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 15:18:58 GMT
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Viewed:
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1979 times
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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, back before the dotcom bubble popped, it
wasn't unheard of for companies to donate their conference call facilities
complete with 800 numbers to call in on. Those days are over. But LD is
cheap, and there is a free service that does conference calls for you, first
come first served, you just have to make an LD call to their switchboard.
(so each caller is paying LD to that number)
The ILTCO organizing committee uses this to great effect, along with a
parallel AIM or Y! chat session where notes are taken and URLs (to samples
etc) can be posted for quick reference during the meeting.
5 to 7 people feels right to me for the size of the SC.
Piggybacking meetings onto fan events is sort of OK but there are always
some people missing, we have found. But it's better than nothing and there
certainly is no budget for special meetings.
Requiring stuff to be mailed/shared in advance (there is a natural website
already in existance to share stuff for LDraw) and that people read it seems
a must.
Setting an agenda and sticking to it is a must. Someone should facilitate
meetings, either the chair, or a member appointed for the purpose of
facilitation. I have facilitation training, it's not hard. I suspect others
do as well. But unfacilitated meetings tend to go down side topics
(especially if it's a meeting about a hobby) rather easily.
If the SC is self selecting, (this is a community consensus thing, I'm
assuming but not asserting that the community is OK with that) we have 3
members already and at least one of the members (me) wants Wayne in on this
for his previous standards body experience. That would be 4. Steve B is a
must, that's 5.
5 is a good number. So is 7, but 6 is not as good, odd is better than even.
In lugnet.cad.dev, Wayne Gramlich writes:
> [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 3 Replies:
 | | Re: LDraw Versioning (Was Re: Backwards Compatibility)
|
| (...) I'm not so keen on actual phone use (all I have is a cell phone), but using AIM, MSN, ICQ etc... is propbably the best way. (...) Due to my work, it's would be easier for me if we did this during or after a lego event. It's easier for me to (...) (22 years ago, 17-Mar-03, to lugnet.cad.dev)
| | | Re: LDraw Versioning (Was Re: Backwards Compatibility)
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| (...) Definitely. I think it's important to draw from ILTCO's experience forming as well as Wayne's experience on the W3C. (...) Good idea. While I'm not going for a position on the SB myself, I can attest for the value of voice conversations over (...) (22 years ago, 17-Mar-03, to lugnet.cad.dev)
| | | SC Membership (was Re: LDraw Versioning)
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| (...) [snip] (...) All: I'm open to the concept of being on the SC. My concern is that is that I am not either a heavy LDraw user or LDraw tool person. This is primarily because most of the LDraw tools only run on Windows and I only run Linux these (...) (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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| [snip] (...) 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 (...) (22 years ago, 17-Mar-03, to lugnet.cad.dev)
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