Minutes 7 November 2005

Minutes from the first meeting 7 November 2005

Present: Andre, Carey, Greg, Karl, Martyn, Peter, Poul, Shane, Travis

1. Selection of chair

   Shane was selected as chair and Karl as vice chair. There was some discussion about the dual role of Shane as both chair and someone who was liable to have strong opinions. We will review this after a few months.

2. Membership of committee

   Shane had suggested that the committee was uncomfortably large. Poul and Marty expressed the view that it was important for communication that both the PI oversight and development team met combined. Shane wondered if membership change could be made explicit rather than just happen by attrition. It was decided that everyone would continue attending for the time being.

3. PI strategic oversight.

   It was decided that another meeting of the PI strategic oversight group (PISOG) should be had before the retreat and conclusions from this committees initial planning and scoping and the PISOG would be presented at the retreat. Shane suggested that we need to provide a clear mechanism for input from the PISOG to this committee.

4. Methods of decision making.

It was decided that in general we would work towards a consensus but that rather than stall progress, when required a 2/3 majority vote would be used to make decisions. Some issues may need to be referred to the PISOG. Every member of this committee would have a vote and Shane would endeavour to publish the agenda by Friday at the latest so that people who are not actually able to attend could vote by sending their contribution and opinion to him.

5. Meeting operation

The agenda is set by sending items to Shane for inclusion by 12pm Friday so that he can publish and agenda that afternoon. Major topics and planning will be scheduled for discussion. Carey will take the minutes, starting from next week. The agenda and minutes will be publically available internationally. Everyone is encouraged to contribute by feeding back to members of the committee and the chair.

6. Outline for future meetings

1. Possible Scope of the project. What are all the possible targets, both existing functionality and possible functionality that we are talking about. This list will be formed on a possible scope wiki page. We will go over this next week.
2. Resourcing. Employing new staff. Who do we need? What skills will we require?
3. Contributions. What existing projects and research may give ideas, indicate directions or directly contribute to this project?
4. Development target. What enviroments (OS's) and users are we targeting, and what are the releative priorities?
5. Development framework. How are we going to develop code? What documentation systems, bug systems, code management systems do we want to employ?