[CMC] Re: Draft Resolutions and AIs from June CMC meeting

[Allan, PM (Peter)]

Adrian,

I think that the way to mitigate the negative effect of the propodal is to advertise the change widely so that people know they need to register well in advance. All conferences have a registration process, so this is not unusual. On a practical question, we need to be clear what we will actually DO if someone just turns up not having registered in advance and advertise that clearly.

Cheers

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: "Adrian J. Hooke" <adrian.j.hooke at jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "Jean-Francois.Kaufeler at esa.int" <Jean-Francois.Kaufeler at esa.int>
Cc: "CCSDS Management Council" <cmc at mailman.ccsds.org>; "CCSDS Engineering Steering Group - ADs" <cesg at mailman.ccsds.org>
Sent: 28/06/08 18:36
Subject: [CMC] Re: Draft Resolutions and AIs from June CMC meeting

At 09:47 AM 6/27/2008, Jean-Francois.Kaufeler at esa.int wrote:
>...  here my commented version (only one small modification):

Jean-Francois: your proposed change is shown in blue below:
CMC-A-2008-06-9
Define and implement meeting registration system to accommodate CESG 
recommendation to only allow technical experts industry participants 
to register for CCSDS technical meetings if approved by a sponsoring agency.
As I remember the discussion, the intent is to make sure that every 
person who is permitted to register at a major CCSDS technical 
meeting is properly authorized by a parent agency. The primary 
motivation is to limit meeting attendance to bona-fide contributors 
who are recognized by an agency. The rationale is that if we are to 
continue to provide free registration, it is becoming 
increasingly  important to make sure that  every participant has a 
recognized and contributing role: visitors and observers who just 
"show up" swell the size of the meeting and thus make it extremely 
difficult for even the big Agencies to be able to afford the required 
hosting facilities.

The only practical way to achieve this is to require that every 
participant is first authenticated by an agency representative before 
being allowed to actually register. This requires a three-step 
process, something along the lines of this:

1. The first registration action is that an individual pre-registers 
on-line and is asked to identify their agency affiliation; this is 
simply a "name, affiliation, e-mail, phone" type of dialog.
2. The person is notified that their registration is "on hold" 
pending such validation. During this hold period, the agency contact 
point is asked by the Secretariat to confirm that this person should 
be registered to attend.
3. Upon such confirmation, the person is notified that their 
registration has been accepted and is sent the full registration links.

Base on that process, I think that the action should read:

CMC-A-2008-06-9
Define and implement meeting registration system to accommodate CESG 
recommendation to only allow participants to register for CCSDS 
technical meetings if approved by a sponsoring agency.

We also discussed the need to close the registration no later than 
two weeks prior to the meeting. This is essential in order for the 
meeting host to properly match working groups to available meeting rooms.

We also proposed that written contributions must be circulated to 
Working Groups prior to this two-week registration deadline so that 
they can properly be digested prior to the meeting. Any materials not 
submitted two weeks ahead of time would not be admitted for 
discussion at the meeting.This is required  to avoid having people 
"show up" with disruptive material that others have not had time to analyze.

Taken together these three changes - 1) only admit "cadre" people; 2) 
close registration 2-weeks ahead of the meeting, and; 3) close 
acceptance of technical contributions 2-weeks ahead of the meeting - 
will almost certainly have the effect of reducing the attendance at 
meetings and will probably also increase meeting productivity. The 
negative effect will be to make the standardization process even more 
agency-centric and therefore more of a "gated community". Is it the 
will of the Management Council that this the effect that we want to achieve?

///adrian