[J3] (SC22WG5.6211) October meeting - Go Virtual/Mixed-mode, or be discriminatory

[Vipul Parekh]

ISO website says on homepage:
All ISO governance and technical meetings planned until 31 July 2020 must
be held virtually or postponed until after that date.
Up until a few days ago, the date was some time in June when ISO was asking
for virtual meetings or postponement.  WG5 should either expect this date
to keep getting pushed back, or for this mandate to be temporarily removed
post-July only to be reinstated later when the weather starts to turn
colder in many regions.

INCITS website has an update on homepage with a link to a Twitter message
that says:
@INCITS Cloud 38 is meeting in mixed mode for the JTC1 SC38 Plenary. This
is the first SC38 Plenary using mixed mode due to covid19. It is working
great thanks to the wonderful facility DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung
e. V. Thanks Eva Zeitz.

It will be highly remiss of both ISO and INCITS to not allow
virtual participation in any governance and technical meetings during the
rest of 2020 and likely through 2021, or at least until a time the risk
assessments with COVID-19 outbreak have been lowered sufficiently and the
public heath emergency declarations by international organizations such as
W.H.O. and national bodies such as US C.D.C have been lifted.  To not do so
will be highly discriminatory against those possible participants who,
given their own personal health considerations or of those in their care or
environs, are in a "high risk" category.

I request WG5 and J3 to anticipate a virtual or a mixed-mode requirement
for the October meeting and to do the needful to make such a meeting a
success.

Also, WG5, J3 need not "reinvent the wheel" for virtual participation:
there are lots of other recent events with similar (or greater) challenges
from which WG5, J3 can learn.  Start with INCITS on their SC38 Plenary
mixed-mode meeting.

Vipul Parekh
Fortran enthusiast
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