From: CBS%UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.MAIL::EARN.UICVM::TEISTEER 28-APR-1989 23:40:19.19 To: LOU,SUSAN CC: Subj: Notes from steering committee (TEI SCL2) to committee heads Via: UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.MAIL; Fri, 28 Apr 89 23:40 BST Received: from UKACRL by UK.AC.RL.IB (Mailer X1.25) with BSMTP id 3586; Fri, 28 Apr 89 23:38:17 BS Received: from UICVM by UKACRL.BITNET (Mailer X1.25) with BSMTP id 2945; Fri, 28 Apr 89 23:38:17 B Received: by UICVM (Mailer R2.02) id 0242; Fri, 28 Apr 89 16:46:42 CDT Date: 28 April 1989 16:40:42 CDT Reply-To: Text Encoding Initiative Steering Committee List , Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981 Sender: Text Encoding Initiative Steering Committee List Comments: "ACH / ACL / ALLC Text Encoding Initiative" From: Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981 Subject: Notes from steering committee (TEI SCL2) to committee heads X-To: "Stig Johansson (47) 2 456 To: Lou Burnard , Susan Hockey To: Committee Heads From: NI, MSM Date: 28 April 1989 Reference: TEI SCL2 The steering committee has asked us to communicate the following to you regarding the progress of the work and the administrative arrangements. 1. Your first major goal must be the completion of what the schedules call the first phase of your work: the preparation of a specification of the textual features involved in the areas you are assigned. In the Revised Work Plan submitted to NEH in July, 1988, this reads Target date for completion of committees' preliminary analysis of their problem areas. In the Technical Annex to the EEC contract, which is about to be signed, it says Committees and Subcommittees will analyse the textual and linguistic features relevant to specific areas, discuss existing practice, and consider elements for possible recommendations. The target date for the completion of this preliminary analysis is October 31, 1989. This preliminary analysis should reflect your committee's decisions about what textual features can be tagged (and, if possible, about which features should be recommended for tagging in all encodings). It need not contain a fully developed formalization of the tag set you intend; that is the next phase of your work. However, we expect that formalization will not wait until the preliminary analysis is complete -- we assume that in the process of analysis, the committees will require at least some sketches of what the formal DTD should look like. The problems of writing the formal DTD should therefore not be postponed until the next phase, but you are not committed to specifying a complete DTD at the same time you present your decisions as to what should be taggable. 2. Your immediate task, as soon as you have finished forming your committees, is to form the initial subcommittees for your group. NI will be sending you lists of people recommended by the steering committee and participating organizations, who should be invited to serve on the relevant subcommittee(s) of your committees. 3. Please revise your planning documents as soon as you can; MSM will send you (or has sent you) the comments from the advisory board and steering committee meetings of February. Since the steering committee would like to see these once more before they are widely distributed, please do not be late on these. 4. The steering committee would like to meet with you all in Toronto on Sunday, 4 June 1989, from 3 p.m. until sometime late that evening, and again on Tuesday, 6 June 1989, from 7 p.m. on. You should also plan to attend the public open meeting on the TEI to be held Wednesday evening, 7 June 1989. Between our first and second meetings with you, we would like you to meet with your committees (unless you are not planning to have a committee meeting in Toronto, in which case please let us know at once). Our Sunday meeting will review the work of your committees and subcommittees to date and the work you plan to assign at your first meetings. Our Tuesday meeting will review briefly how your opening meetings went. 5. The steering committee hopes that at your first meeting you will be in a position to specify exactly what work is to be done in the first development cycle, and assign pieces of it to individuals and subcommittees, with deadlines. Discussion with your committees should also allow you to confirm or modify your outline of the subcommittees and their tasks. Since some members of your committees will have direct input into future funding decisions affecting the second development cycle of the initiative, the steering committee urges you to plan the first meeting very carefully, and to concentrate on the immediately necessary fields of endeavor. (For the moment, avoid too much emphasis on esoteric topics.) 6. The steering committee will meet in September and would like from you at that time a written report summarizing your committee's work to date, the problems remaining to be resolved, and the prospects for completing the first cycle on time. (Note: MSM will be soliciting your input on the specification of the *second* cycle well before September, for the second-cycle funding proposals.) Administrative details: 1. The steering committee has decided that the allocation of travel funds is best done by the committee heads, rather than at a central site like Chicago. This would involve giving you a responsibility to which you have not agreed, so we ask you now whether you agree to this arrangement: a. Based on the numbers of members, their distribution by continent, and the estimated number of meetings (two for TD, four for each other committee, divided evenly between North America and Europe), each committee will be allocated a portion of the travel funds now on hand. We anticipate that this portion of the funds will be sufficient to pay 50% of the estimated travel costs for committee members' travel to each meeting of their committees. (See f below for details of estimates.) b. Before each committee meeting, you will allocate the funds to your committee members based on location, airfare, and their other resources, and send a list of the allocations to Chicago for use in processing the receipts. c. The allocation of funds you make will be a ceiling on the amounts reimbursed to any committee member for travel expenses. d. If some committee members can obtain travel funds elsewhere, you will be able to allocate their money to other members who cannot. As committee head you are in the best position to decide where the funds should be re-distributed in order to best serve the the needs of your committee's work. e. As we gain more perfect knowledge of the situation, some reallocation of the funds may prove necessary, and so the total amount of funding available to your committee is subject to change. f. At the moment, our funding seems to be sufficient to pay approximately 50% of the estimated costs for travel to each committee meeting. The (full) costs are estimated as follows: - transatlantic airfare $1000 - intracontinental airfare $500 - per diem $100 (for a two-day meeting, transatlantic travelers get three-days' allowance, others two days') The amount available will be half of this: $500, $250, $50. g. If you and the committee agree, and if it seems feasible in view of the work of your committee, it will be within your power to hold fewer meetings in order to conserve your funds and pay a higher percentage (up to 100%) of the estimated costs. Within a few days we will send you a note indicating the exact amount of money available for your committee for travel to meetings within the current budget, so that you can compute the exact amount available for each member for each meeting. You will probably want to reconfirm with the members of your committee that they will be able to do something with the amounts available. 2. If you are planning to meet with your committee in Toronto, please let MSM know at once when you wish to meet and about how many people you expect (members only, or more?). MSM will then contact Ian Lancashire who has promised to try to arrange rooms for us. 3. Travel expenses to Toronto: Pending resolution of the question laid out above, your committee members should be told the TEI can pay half of their documented expenses for travel to Toronto, up to the ceiling of our estimates. Our estimates are: - Airfare within North America $500 (we will pay $250 max) - Airfare from Europe $1000 (we will pay $500 max) - per diem $100 (we will pay $50 max) * for all committee members, 1 per diem for each day of your meeting * for Europeans, 1 additional day Please recollect that the ceilings unfortunately also apply to your own travel. 4. Committee meetings are to be closed, open to invited guests, or open to the public as you think most conducive to accomplishing your work. You need not feel obliged to hold open meetings for the sake of public participation or publicity; base your decisions on how well they help you accomplish the work. The Steering Committee bears responsibility for publicity. Members of the steering committee should be free to attend any meetings of the working committees. 5. For contractual reasons, the TEI must notify the EEC of all committee meetings, their location, time, and agenda. Please send this information, as well as the allocations for travel allowance (see 1.b., above) to MSM as soon as you know it, but in no case less than a month before the meeting. 6. Distribution of committee documents should be handled by yourselves if at all possible. Assignment of TEI document numbers has to be centralized; as you assign documents for composition by committee members, or as you receive unassigned documents from them, please contact MSM for a current number. (If you would prefer to handle the number assignment for your committee yourself, we can probably work that out, but be sure to keep me current on the numbers assigned. -MSM) 7. The mailing lists set up are intended primarily for internal committee discussion; you may add outside subscribers if you like, but you may want to consult or at least inform your committees. The steering committee have been told that they may subscribe if they wish. ---- end of document SCL2 ----