[gnso-vi-feb10] call for agenda items -- and preview of what's already on the list

["Mike O'Connor" <mike@xxxxxxxxxx>]

hi all,

i'm going to try to do this weekly note to the list for a while.  at least 
while things are as active as they've been -- my VI mailbox has 734 messages in 
it, generated over a 3-week interval.  not too bad!  

disclaimer -- while Roberto and i talk a lot, and seem to share an uncanny 
ability to read each other's minds and agree, he hasn't vetted this post and 
has every permission to correct me if i've strayed off course with any of this 
stuff.  

this will just be a standard reminder that we have a call coming up on Monday.  
if you've got something you'd like to see on the agenda, let us know.  i'm not 
promising that everything will always make it, but it's very helpful to hear 
about things that we might miss otherwise.

Here are the major goals for the call, at least right now.

-- Launch an "evaluation team."  

i'm preparing a set of materials for this part of the conversation that i'll 
post later today.  in a nutshell, we've got a great (and growing) group of 
proposal-champions working very hard and very well.  but we also need assemble 
a group of people to be "evaluation-champions" who can provide a common 
framework by which we compare proposals.  with 65 people on the member-list, 
we've got lots of talent to draw on.  start thinking about whether you'd like 
to volunteer for this -- in the absence of volunteers, we'll start 
"volunteering" people.  :-)

-- Review tasks and milestones.  

i have gone a little too far in the direction of "not clogging up the pipes 
with process stuff" and left you in the dark as to what The Plan is.  i want to 
take a few minutes on the call and remedy that.  again, materials and tools are 
in the pipeline and we'll hit the list with those later today too.  our hope is 
that these materials will be pretty self-explanatory and that we won't have to 
spend a lot of call-time on this.

-- Anti-trust overview

this is a carryover from the very first agenda.  and this one *may* carry over 
again if the materials aren't quite done.  Margie and Amy have been working to 
put together a primer for us on this topic that we'll discuss on the call if 
it's ready.

-- Hear from proposal-advocates

this is round-2 of the item we had on last week's call.  i've heard of several 
more new proposals, but we need to hear from proposal-advocates whether they 
need presentation time on the agenda.  this is the tentative deadline for new 
proposals, so at a minimum people need to declare their *intent* to drive a 
proposal and post a sketchy overview of what they're proposing.  if we're 
overwhelmed with "proposers" we'll do the same thing we did last time and defer 
some conversations until the next call.  

-- SR sub-group question

a thread is emerging that maybe SR ought to be a sub-group of some sort.  we're 
thinking that this might be a good idea.  it may turn out that the SR sub-group 
conversation evolves into a proposal.  or not.  but in either case the 
conversation is seems valuable and should be continued, while at the same time 
perhaps becoming a bit more focused/contained.

-- Face to face meeting question

we've discussed the idea of a face to face meeting.  there are some pretty 
substantial barriers to this.  first off, of course, is expense.  we checked 
back up the chain and there currently isn't a budget for this kind of thing.  
we'd have to be able to justify the expense against what we'd be able to 
accomplish -- and that decision would have to go through the Council.  in 
addition, there's simply the time-commitment that would be required.  many on 
the working group have jobs and lives that would be pretty seriously disrupted 
by a meeting like this.  plus, as you'll see, we actually have a fair amount of 
slack in our schedule to work these issues out.  so we'd like to kick off a 
conversation about this topic before making a choice, but the prospects are 
daunting.

as you can see, this is already a pretty full agenda.  but there's always room 
for a little more if there is something crucial that we've missed.



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