Subject:
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Re: LDraw Versioning (Was Re: Backwards Compatibility)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev
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Date:
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Mon, 17 Mar 2003 06:26:58 GMT
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Viewed:
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2337 times
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[snip]
> Also, Wayne, since we're on the topic of standards bodies, would you mind
> sharing with the community some of your thoughts about this, based on your
> past term(s) as Sun's representative to the W3C?
>
> Guys - allthough the W3C is way above and beyond what we're doing here, I
> think it's valuable to learn how the big boys do it, and draw from that
> what's appropriate for our community.
>
> I know Wayne isn't all that active here, but I've met him in person on
> multiple occasions (BricksWest 2002 and 2003). Each time we get into good
> discussions about the current state of the LDraw community, and what should
> be done differently in the future. Because of his experience, Wayne has a
> lot of valuable insight into our situation.
Tim:
For those who do not know, W3C stands for World Wide Web Consortium
and it is the organization that is responsible for web standards such
as HTTP, URL, HTML, XML, etc.
Before I get into the details of how W3C operates, let me start off
by pointing out that W3C is a fairly heavyweight organization and
it would be inappropriate to adopt all of the things that W3C does
to get recommended practices out the door. I view the LDraw community
as a friendlier group of people that can get by with substantially
less that what W3C had to put in place.
I got to participate in the early days of the HTML standard.
In order to particpate, the corporation has to pay a membership
fee. It is based on corporate revenues. Large organizations
like Sun, IBM, Microsoft, etc. had to pay $5OK/yr. just to be
a member. Somehow, I don't think membership dues are appropriate
for the LDraw community. ;-)
Each company can send one person to each standards committee.
When you are signing up for a committee, you agree to go to
a quarterly meeting that is face-to-face for 2-3 days. In addition,
you are required to participate in a weekly conference call.
There is a members only E-mail list where committee E-mail
occurs. The HTML committee had 25-30 people (which is a rather
large and difficult to manage number.) The weekly conference
call had an published agenda. Any materials needed for a
discussion topic had to be sent out three days ahead of the
conference all, so that people had a chance to read them.
You were expected to read them to. There was a facilitator
whose job was to keep the conference call on topic. If a
topic ran into problems, it was shelved until the next meeting
and a the next topic was discussed. Finally, there were
minutes of every conference call, and all of the face-to-face
meetings. All this heavy weight organization is needed to
ensure that progress is made.
I suspect that the LDraw community can get by with much less
structure for managing its file format(s). I would recommend
that it be a self selected group that tries to keep its number
in the general range of 5-7.
The conference calls are a good thing, but I suspect that having
them every week is a little too frequent. Every 2-3 weeks should
be good enough. Having an agenda sent out 24 hours before the
call is a good thing. I found the meeting notes to be a total
waste of time. If there is any way that the LDraw committee can
make conference calls work, you will find it very useful tool.
The face-to-face meetings were useful too, but they can be quite
expensive. (One time Sun dropped $5K to send me to Paris, to
attend one 2 day meeting; it was fun, but it was not worth $5K
to Sun.) I suspect the best that the LDraw committee could
arrange is to try to get together for a day after either BricksFest
or BricksWest. If most of the committee wants to go to an
appropriate Brick gathering, tailgating a face-to-face meeting
afterwards is appropriate; otherwise, I suspect that the conference
call is the best alternative technology.
When it comes to the standards document itself, those could be
quite tedious. In general, one person was assigned the task
of writing the entire document. Portions would be farmed out
to other committee members, but in the end, one person took
all of the text and worked it into a single cohesive document.
This editor always worked directly for W3C.
I suspect that the LDraw committee can get by without having
to have a single editor. If each person writes up one section,
that is probably good enough.
In the end, the thing to remember is that this all supposed to be
fun, not work. No structure is pretty chaotic, a little structure
can be quite useful and too much structure can be pretty smothering.
Finding that delicate balance of just enough structure to get the
job done can be a little tricky, but think I see people making the
right sorts of proposals, so I suspect that you folks are already
on the right track towards forming an effective and useful LDraw
committee.
I hope you found the text above to be useful,
-Wayne
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: LDraw Versioning (Was Re: Backwards Compatibility)
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| GREAT input Wayne. (now, can we twist Wayne's arm to be on the SC?) Yes, we should learn from orgs but not adopt everything. The proper balance is key. What follows is some ILTCO organizing committee experience. On the topic of conference calls, (...) (22 years ago, 17-Mar-03, to lugnet.cad.dev)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: LDraw Versioning (Was Re: Backwards Compatibility)
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| Ok...replying to myself here... (...) Also, Wayne, since we're on the topic of standards bodies, would you mind sharing with the community some of your thoughts about this, based on your past term(s) as Sun's representative to the W3C? Guys - (...) (22 years ago, 17-Mar-03, to lugnet.cad.dev)
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