Members' Councils

Objective of Meeting

All Members of The Open Group are members of either the Customer Council or the Supplier Council.

In our All-Members meetings, the Customer Council and Supplier Council join together to invite members from all Forums and Working Groups of The Open Group to share issues and concerns that are of common interest - across all Forums and Working Groups.

Summary

The meeting was introduced by Chris Greenslade, Chair of the Supplier Council, who introduced Ian Dobson (The Open Group staff secretary to the Customer council and Supplier Council. 

Ian presented the agenda in a sequence of slides. 

Council Officers and Forum/WG Representatives

The officers of the Councils are:

• Customer Council: 
  • Chair: Ben Calloni (Lockheed Martin)
  • Vice-Chair: Alan Doniger (Energistics)
  • 3rd Customer representative on Governing Board: John Anton (Kestrel Technology) 
• Supplier Council: 
  • Chair: Chris Greenslade (Clars)
  • Sam Ceccola (BEA Systems) 

The role of Forum/WG Representatives to the Customer and Supplier Councils is to ensure an effective channel for sharing issues between the Customer and Supplier Councils and Forum members. By default, as presented in the October 2006 Conference (Lisbon), Forum/WG Vice-chairs are called upon as the representatives to the Councils, unless they appoint other members of their Forum/WG to fill this role. 

Future Conference Dates and Themes

Ian presented the proposed dates and locations for future Open Group conferences through to end-2008. This information will be made available on The Open Group web site as and when the key information is confirmed. Some venues in 2008 are not yet confirmed, and the plenary themes of 2008 are also not yet decided. Members are invited to give their feedback via the Councils officers or Ian. 

Plato Tutorial

Ian recommended to members the Plato Tutorial. (Plato is The Open Group Plato web collaboration tool.)

Plato is an example of what is often called Groupware or Web Collaboration software. It has been designed so that a group of people, typically in a project or working group, can share items such as email, documents, actions, and calendar events, in a controlled area of the web using a web browser. 

What Makes a Forum/WG Effective?

Following up this activity from the previous meeting (San Diego, January 2007), Ian summarized the objective of this Councils initiative to support improving the value of membership by identifying what characteristics make member participation a richer experience. So the aim is to capture the key characteristics that make a Forum/WG effective in delivering value to its members. The prime deliverable is expected to be support to Forums/WGs on common and subject-specific characteristics for providing best value. A further outcome could be a Guide to Best Practice for Forums/WGs on how to deliver best value.

Forum and WG leaders have been asked to provide feedback to the Councils on their experience and views. To date, feedback has been received from the Security Forum and the Architecture Forum. Ian presented this feedback, and requested members' comments. One comment from a member who has been involved in staging Architecture Practitioners Conferences in South Africa offered to help raise awareness and outreach in their region by including awareness information on other Forums/WGs of The Open Group in their future conferences. 

Outputs

• Updates on Member Councils officers and relationship with Forums and WGs
• Updates on future Open Group conferences through to end-2008
• Recommendation for members to attend the Plato Tutorial (Paris, Thursday evening)
• Report back on Councils initiative on what makes a Forum/WG effective

Next Steps

To be decided with Councils officers.

Links

See above.