(j3.2006) Won't be in Toronto

[Bill Long]

If JPL can't justify the cost of sending Van to Toronto (no matter how 
they word the excuse), I imagine that the prospects for attending a 
meeting in Europe are even worse.  While it is very unfortunate that he 
will not be at m198, the general trend is more worrisome.  Yet, we don't 
want to discourage wider international participation at WG5 meetings by 
always having them in the US.

Those of us who have our J3 travel and membership funded by our employer 
see tension over costs to some degree.  J3 does keep travel costs down 
for the majority of members by meeting in Las Vegas, and that definitely 
helps during the cost discussions at work.  We also scaled back from 4 
meetings/year to 3, mainly motivated by cost.  The one thing we don't 
control is the annual membership fee to ANSI, which went up a couple of 
years ago ($800 -> $1200).  Perhaps ANSI should try to encourage 
long-term commitments to standards activities by reducing the fee each 
consecutive year of membership (maybe $100/year) until the fee is down 
to a nominal amount.

Cheers,
Bill

On 5/7/12 3:01 PM, Keith Bierman wrote:
> Not being part of JPL or NASA (anymore, nor for a long time)....
>
> JPL is actually owned by Caltech, but nearly 100% financed by NASA. If
> NASA doesn't want to pay for something, it is incredibly rare that
> anyone with the authority to do so is going to go against NASA (if, Van
> was awarded the Nobel Prize, Caltech might spring for that; but
> mathematics is excluded from Nobel awards).
>
> The consequences of going against NASA's will (even in trivial ways) can
> be profound, so JPL staff are trained early to not even think about it
> (other than finding other funding sources, which they sometimes have
> been allowed/encouraged to do). But it seems highly unlikely that Van
> could get this sort of funding outside of the primary channels (once
> upon a time, the hypercube group might have; but that was over in the
> Navigation Division not Oceanography).
>
> Other than our all lamenting Van's fate (and perhaps the funding battles
> that NASA is losing at major government levels, and JPL's own battles)
> there's not much left for any of us to do but to hoist a drink in Van's
> honor.
>
>
> Keith Bierman
> khbkhb at gmail.com <mailto:khbkhb at gmail.com>
> kbiermank AIM
> 303 997 2749
>
>
> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Van Snyder <Van.Snyder at jpl.nasa.gov
> <mailto:Van.Snyder at jpl.nasa.gov>> wrote:
>
>     On Mon, 2012-05-07 at 13:43 -0400, Daniel C Chen wrote:
>      > I am really sorry that you won't be coming to Toronto this June. Is
>      > there any chance that it may change at the last minute? I am just
>      > hoping ...
>
>     Very unlikely.
>
>     As an earlier supervisor told me when I joined an oceanography group,
>     "If you're a civilian in the Navy, you'll never be an admiral."
>     Mathematicians and software engineers are always second-class citizens
>     if they're not in organizations devoted to mathematics and computer
>     science. But then, the entire organization is a second-class citizen.
>
>     Van
>
>
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>
>
>
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-- 
Bill Long                                           longb at cray.com
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