OASIS offers a wide range of services to enable the efficient operation of a Member Section:

• Member services
• Financial management
• Specification development
• Marketing and promotion
• Web site hosting and maintenance
• Mailing list management
• Secretariat support
• Meeting facilitation
• Other services

Member services

Because Member Section participants become members of OASIS, our staff assumes all administrative functions for managing membership, including:

• Creating and maintaining the membership database
• Recruiting new participants--both from within OASIS and externally
• Processing membership applications, including Membership Agreements with appropriate IPR provisions
• Invoicing, collecting, and distributing member dues
• Coordinating membership renewal services and enhancing retention of existing members
• Publishing up-to-date membership rosters online
• Maintaining user accounts for all participants
• Providing online tools for participants to self-manage their committee participation
• Analyzing membership growth and renewal opportunities
• Conducting Steering Committee elections
• Archiving membership-related documentation

Financial management

OASIS staff process and manage your accounts and contracts, providing a range of services that include:

• Bookkeeping
• Bank account(s) oversight
• Acceptance of online and manual credit card payments, checks, and wire transfers
• Payment of authorized invoices
• Quarterly financial reports that allow your Steering Committee to manage funds
• Auditing
• Official annual reporting
• Tax return filing

Specification development

Not all Member Sections create specifications. Those that do take advantage of the respected OASIS Technical Committee Process, receiving the complete support of the internationally dispersed OASIS staff, who assist each committee with:

• Drafting charters and building support for work
• Guidance on the use of processes and tools for running meetings, managing membership rosters, and other tasks
• Editing, production, promotion, archiving, and maintenance of documents, including specifications, test suites, meeting minutes, white papers, and other official materials
• Administering and promoting public reviews
• Evaluating your work to identify potential conflicts or overlap with other specifications
• Building official liaison relationships with related committees and/or other organizations
• Balloting of specifications for ratification within committees and OASIS at-large
• Choosing to operate under a well-defined Intellectual Property Rights mode that best meets their needs:
  • Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND)
  • Royalty-Free on RAND Terms
  • Royalty-Free on Limited Terms

Marketing and promotion

All Member Sections--especially those organized to promote adoption and interoperability--gain from association with the international reputation of OASIS and our relationships with the media. Our communications staff:

• Draft and distribute press releases, announcing major milestones such as the formation of the Member Section, new committees, approval of standards, interoperability events, etc.
• Create a customized press list of editors and analysts that cover your subject area
• Arrange for editorial and analyst briefings with your spokespeople
• Promote your activities in OASIS News, XML Daily Newslink, Cover Pages, and XML.org
• Identify and coordinate presentation opportunities at conferences and other events
• Assist in managing and promoting Interoperability Demonstrations (InterOps) to showcase multi-vendor implementations of your work at major conferences
• Develop data sheets to assist in recruiting new participation
• Create case studies describing successful adoptions of your work
• Manage logistics and promote webinars to educate the marketplace on your mission and accomplishments

Web site hosting and maintenance

Depending on a Member Section's needs, OASIS staff may:

• Provide web hosting and web mastering services
• Transition your existing site or create a new one
• Assist in developing and maintaining content
• Provide backup of all web and email data via the enterprise wide fail-over server network
• Host an XML.org Community site in support of your technical agenda, where readers can contribute to online collaborative workspaces, blogs, directories, wikis, forums, and technical and educational materials

Mailing list management

OASIS provides Member Sections with full subscription, posting, and archiving support for mail lists, as detailed in our Mail List Guidelines and Procedures. You may create a variety of mail list types, including (but not limited to):

• Steering Committee list
• Member Section general member list
• Committee lists used by your members to conduct their work
• -dev lists to encourage public dialog on implementing a specification
• -user lists to assist those adopting a specification
• -interest lists to support community awareness of your work
• -comment lists for public feedback to your Committee members
• -discuss lists that host 90-day dialogs to vet new ideas and soliciting interest in forming Committees

Secretariat support

If needed, OASIS staff is available to provide guidance and support to your Member Section Steering Committee by:

• Assisting the chair in producing meeting agendas
• Taking minutes
• Tracking actions and decisions
• Handling and tracking liaisons with other bodies
• Maintenance of web site content related to the technical work

Meeting management

OASIS staff can support your face-to-face meetings and events worldwide by:

• Assisting with the selection of meeting sites
• Coordinating co-location with OASIS general meetings or other relevant events
• Contracting with hotels and other venues
• Managing online and on-site registration
• Overseeing other logistics (room allocation, catering, etc.)
• Arranging for use of OASIS-owned audio/visual equipment
• Contracting with service providers
• Organizing receptions and other networking events
• Creating signage, proceedings, and other materials
• Identifying sponsors

Other services

The services described here are just some of the ways the OASIS Member Section program can meet your needs. We welcome discussions of other ideas you may have.

For more information on OASIS Member Sections, contact member-services@oasis-open.org.