[CMC] CMC: flow of events for Athens meeting?

[Adrian J. Hooke]

At 11:44 PM 1/31/2005, Soula Jean-Marc wrote:
>Nevertheless, I've a question on the drawbacks of holding the CESG and CMC 
>meetings  before or in parallel to the CCSDS Working Group meetings. 
>Obviously the CESG report cannot bring the most recent messages from the 
>groups and areas if we place things in that order. Maybe you have 
>workaround solutions in mind ; could you please clarify ?

Jean-Marc: to address this question, I think that we first need to separate 
the issue of CESG reporting from the needs of the CMC to meet in an 
effective manner to manage the organization.

The normal mode of working of CCSDS is that the CESG will flow work items 
to the CMC 365-days/year, using electronic communications and voting media. 
It's actually an anomaly that twice per year we suddenly bunch all of the 
decision-making together into a hastily-prepared face-to-face report, and 
expect the CMC to react in real time to a large volume of complex 
recommendations, communicated in presentation format. We've also seen 
several instances where those real-time "paper" recommendations do not get 
properly formulated, or get lost.

I therefore think that we should look on this Athens meeting as a welcome 
opportunity to break the cycle and to try another formula, so that the CMC 
can spend its face-to-face meetings working primarily on strategic 
management issues. So here's the sequence that I propose for the Athens 
meeting:

1. 06-07 APRIL (all day): The CESG will meet to prepare a summary report of 
the current status of the Areas/WGs/BOFs, and to identify issues requiring 
management attention.

2. 08 APRIL (afternoon): the CESG report will be given to the CMC's opening 
session.

3. 11 APRIL (early morning): in a very condensed form, the CESG report will 
provide introductory material for a brief "CCSDS opening plenary" (to which 
all of CCSDS delegates will be invited) that will kick-off the technical 
Area and WG meetings.

3. 11 APRIL (afternoon): the CESG report material will be used by the Area 
Directors as a basis for their presentations to the joint OMG/CCSDS "Space 
Day" plenary session.

4. 12-13 APRIL: the CMC will re-convene and will meet in parallel with the 
CCSDS technical meetings; this has the advantage that Area Directors can be 
called in as necessary to report on special issues, and the CMC can meet 
with their OMG management counterparts as needed.

5. 15 APRIL (evening): at a brief closing CESG meeting I will task the Area 
Directors to update their reports to summarize current status. This updated 
CESG report, along with appropriately formulated and voted CESG 
Resolutions, will be transmitted electronically to the CMC within 30-days 
of the end of the meeting

Given the particular circumstances of the Athens meeting, I think that this 
will work well. It's certainly worth an experiment, and if it is successful 
then we may think about repeating it at the September meeting in Atlanta.

I'd therefore like to propose that we quickly agree on this revised 
schedule for Athens, and announce it to everyone as soon as possible.

Best regards
Adrian

Adrian J. Hooke
Chairman, CCSDS Engineering Steering Group (CESG)
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Interplanetary Network Directorate
M/S 303-402, 4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, California 91109-8099, USA
+1.818.354.3063 OFFICE
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