[J3] (SC22WG5.6175) October meeting visa invitation letter

[Steve Lionel]

On 4/28/2020 12:31 PM, Ondřej Čertík via J3 wrote:
> Thanks for this initiative. Having a projector and a telecon capability would be extremely beneficial.

I'm not convinced a projector is needed, with presentation sharing. 
Often a projector is available at WG5 venues - as I wrote earlier I'm 
not aware that the Las Vegas Residence Inn (J3 venue) has one we can 
use, but maybe it does (for a fee, I am sure.) What I usually see, when 
local attendees are watching a projection and remote attendees are 
watching what is shared,  is that the presenter talks to the room and 
not to the whole audience, and sometimes points to things on the 
projection screen leaving the remote viewers clueless. I suppose video 
can help with that, but that adds complexity.

Telecon capability, though, is going to be required. The question is who 
will pay for it, something I am working on. J3 can buy equipment with 
funds from meeting fees, but it would be nice if INCITS or even ISO can 
provide some funding. There's also a logistical issue with the way J3 
operates in subgroups that tend to meet together at odd times and then 
the members go off by themselves to work on papers. That needs a 
rethink, and I'd love to see some concrete suggestions in this area.  
Speaking of which...

> Thanks also for the willingness to reevaluate how J3 works. I agree that's needed. If you wouldn't mind, can you please elaborate more what you mean by "time-shifted engagement"? Let's discuss the details.
>
That was Nathan's term - I took it as meaning getting away from doing 
the development only at J3 meetings, which is what I have hopes your 
Github can help with, as I discuss in my latest blog post. It will 
require a willingness across J3 to change the way we work, and needs to 
be established collectively. Really this is a J3 thing and not WG5, 
unless WG5 wants to "take back" technical development of the standard 
from J3, in which case we have additional issues to deal with, and I 
don't think that would be productive.

There is a great deal to be said, however, for the personal interactions 
and exchanges of ideas that happen when everyone is together in the same 
room,and chatting 1-1 in corridors, etc. Physical meetings are more 
efficient and encourage attendees to devote most of their attention to 
the standard work at hand. That simply doesn't happen with virtual 
meetings. But members who want to do the work, even though they're 
unable to attend in person, should still be able to participate.

In my mind, the biggest step we can take is to get work-list papers 
written between meetings, with tuning by small teams of interested 
parties, so that when we do meet in person we can get things done 
faster. We don't need any equipment to do that, just a shift of mindset 
and a willingness to siphon off some time from "the day job" to make it 
happen. (I understand, though, that some members simply may not be in a 
position where they are allowed to devote resources to J3 between 
meetings.) I'll note that often J3 votes to change or choose among 
approaches with straw votes, so we can't simply present papers as a 
"take it or leave it". Again, needs some thought and discussion.

Steve

P.S. Note that I am following up to the WG5 list where this discussion 
started. J3 subscribers (the WG5 list forwards to the J3 list) need to 
remember to replace the J3 list address with WG5 when following up.