RE: [tm-pubsubj] Declare victory and retire?

[Mary Nishikawa <nisikawa@fuchinobe.oilfield.slb.com>]

> > * Bernard Vatant
> > | - PubSubj TC has been very very long (almost 2 years now) to deliver
> > | something that seemed simple to begin with, and that in its initial
> > | charter was due more than one year ago (2002-Q1).

Bernard, from the very beginning, there was really  no real core group of 
corporate sponsorship. I was under the impression there was at the time 
(Mondeca, SUN Microsystems, empolis). I exclude Ontopia from this list 
because they are in the committee as individual members.  For most OASIS 
TCs there is usually at least one or two major corporate sponsors who are 
paying for conference calls, etc.

Specifications move forward by companies who have agreed to collaborate and 
allot resources both human and financial. If you want to make progress, in 
OASIS anyway, this is necessary.

I have mentioned this before, but it does not seem to get through. 
Individual members do not have the same voting status (we cannot vote a 
Specification as an OASIS standard, we cannot vote for the board).
This is the main reason why we do not have a member section too. I have 
been hoping for those representing corporations to step forward and sponsor 
the group (I am an individual member -- Schlumberger is not an OASIS 
sponsor -- for any technical committee).

In most cases the people who start the TC (especially the chair has a 
vested interest in having the committee work go forward -- if this is not 
the case, there is very slow progress, I think).

I did not take the Chair of GeoLang for that very reason. I do not have 
corporate backing for the work.
I am not personally going to promote this committee from my own pocketbook 
unless I start a company myself that will use published subjects that is :)

>*LMG
> > Well, that is your opinion. It never did seem simple to me, and I am
> > quite pleased with what we have done so far, though I agree that we
> > have not made as much progress as I would have wished us to. I think
> > the problem is largely that we have had too little resources for work
> > on this outside the F2F meetings.

* Bernard Vatant
>Yes, we keep saying we don't make progress enough because our resources are
>so sparse, but never tackle the fundamental issue: why are our resources so
>sparse, why did not we gather more task force since two years? When this TC
>was founded, the declared roadmap was to attract potential adopters in the
>industry, publishers, librarians, and so on, and work with them around real
>use cases. Two years after, it turns out that those potential collaborators
>are not here, at a few notable exceptions, and that the work is made by
>basically the same core community than two years ago, also involved in
>SC34, and that the whole expected scenario did not happen.

This is not usually why TCs are formed (attract adopters, ie. customers of 
topic maps :)). If this was the motivation, then it may be the root cause 
of the problem.


> > | - The very slowness of the process, and/or the lack of bandwidth of
> > | participants, and/or the lack of clarity or consensus on what this
> > | TC really wants to achieve, and/or the lack of investment in this
> > | process of real users, all those factors have been slowly leading
> > | the TC activity, over the past six months, to some kind of dormant
> > | stage.
> >
> > Agreed, and I think member bandwidth is the primary problem.
>
>No, it's a secondary problem, the primary one being lack of interest and
>involvment of more people. The lack of task force entails the lack of
>bandwidth. We've not reached the needed critical mass.

People? This is not a club :)

> > | The pile of core issues, in fact the very purpose of this TC :
> > | bringing practical solutions for PSI widespread adoption in the
> > | industry, remains in standby.
> >
> > Well, that's hardly surprising. How could we expect this to be adopted
> > before the technology is ready? Before deliverable 2 is in place
> > there's nothing to show people what they are supposed to do.
>
>Sorry I was not very clear here. I meant that real users' viewpoint has not
>been an effective input in the process, and that we have not really tested
>the specification against real world use-cases. A notable exception being
>what Mary has done with UNSPSC subjects. But this input has been also in
>standby for a while.

Standby? :)  Bernard, did I volunteer or did you assign me something I 
don't  know about? :)

I now have a paper under review by marketing and they needed to read our 
committee specification.
  It could not be found in our public documents directory last month. There 
was no *advertising* or even any simple way to get our specification. This 
is why I went ahead to ask you if I could take care of the documents in 
KAVI. It was getting a little embarrassing.


> > | - Wrap up Deliverable 1 (why this is not done yet, I wonder)

  Not sure what you mean by this. We have another revision coming and there 
shouldn't be another one in a while. The specification is in our documents 
folder. There is one more version which will include the OASIS stuff that 
Patrick has added in  appendices. Is there anything else?


> >Good question. It would be very useful if you could post a summary of
> > its current status so that we can finish this job.

Will do ASAP in a separate thread.

Now I am really confused. I guess I missed something.


> > | - Wrap up the TC, explaining publicly why (impossibility to meet its
> > | charter, for such and such reasons).
> >
> > Personally, I am very strongly against that. If you want to resign as
> > chair that's up to you, but if you do my wish would be to find a new
> > chair and carry on.
>
>Understood.

We need a corporate sponsor to step forward. This would include the chair.
We need to ask, who is benefiting the most from this committee work? Are 
they willing to step forward?
I hope somebody does that. If not, the work may need to return to ISO.

Patrick has taken responsibility for GeoLang and will do so for XMLVoc too. 
Another idea is to revaluate all the work of the three committees, and 
create one new committee.

Best regards,
Mary