FORCES Project - Management Committee Agenda 04/02/99

Date: 19.00-20.00, Thu. 4th February 1999

Venue: BT, Angel Centre, Islington

Agenda:

1. Appointment of Secretary (M. Calder)

2. Apologies for Absence (G. Blair)

3. Approval of Agenda

4. Approval of 08/09/98 minutes and matters arising

5. Review of outstanding actions:

   AP/0/5/ALL It was planned that project members set up collections of web pages (e.g. on their local work or on a subject of interest to them) that can be referenced from the main pages. It may be difficult for members from BT to set up pages outside their firewall without a considerable `BT quality overhead'. K. Turner stated that Stirling would be willing and able to host WWW pages on behalf of BT if required.

   AP/0/6/KT&ALL K. Turner was to merge and unify bibliography entries on service creation and engineering for a central page. All partners are asked to contribute entries in whatever form, including URLs for documents that can be referenced.

   AP/1/2/DM D. Marples will organise the design of some reusable artwork (including a new FORCES logo) and an agreed mission statement to be used for the flier, the web-site and announcements in the press. S. Corley offered the use of BT's printing facilities. There was some discussion on the purpose of the flier and the best approaches to advertising. Mailshots were rejected as a way of attracting new members but the use of fliers as hand-outs at conferences was approved. The committee will try to have the flier ready for FIW'98 and the Programmable Networks Workshop.

   AP/0/8/MT M. Calder was to prepare an initial announcement to be published in the Software Echo. M. Calder will prepare a 100-word summary ready for publication in any trade magazine willing to print such an announcement. K. Turner offered to take responsibility for this action if M. Calder is not well enough to do so within the next week. Suggestions were discussed for suitable trade magazines or news groups. The FITS List and the Communications News were proposed. Some consideration should be given to what kind of services the project wishes to cover, in order to determine suitable publications.

   AP/1/3/DM D. Marples to contact Fran Kruc at BT with regard to obtaining a list of appropriate trade publications.

   AP/0/10/DM Atlantech was mentioned as a possible new SME partner. It was suggested that CITEL might have some ideas for new SME partners. D. Marples agreed to contact some SMEs that he had in mind. However, he was keen that FORCES agree a mission statement soon, so that he can approach the SMEs with a concise statement of what the purpose of the forum is.

   AP/0/11/MT M. Calder was to approach Scottish Enterprise for new SME partners. D. Marples suggested that M. Calder contact Ken Sutherland (01506-497-496) who is now working at Scottish Enterprise.

   AP/1/6/KT K. Turner will investigate the possibility of holding the meeting at the IEE premises in Savoy Place. There was some discussion as to the best format for the colloquium. One suggestion was to advertise a debate, with the topic(s) being published well in advance. An invited panel would consider arguments from key speakers and the floor and respond with a considered judgement. An invitation to a senior figure from BT's R&D programme was raised as a possibility. Other suggestions included having a poster session and organising a dinner/cocktail evening.

   AP/1/7/ALL All partners to investigate video-conferencing facilities and interoperability.

6. AOCB

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