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Meet w/ the Stds Board in 2002





Folks,

When Jim and Geoff and Roger and I were at the IEEE Standards Board
meeting in Piscataway last week, I raised an idea that I think 
deserves some discussion amongst the SEC.

As you may be aware, the standards board meets 4 times a year, usually
in March, June, September, and December.  The March meeting usually
takes place one to two weeks after the 802 March Plenary week. Sometimes,
we have a scheduling conflict between the two meetings, and the standards
board has been considerate of our needs, especially since we tend to
schedule our meetings farther in advance.

The standards board has been trying to "reach out" to the industry
lately.  We even went so far as to fly all the way to Signapore this
past January to hold our meeting. That meeting was held in conjunction
with some big meeting of the IEEE Power Engineering Society.
Typically, it seems that 3/4 or more of the standards board meetings 
are held in or near Piscataway, NJ, which is not exactly the center of
the universe of high tech.

I think it would be a great idea to invite the Standards Board to hold
one of their meetings in conjunction with an 802 meeting, and it seems
like March would be a good month to do this.  Furthermore, I recall
that we hadn't finalized the location for the March 2002 meeting as of
the end of our last meeting.

So, I raised the idea of having the standards board hold its March 2002
meeting at the same hotel, during the same week, as the March 2002 802
Plenary meeting.  The standards board typically meets for three days.
The first day, a couple of small groups (ProCom and PatCom) meet for
just a couple of hours.  These meetings could take place thursday
afternoon.  They are not likely to be of broad interest to the 802
folks.  The more interesting meetings of NesCom and RevCom take most of
a day, and these could be held on Friday during our plenary week, since
we ain't doing Friday meetings anymore.  Then the Standards Board could
hold it's meeting on Saturday.

Imagine this scenario (concocted by Geoff, who is creative as all get
out):  Your project has been presubmitted to NesCom (for a PAR) or
RevCom (for a std), so it's on their agenda.  Your WG approves the
project on Thursday afternoon.  The SEC approves it Thursday night.
NesCom or RevCom approves it on Friday, and the Standards Board
approves it on Saturday.  Talk about expedited processing!

The other benefit is that this would build a better relationship and 
better contacts between the Standards Board members and the 802 members,
and it would also present a great opportunity to meet and interact with
the IEEE standards department staff.  Believe me when I say that this
sort of interaction is very valuable.

I talked to Terry Steenweg (she's the meeting planner, Dawn's opposite
number), and a couple of other members of the staff, and they were very
enthusiastic about the idea.  The meeting schedule for the stds board
isn't very hard to accomodate.  They would need a couple of small rooms
Thursday, a couple of medium sized rooms Friday, and a medium-large size
room (a little bigger than what we need for an SEC meeting) for the board
on Saturday.  Total attendance at these things seems to be ~40 people.
Naturally, they have a budget for their meetings, so I don't
think there would be any additional financial cost to 802.

What do you all think?  We probably need to bring this up at the June, 2000
Standards Board meeting, so I would like to get an idea of how the SEC
feels before I formally raise the idea with the board.

Howard Frazier