[Fsatom-comm] II. Computations vs Simulations ; demand for joiningthe committee

[Gilles Zerah]

Xavier Gonze wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Coming back to the organisation  and membership
> of the steering committee.
> There have been comments by Konrad and Gilles :
>
> Gilles Zerah wrote:
>  >I think the process of construction of the project should be by
>  >iterations. From the workshop
>  >we should set up concrete actions defined at that time  (and this has
>  >already started), and contact
>  >the workshop participants, and then other people.
>  >A further iteration would be to define a more formal organization (if
>  >necessary) , including a steering comitee, the
>  >present one can be considered as provisional.
>
> Konrad Hinsen wrote:
> > Let's start by what we (FSAtom) are not: we are not a legal entity of
> > any kind, we have no money, no power, in fact nothing but good
> > intentions. So why do we have a steering committee if there isn't
> > even anything to steer at the moment?
> >
> > I see the role of this committee as being a smaller group of people
> > (smaller than the current or potential FSAtom community) that can take
> > initiatives and discuss ideas quickly. For the composition of the
> > committee that means that we should have as few members as possible
> > while still covering a wide range of expertise. I do not think that it
> > is necessary or even desirable to have a representative of each
> > project in the committee. The committee is not a parliament. If we
> > follow that road, we will soon need to elect an executive board of the
> > steering committee, and that's the first step to bureaucracy.
> >
> > I think that people should join and leave the board as a function of
> > their activity, projects, available time, etc. Most importantly, I
> > think we should not start to waste too much time discussing
> > formalities at this time, before any real activity has started. In
> > other words, I propose to postpone any detailed discussion of changing
> > the composition of the committee until we all have gained some
> > experience with what we can and can't do.
> >
> > What we should however do is create the status of a "member" of the
> > FSAtom community. Membership should be open to anyone related to any
> > free-software project in our domain, even if it is only in the
> > planning stage (that probably translates to "anyone who wants to
> > become a member"). Members would be listed on the Web site, and be
> > able to participate in a member mailing list. It should be clear that
> > one can be involved in FSAtom without being in the committee, and it
> > should in fact be clear that most work is not done by the committee.
> >
> > I see no problem in answering that we prefer to postpone that
> > question, exactly because there are more urgent things to do than
> > formalizing politics.
>
> I mostly agree with Konrad and Gilles, and in any case, I think it is
> wise to postpone any change in the present committee until we have
> the first "General" meeting of the FSAtom (that might either be virtual,
> or organized after a planned CECAM workshop, as discussed in one of my
> mails of today). Before I transmit this to Stefano and Paolo,
> I would like to hear from you about the following idea...
>
> The committee might be the image of the FSAtom activities, that is,
> it might be the union of :
> - people responsible of a FSAtom workgroup ;
> - people organizing a workshop or a tutorial for the FSAtom ;
> - the person responsible of the FSAtom Web site ;
> - the person in charge of linking all these people, and linking
>   to the Free Software Foundation (who would be the chairman).
> This would have the advantages that
> - the committee membership is well-defined and associated to a duty ;

I agree. Steering committee is maybe a misnomer. Duty committee is better
;-)

>
> - one avoids the present problem that Mark Tuckermann,
>   who is responible of a workgroup
>   (according to the "Minutes" established by Konrad) is not part of
>   our discussions !

This mean you propose to extend to committee to Mark?

>
> The committee might be renewed once per year,

OK, but also tasks (duties) might extend on a non yearly basis
and might the reasons for a modification of the committee.
The question of how to handle this arises immediately. I have no answer.

> one people might
> be renewed at most once for a given responsibility
> (may be I am already too bureaucratic).

Two years maximum in a row is very short...(I know by experience,
and once you write this, it is in stone. So I would avoid)

>
>