Re: [vhdl-200x] Action Item(All): Review of VASG Working Group Operating Procedures

From: Jim Lewis <Jim@synthworks.com>
Date: Tue Jun 28 2011 - 07:35:30 PDT

Hi John,
I wanted to reply to your comments before the meeting Thursday.

> The P&Ps look pretty good and have a good focus on electronic communication for meetings and voting. One mechanism used fairly extensively in DASC WGs and our group is twiki for online collaboration.
> Taking attendance, recording and approving meeting minutes, providing and defining meeting agenda is done here for us. Some of the language in the P&P could reflect that more directly.

P&Ps are a specification document. Twiki is one implementation.
I would not want to have to revise the P&P because we drop
EDA.org twiki and take up IEEE's Mentor system (also a twiki).
While I currently see no reason to switch, external forces
could obligate us to switch. I think the DASC originally had
an implementation document that they called their operations
manual (that people still refer to although I have not seen
a copy).

> One example is the distribution of meeting agenda with advance notice. It is living twiki topic and published. It may have a standing agenda or agreed-to items at the end of the current meeting. It
> also has a mechanism for members to propose agenda items just in time for the start of a meeting. That said, when does the 7 day notice of meeting agenda apply?
>
> So, I'll offer a thought. The intent of the 7 days is to allow members to plan to attend and not miss discussion and possibly an in-meeting vote on an important topic, correct? We have addressed the
> voting aspect in our voting policy that will always back up an in-meeting vote with an electronic vote by email. That requires 7 days notice for the vote.
>
> Does 7 days means anything more? It could also mean that the agenda is fixed 7 days in advance, but I think that is too rigid a policy. It could also be a way to insure that further discussion takes
> place on a short notice agenda item before a vote is scheduled. We could state that a short notice agenda item can be tabled to the next meeting at the request of a member. I don't know if that is
> really needed. The chair has an obligation to fairness that would allow a vote to be postponed or appealed already.

7 days is about openness and notice. The original time (much
longer) was instituted due to potential travel. My interest
lowering it to 7 days in particular is if we want to hold
meetings at two week intervals, we need to set the notice
time to allow adjustments to schedules without having to
cancel meetings due to time limits.

> Finally, there is a strong statement in 7.2 about Working Group Membership
> status that says all voting will be done electronically. That's great.
> _It belongs in section 9 on Voting_ and should be
> referred to in 7.2. It is otherwise easy to miss in P&P review.

I agree, however, we can only modify sections that IEEE allows.

If you go back to the IEEE original template for this,
   http://standards.ieee.org//about/sasb/audcom/wg_pp.doc
you will note that section 9 is plagued with red text of the
following form:
   This clause shall not be modified, except to ...

Maybe the statement about electronic voting is too much
about implementation and should not be in the document
at all.

Best,
Jim

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Jim Lewis
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SynthWorks Design Inc.           http://www.SynthWorks.com
1-503-590-4787
Expert VHDL Training for Hardware Design and Verification
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Received on Tue Jun 28 07:35:55 2011

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