[adhoc] heads up

Steering committee members,

After a bit of silence on the list, this is just a heads up that we
have a couple of things yet to accomplish in the two weeks remaining
before we meet in Victoria.

First, I expect nominations from Harold, any moment now, for program
committee chair, and we will need to expedite the discussion and vote
on that, in order for the PC chair to have at least a few days before
the conference to email other PC members and arrange a meeting in
Victoria.

Second, I'm going to ask for some discussion, leading to
recommendations that we could forward to both ALLC and ACH executive
committees, on how best to tie up the loose ends we identified in the
governance document. Those loose ends, and possible recommendations
on each, for discussion, are:

    1. The governance protocol should probably specify how often
membership in the ADHO steering committee is reviewed and adjusted.
It probably makes sense to review these things annually.

I've talked this one over a little bit with Harold and Lorna, and it
seems to make sense that the SC should review best available
membership information from the past year (which probably would be
December figures from OUP, since that's the end of their business
year, and we could expect them to have audited figures by June). If
we do that review before the annual meeting, we can let each
executive committee know how many steering committee members should
represent each organization on the SC, so they can appoint
representatives when they meet at the conference. Then the new SC
would meet after those executive committees meet, but also during the
annual conference.

    2. The governance protocol should perhaps specify more clearly
what decision-making power is delegated to the ADHO steering
committee, its chair, and the appointed subcommittees (on
publications and conferences), by the executive bodies of the member
organizations. In particular, the protocol should probably specify
what the role of the ADHO standing committee on conferences is, with
respect to the program committee and the program chair.

There is some guidance on this question in the conference protocol
and annex, where it says, for example, that the ADHO standing
committee (referred to in the protocol/annex as Conference
Coordinating Committee, or CCC) solicits the conference bids,
determines the number of PC members, appoints the chair of the
program committee, makes sure that an email list exists for PC
communication, maintains a list of reviewers, and provides the draft
call for papers (which can be modified from year to year by the
program committee). We may feel that that's specific enough, and
then we would simply insert a sentence in II.7 of the governance
protocol, referencing the conference protocol and annex (right now,
the governance protocol simply says that there will be a chair of the
conference committee, period).

Finally, you may have noticed that the question of COCH-COSH
membership has dropped from my pre-conference agenda. In
conversation off-list, Harold has pointed out that the SC's authority
to take up this question rests on the governance protocol, and that
document needs to be approved before we can act on its authority. I
take that point, and so we'll refer that question to the face-to-face
meeting of the SC in Victoria, after the executive committees meet to
vote on the governance protocol. I will try to fix a time and place
for that meeting in the next day or two. Meanwhile, let us
concentrate on coordinating a proposal to both EC's on the loose
ends, described above, so that the approval of the governance
protocol doesn't get hung up on those questions.

John

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Received on Tue May 31 2005 - 16:59:01 EDT