OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

  • 1.  Coordination Call Attendance

    Posted 09-29-2008 15:41 
    Michael and Robert,

I notice that the membership and voting membership of OASIS TCs is rather
fluid.

In the minutes, it would be valuable to know

1. Which attendees were voting members at the start of the meeting (with an
asterisk or other indicator).

2. Which voting members were absent from the meeting, whether on leave, etc.

I find this valuable, as a newcomer, to understand how the quorum is
composed and also to know, at each occasion, who the voting members are,
whether attending or not.

This is also moderately useful historically, since otherwise it is not clear
in minutes of past meetings how the body was constituted at that time.  (It
also has a parliamentary function around reconsideration, although I don't
expect that to be of much concern.)

I know this involves more work in preparing minutes, even though the
information is known at the time of the call and is consulted as part of
determining the quorum.

 - Dennis

Dennis E. Hamilton
------------------
NuovoDoc: Design for Document System Interoperability 
mailto:Dennis.Hamilton@acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430 
http://NuovoDoc.com http://ODMA.info/dev/ http://nfoWorks.org


  • 2.  Re: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

    Posted 09-30-2008 08:49 
    Dennis,

On 09/29/08 05:43 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
> Michael and Robert,
> 
> I notice that the membership and voting membership of OASIS TCs is rather
> fluid.
> 
> In the minutes, it would be valuable to know
> 
> 1. Which attendees were voting members at the start of the meeting (with an
> asterisk or other indicator).
> 
> 2. Which voting members were absent from the meeting, whether on leave, etc.
> 
> I find this valuable, as a newcomer, to understand how the quorum is
> composed and also to know, at each occasion, who the voting members are,
> whether attending or not.

Thanks for these suggestions. Actually, most of the information you are 
looking for is present already, even though not in the minutes.

The information who is a TC member and who has voting rights can be 
found on TC roster page at

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/office/members/roster.php

or (public version)

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/membership.php?wg_abbrev=office

Rob and I update this page before each call and use it for quorum 
calculations. A quorum is reached if more than 50% of the voting members 
are present in a meeting.

Furthermore, we track the attendance of each meeting in the calendar 
tool at:

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/office/calendar.php

See for instance the entry of the call on the 22nd of September:

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/office/event.php?event_id=18222

This page also shows how the quorum is calculated.

It does not list the voting members at the beginning of each call. But 
in the very few cases where these may be of interest for a call in the 
past (I cannot remember that this was ever the case) these could be 
easily recalculated by applying the OASIS rules to the meeting 
attendance that is tracked in the minutes or the calendar. This is a 
little bit more complicated than just having that information in the 
minutes directly. But I think what is of interest is not so much what 
was the situation in the past, but what is situation before each call. 
And that can be easily found on TC'c roster page.

Best regards

Michael

-- 
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  • 3.  RE: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

    Posted 09-30-2008 16:05 
    Hello Michael,

I apologize, I did not make myself understood.  I understand how the
membership is determined at the beginning of each meeting, and how I could
check it myself.

However, the minutes are a public, archival records, and the membership
changes over time.  So there is no way to easily know what the voting
membership and voting attendance was at the time of any previous meeting,
especially since voting membership changes from time to time.  (I assume
that Florian Reuter is not currently a voting member because of consecutive
absences, for example.)

I looked at the Calendar tool, but it doesn't provide any more information
than the minutes with regard to this question.  I don't think it is part of
the OASIS public record, either.

Also, the complete membership roster is difficult to use (being organized by
organization rather than individual).  For those reasons, I am requesting
that the minutes should reflect the voting membership status.  It is only a
request.

Although it is apparently of little interest to know the voting membership
composition on the occasion of individual past meetings, I would have
thought it an important element of accountability.  OASIS is apparently more
informal than I had expected.

 - Dennis

PS: I do not understand why some organizations and some individuals have *
next to their names.  For example, Novell* and Patrick Durusau*.  I have
looked everywhere for an explanatory note and have failed so far.  


    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 4.  Re: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

    Posted 10-01-2008 08:01 
    Hi Dennis,

On 09/30/08 18:07, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
> Hello Michael,
> 
> I apologize, I did not make myself understood.  I understand how the
> membership is determined at the beginning of each meeting, and how I could
> check it myself.
> 
> However, the minutes are a public, archival records, and the membership
> changes over time.  So there is no way to easily know what the voting
> membership and voting attendance was at the time of any previous meeting,
> especially since voting membership changes from time to time.  (I assume
> that Florian Reuter is not currently a voting member because of consecutive
> absences, for example.)

I agree that it is not easily possible to determine what the voting
membership of a meeting was by just looking at the minutes or a single 
web page, but it can be calculated by checking the last few minutes.

But I would like to understand why this is important to you? I have 
never required that information, even not in my role as TC
co-chair. What I need is the information who right now is a member and 
has voting rights. But this information is available at the TC 
membership page.

We furthermore track already the number of voting members the TC has in 
total and the number of those that are attending. Why is it important to 
you to also have the names of voting members that are not attending to a 
call in the minutes?

> 
> I looked at the Calendar tool, but it doesn't provide any more information
> than the minutes with regard to this question.  I don't think it is part of
> the OASIS public record, either.

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that it is part of the public 
record. At least, the data in the tool is used to conduct electronic 
ballots.

> 
> Also, the complete membership roster is difficult to use (being organized by
> organization rather than individual).  For those reasons, I am requesting

That's true for the public roster. The roster at the TC member page

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/office/members/roster.php

can be sorted by the last name or status by clicking the corresponding 
heading. Maybe that's what you are looking for.

> that the minutes should reflect the voting membership status.  It is only a
> request.

Maybe Rob has a different opinion here. I personally think this causes 
some overhead. And to be honest, unless I have overseen something, its 
nothing that really helps us to conduct or organize our TC work. For 
that reason, I simply would like to understand what the benefit would be 
before  I agree to actually track this information.

Anyway, that's my personal opinion. If other TC members believe we 
should track more information regarding the status of TC members in the 
minutes, then we may of cause do so. Is this a topic you wish to discuss 
in one of the next calls?

> 
> Although it is apparently of little interest to know the voting membership
> composition on the occasion of individual past meetings, I would have
> thought it an important element of accountability.  OASIS is apparently more
> informal than I had expected.
> 
>  - Dennis
> 
> PS: I do not understand why some organizations and some individuals have *
> next to their names.  For example, Novell* and Patrick Durusau*.  I have
> looked everywhere for an explanatory note and have failed so far.  

I believe this is left over from the last change of IPR rules at OASIS, 
where all organizations and individual members that signed the new 
membership agreement were marked by the "*". We may ask Mary McRae 
whether this true.

Best regards

Michael
> 
> 
    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 5.  RE: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

    Posted 10-02-2008 16:09 
    I apologize for being thick about this.  The information I asked for was
always available in other activities known to me, and I assumed that it
would be valuable as part of our accountability for the work (providing
simple demonstration for what the numbers are based on, in particular).  It
is missing for me. I now understand it is not the practice and would be
burdensome.

I also apologize for not realizing what all the additional tools are and how
they are used by TC officers.  I use the resources that were available to me
as a non-TC member because that is what I already knew to use.  

I will not pursue this further.

 - Dennis

PS: I think of the public record as the material that is perpetually
available without being a member of OASIS or the TC. 


    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 6.  Re: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

    Posted 10-02-2008 05:05 
    "Dennis E. Hamilton"


  • 7.  RE: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

    Posted 10-02-2008 16:09 
    Rob,

That is interesting about recording votes and such.  That was not anything
that figured in my request, even though I did cast a nay vote on the last
call (and I must remind Michael to identify me in the minutes).

My interest was in accounting for the voting membership and attendance over
time, since the current state on the TC page is not helpful with regard to
knowing what the voting participation was at a prior time.  I have no axe to
grind about this.  I was simply taken aback that it wasn't done already and
easily available.  (My experience in the matter is quite dated; I had
thought that this kind of tracking was the usual practice in standards
development and other membership-based committee efforts.)

I overlooked Michael's recent response.  OK, I get this is simply not the
practice, it is considered burdensome, and I will shut up.

 - Dennis

PS: With regard to the TC Calendar that Michael suggested, I didn't find
that workable and it does not appear to be part of the TC's public record
(being behind the password curtain).  The posted membership on the TC page
is also difficult to use. I just got through to the TC's roster and now I
understand what the tool is that has been mentioned.  My my ...


    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 8.  RE: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

    Posted 10-03-2008 00:50 
    Dennis,

I'm not concerned so much with the burden.  My greater concern is that we 
do not stray from what minutes are.  Minutes of a meeting record the time 
the meeting started, the attendance, a description of items discussed and 
actions taken, and the time the meeting was adjourned.  It should not 
contain random facts, even useful facts, that were not part of the 
meeting.  If we start recording other information and then approving 
minutes that contain such information, which was never presented in the 
meeting and thus the TC never had the opportunity to discuss, challenge or 
correct the information, then we have a different kind of problem. 

Now I have seen other bodies have a set part of the agenda where they 
review who has voting rights.  For example INCITS V1, the US JTC1/SC34 
shadow committee does this after attendance is taken in each meeting. 
Since the voting membership list was presented in the meeting, it can 
legitimately be recorded in the minutes.

Is there interest in doing something similar, i.e., having a short segment 
at the start of each TC call, where we list which members present have 
voting rights?  This would then trickle into the minutes.

-Rob

"Dennis E. Hamilton"


  • 9.  RE: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

    Posted 10-03-2008 17:20 
    Rob,

I hadn't been thinking about the conditions on what minutes are for.  I
don't think I've ever heard that laid out in that way.  Thank you.

From a protocol point of view, I do recall their being standing items to
report on the membership and attendance and perhaps that is how things got
into the minutes (although people may have just been doing it as inherited
craft, without knowing the principle).

I believe that would work in this instance, although I guess technically it
is a report and reports have a funny status.

I see in Robert's Rules that Minutes are expected to be quite spare and
account for actions and not much else.  However, the two-tiered membership
makes that a little trickier, and it would be weirder to put such a report
anywhere else.  Interesting.

 - Dennis


    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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