rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (02/29/88)
This is the promised followup to an article I posted at the beginning of February. That article was titled "Any academics interested in being nominated?" with Message-ID <362@fig.bbn.com>. Since then I've had a number of interesting email exchanges with a variety of people. In that article I said I was bothered by the lack of "academics" in the slate presented by the nominating committee. That was poorly worded, even though I reviewed my writing a couple of times. A better way of phrasing it is that almost all the nominees (all but one or zero, depending on whether you consider UCB a vendor or not :-) have strong commercial involvements in Unix. Academia and research are under-represented. Given that, I volunteered to collect names and and get the minimum number of signatures needed to add people to the slate. Unfortunately I blew it: I started too late. It's all my fault. At any rate, since there was interest, here are the people suggested to me. Their appearance on this list will be news to almost all of them. Scott Brander, John Chambers, Peter Honeyman, Mel Pleasant, Clyde Pool, Barry Shein, Gene Spafford, Henry Spencer, Chris Torek, Len Tower, Bob Webber Other people mentioned in the (quasi-, at least) commercial arena where: Doug Gwyn, Ron Heiby, Mark Horton, Larry Wall PLEASE! Don't comment on the appropriateness of anyone mentioned! I am just forwarding suggestions I received from other people! It's too late to do anything about it this year, anyhow (deadline was two days before I posted this; on purpose). If you want to do anything about it, watch for the nominations call next year, and contact folks then. So, what can be done for next time? Well, I have a couple of suggestions, which I'll present to the board later. Basically, a rough outline of what a board member does should be posted in ;login: when the call for nominations is set, as well as contact points for how to get involved with the nominating and conference program committees, etc. Also, I think five signatures is too easy to a nominating requirement. Finally, I want to re-emphasize that I don't intend to put down any of the current or previous board members or nominees; I'm a real Usenix fan, and this whole thing started because I got involved too late. I'm gonna work on changing that this year, and I encourage everyone else to do so, also. /r$ -- For comp.sources.unix stuff, mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.
jsq@uunet.UU.NET (John S. Quarterman) (03/07/88)
In article <458@fig.bbn.com> rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes: >So, what can be done for next time? Well, I have a couple of suggestions, >which I'll present to the board later. Basically, a rough outline of what >a board member does should be posted in ;login: when the call for >nominations is set, I agree that this would be useful thing to have, but I'm not sure what it would say: other than the basics of attending four meetings a year to make decisions regarding the association and keeping in touch the rest of the time, individual board members tend to do quite different things depending on their interests and what needs to be done. A new board member might end up doing something new. As for the legal responsibilities (especially of the officers), I believe the bylaws were printed in ;login: recently, and a copy can be obtained from the office. You can get some idea of what board members do by reading the current and previous statements by nominees in ;login:. Also, the electronic addresses of all board members are in the masthead of ;login:. > as well as contact points for how to get involved You can find out how to get involved with anything regarding USENIX by contacting the office: usenix!office, office@usenix.org, or 415-528-8649. >with the nominating and conference program committees, etc. Program committees are appointed by program chairs, who are appointed by the board. Program chairs for future conferences are listed in ;login: and can be found by contacting the office. > Also, I think five signatures is too easy to a nominating requirement. There is a committee appointed by the board looking into the possibility of changing the election procedures. If you have suggestions for what they should consider, please send them to Peter Salus <usenix!peter or peter@usenix.org>, the USENIX Executive Director. >I'm gonna work on changing that this year, and I encourage everyone >else to do so, also. I don't think anybody's going to argue with that....