The Supreme Order of the Donkey

Minutes from Previous Meetings

	*Date*	*Location*	*Recipient*
Version Subversion	March 22, 2002	Barcelona, Spain	Gunther Stuhec
Heroic Editing	October 4, 2002	Burlington, MA, USA	Mark Crawford

The Supreme Order of the Donkey is the honorific associated with those individuals whose contribution to UBL goes beyond social norms, entering into the realm of the heroic. Bestowal of the SOD is associated with a Noteworthy Act.

It is useful to deconstruct some Donkey concepts in order to more fully understand The Dead Donkey and its relevance to the proceedings so that we remain mindful of opportunities to invoke His Spirit at junctures of great need.

Definition of “Dead Donkey” – an idea whose time has passed. It's been argued to death. Definition of “Flogging the Dead Donkey” – continuing to discuss (rant and rave about) an idea whose time has passed.

The genesis of the SOD lies in the practice within the Naming and Design Rules subcommittee, of arguing and re-arguing an idea until all present are slaphappy. As a result, it is always all right to award the SOD for Flogging the Dead Donkey. However, as time passes, and the SOD is repeatedly awarded, examples of this specific behavior are expected to become less plentiful. For this reason the SOD criteria has been expanded to recognize achievements whose impact on the TC may be either positive or negative. This is probably due to some recognition of the whole “duality of man thing”. Any Noteworthy Act bestows upon its perpetrator, eligibility.

Definition of “Noteworthy Act”: a statement or deed or succession of same that in its distance from the norm exceeds two standard deviations either in the positive or negative direction.

Examples of Noteworthy Acts:

(positive) Carrying a small child from a burning building
(positive) Writing a script that converts a Core Components design description into a corresponding XML Schema.
(negative) Unsuccessfully and repeatedly arguing the relative merits of local or global XML tag names (an example of Flogging the Dead Donkey)

Eligibility

All voting members of the OASIS UBL technical committee are eligible for the SOD. The member must be present (at the face to face meeting) to win.

Rights, Privileges and Responsibilities

As a token of bestowal of the SOD, the honoree receives Don Quixote. It is the responsibility of the recipient to care for Don Quixote until he is awarded to the next honoree at the next face-to-face meeting.

Definition of “care for”: Don Quixote likes to have his picture taken. He has been known to drink one too many margaritas and do the Cha Cha on the dinner table. Don tends to tell on honorees that fail to live up to their charge. The compliant honoree will want to provide proof of compliance with this rule, for example, in the form of personal testimony or photos.

The primary privilege of membership in the SOD is that special feeling that comes from long airplane rides spent with Don Quixote on one's lap. Come to think of it, that may be the only privilege.

At each face-to-face meeting, it is the responsibility of the current keeper of The Donkey (Don Quixote) to pick the next honoree. While it is the responsibility of the current keeper to pick the next honoree, protocol dictates that other TC members be consulted during the course of the meetings (usually over a period of a few days). In this way an optimal recipient will be identified. There are many side benefits to this practice including but not limited to:

opportunities to form mini-conspiracies regarding possible motivations of candidate honorees, especially when there is no ready explanation
opportunities to postulate possible parenting mishaps constituting the root cause of the Noteworthy Act

At each such bestowal of the SOD, embodied by transference of Don Quixote, the following data items will be captured:

Name of honoree
Date and location of award
Title of Noteworthy Act

The title of the Noteworthy Act is important. It needs to be concise, properly capitalized, and preferably funny. Scathing or dry humor and double-entendre are all in scope.

Use this XML Schema to validate a submission (a Bestowal):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:ubl="urn:oasis:names:tc:ubl:Order:1.0:0.65" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" elementFormDefault="qualified" attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
	<xs:complexType name="Bestowal">
		<xs:all>
			<xs:element name="Honoree" type="xs:string"/>
			<xs:element name="Date" type="xs:date"/>
			<xs:element name="Venue" type="ubl:LocationType"/>
			<xs:element name="Title" type="xs:string"/>
		</xs:all>
	</xs:complexType>
</xs:schema>