TEI Board Meeting 31 2008: Board Meeting Addendum: Strategic Travel

Council meetings in 2009

We suggest that, if budget permits, the council is supported to hold two face to face meetings in 2008. Several arguments may plea in favour of such a regularity:

• The group has proved to be very efficient in face to face discussions since it allows a clear comparison of views and the capacity to provide concrete illustrations of technical discussions;
• The constant turnover on council members requires that team building aspects are taken into consideration to ensure that we all have the same background in designing, implementing, but also explaining our strategy and choices;
• The recent stabilization of existing P5 content requires that the council identifies its priorities and has the capacity to define a mid- term technical strategy. Part of the F2F meetings has to be dedicated to this strategic planning;
• The editorial work behind the “getting started into the TEI” activity requires actual exchanges among council contributors and direct feedback with council members;
• The combination of council meetings with a local seminar has proved to be a strong element of the consortium outreaching activities since it allowed for both a better perception of how the TEI maintain the guidelines and for the council a better understanding our the community needs. This in turn brings budgetal benefits if we can acheive some local support and attract new members (a TEI flyer to be distributed locally; comprising a little section on “why become a member” could be valuable).

We already have two bids for the hosting of council meeting in 2009 from Lyon (FR) and Dublin (IR). Since these meetings would be close to the center of gravity of council members, we could anticipate a rather lower budget for both (below 12K€ each in any case). These meetings could take place in en of March and end of September.

We would also like to prepare a meeting in the US in early 2009 to liaise closely with the corresponding (digital) library community (Virginia?).

Update on this proposal:

• Lyon is confirming invitation for March and will have a budget for at least dinner, coffee breaks and perhaps some extras. As Lyon is really central (direct trains from Charles de Gaulle, VERY close to the center of gravity of the Council). The overall budget should be on the lower side of the spectrum.

Answers to question raised by the council:

• What is the average cost for a meeting?
  • Daniel should answer this.
• How does this address the goals and priorities identified earlier?
  • Address the priority to be reactive and decisive with respect to our user community. Two meetings a year warrants that the ensuing releases fully cover user’s requests for evolution of the guidelines. It also provides a may to create a real shared view on the TEI technical orientations and priorities which in turn can be easily disseminated to the community by council members’
• Why couldn’t the same intense level of work be accomplished via teleconference?
  • Because we cannot go deep into the principles and only tackle surface issues. Telcos and Videos are often a procrastination tool for too complex issues.
• Would it be more cost effective for the Board to spend money on videoconferencing capabilities?
  • That would not improve the human aspects while resulting on probably more technical problems when setting up such environments.
• What is a minimum host contribution?
  • Should not be set in advance, but basically: free rooms, coffee breaks, one dinner and inviting 2 members of the council as speakers.

Whatever the decision of the board, we should put as a priority to have this peripatetic nature of the council be integrated in forthcoming grant proposals.