Steve,
Steve Pepper wrote:
> | >1. Fresh start, clean slate, new chair, all that.
> | >2. Less admin with just one committee (especially given the degree
> | > of overlap we had in membership).
> | >3. Opportunity to change the name and become less Topic Maps-centric.
> | > Suggest calling it "OASIS Published Subjects TC" and going after
> | > representation from the RDF community.
>
> Oh, and
>
> 4. Mary for chair (unless Patrick wants to fight her
> for it ... but he has so many hats already ;-)
>
Maybe, maybe... ;-)
What I find curious is despite several posts asking the question:
If the present TCs are broken, how is another TC going to do any better?
There has been no answers from anyone who appears to assume that the
present TCs are broken.
Since I have asked for reasons why the present TCs aren't working (and
gone unanswered) I will offer my own (with ways forward as well):
Personally I think the present TCs have been less than very productive
primarily because we are such a small community and all of the
participants have day jobs. It is simply not possible for those
participants, however skilled or dedicated (and I think they all are) to
devote unlimited amounts of time to OASIS TCs along with other standards
efforts and still maintain their regular duties.
Having a new TC, whatever the name, etc., is not going to change that
basic fact.
But I don't suggest the foregoing to say that the TCs are doomed. Far
from it. The GeoLang and XMLVoc TCs need the output of the PubSubj to
move forward.
There is at least one group that is very interested in doing the
language side of GeoLang that is not presently in the TC, but for them
to start, they have to have a starting place from PubSubj.
As I mentioned yesterday, the SBL is in discussion with a vendor that
could easily issue PSIs for biblical materials, but again, it needs to
know which way to point its cannon. Either one would be a boost in
visibility for PSIs in the near term and not two years from now (if not
more) with a new TC.
As I noted yesterday, there are several deliverables that could issue
from the PubSubj TC without any change to its charter and being less
than the "full monty" would be less of a drain on the resources of its
members. If (I should say when) the PubSubj TC starts issuing work
products that can be used by the RDF community (or anyone else, perhaps
the topic map community) we should find it an easier task to attract new
members to share the work load. We can certainly give the work products
less topic map centric names if that is seen as an advantage.
We have been down this "present organization is not working, the
solution is another organization" road before. Setting up another TC is
simply avoiding the substantive question about how to use the resources
we have to go forward in favor of appearing to go forward by forming yet
another TC with the same members. Not being a large vendor with a
marketing staff (none of the TC participants are) I prefer substantive
progress over motion to give the appearance of progress.
If your question, Steve, is will I fight to keep the TCs going (whether
as chair or as a participant) and making substantive progress as opposed
to creating the illusion of progress through procedural motion, the
answer is yes.
Hope you are having a great day!
Patrick
--
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model
Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!
