Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!usenix!peter
From: pe...@usenix.UUCP (Peter Salus)
Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix
Subject: USENIX Board Meetings
Message-ID: <83@usenix.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Jun-87 14:58:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: usenix.83
Posted: Tue Jun 23 14:58:31 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jun-87 02:53:39 EDT
Lines: 308
Keywords: USENIX Board
At the Open Meeting with the Board in Phoenix, several
USENIX Association members expressed an interest in
obtaining the summaries of the Board meetings more
rapidly. It was suggested that I post the summaries
as soon as they are available. Following are the summaries
for the New Orleans and the Phoenix meetings. They will
also appear in the July/August issue of ;login:.
I'd appreciate reaction to this method of making USENIX
members aware of Board activities.
Peter H. Salus
Executive Director
Summary of the Board Minutes; New Orleans, 26-27 March 1987
Attendance
Present at the meeting were: Stephen C. Johnson, Marshall
Kirk McKusick, Alan G. Nemeth, John S. Quartermam, Deborah K.
Scherrer, Waldo M. Wedel, David A. Yost -- Directors; Rick Adams,
UUNET; Eric Allman, Phoenix program chair; Ed Borkovsky,
/usr/group director; Judith F. DesHarnais, Conference Coordina-
tor; John L. Donnelly, Tutorial and Exhibit Manager; Mike O'Dell,
UUNET; Jeannie Patton, Wells Communications; Lizabeth Reilly,
/usr/group Executive Director; Peter H. Salus, Executive Director
Washington Conference Wrap-Up
Despite the snowstorm, it was generally agreed that the
Washington, DC, conference had gone well. There had been 303
UniForum registrants who also attended the USENIX meeting and 63
USENIX registrants who had checked off the appropriate box on the
UniForum registration. There were 1570 registrants for the
USENIX conference and "about 1500" registrants for the /usr/group
technical sessions and tutorials.
There was a good deal of discussion concerning the format-
ting of technical sessions and topical sessions. The question of
four-day vs. three-day conferences was considered and it was
decided that if DesHarnais could make appropriate arrangements,
the Dallas conference should be enlarged to four days [this has
been effected].
Large Systems Workshop
It was reported that there were three dozen registrants for
the forthcoming workshop in Philadelphia. The Workshop will have
pre-prints, so no Proceedings volume is scheduled; Salus stated
that a summary would appear in ;_l_o_g_i_n:.
Phoenix meeting
Allman reported that there would be 41 papers offered in
Phoenix in 14 sessions. Donnelly reported that there will be 8
tutorials each on Monday and Tuesday. There will be four "new"
tutorials: Advanced System V, Graphics offered by Borden, X-
windows, and NeWs. Yost stated that the FaceSaver on which he
and Katz had been working would be operative in Phoenix.
Future meetings
The table below shows the status of planning for future
semi-annual meetings of the USENIX Association. Where the word
None appears in a field, in means that no commitments have been
made for this category for this meeting.
Future Meetings Status
Date Location Hotel Host Program Chair
6/8-12/87 Phoenix Hyatt NoneEric Allman
2/8-12/88 Dallas Registry NoneRob Kolstad
6/20-24/88 San Francisco Hilton NoneSam Leffler
1/31-2/3/89 San Diego Town & Country NoneNone
6/12-16/89 Baltimore Hyatt NoneNone
1/23-26/90 Wash. DC None None None
6/11-15/90 Anaheim Marriott NoneNone
1/22-25/91 Dallas None None None
6/10-14/91 Nashville Opryland NoneNone
UUNET
Adams and O'Dell presented the UUNET business plan (follow-
ing their January proposal) which was greeted with enthusiasm.
After considerable discussion, Salus was asked to consult with
the Association's lawyer and accountant and to set aside $35,000
for the brief experimental period to cover excess expenses, even
though this was larger than the predicted possible loss. Salus
was to sign on behalf of the Association as guarantor wherever
possible, rather than actually expending funds.
Standards
Nemeth and Quarterman detailed the history of the P1003 com-
mittee and the Association's representation on it. Quarterman
spoke of his roles and of the steps by which the trial use stan-
dard could become a full use standard. Reilly told /usr/group's
side of POSIX and said that /usr/group's pamphlets had renewed
interest in standards in the user community. The question of a
Standards workshop in the autumn was brought up. The Board
expressed warmth and Quarterman agreed to find a chair and fix
upon a location.
Meeting with /usr/group
Following Washington, Nemeth had invited the /usr/group
Board and Executive Director to the New Orleans meeting; Borkov-
sky and Reilly now invited the USENIX Board and Executive Direc-
tor to a portion of the /usr/group's next Board meeting on May 1
in Santa Clara, CA.
Women and minorities
Quarterman and Scherrer brought up a number of proposals
made by Liz Sommers concerning women and minorities in USENIX.
There was considerable discussion, in the course of which it was
noted that there were three distinct questions: the ethnic and
sex representation in the industry, the representation in USENIX,
and the phobia where "wizards" and "gurus" were concerned, which
made the Association seem like an "in" group.
Salus was requested to get in touch with the United Negro
College Fund.
It was decided to look into the following items:
science fairs
advertising what USENIX does
using student help at meetings
instructing program chairs to use more "new" folks
problem BoFs.
work-in-progress sessions
----
Summary of the Board of Directors' Meeting; Phoenix, AZ, June
7,8, 10, 1987
Attendance
Present at the meeting were: Stephen C. Johnson, Rob Kol-
stad, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Alan G. Nemeth (President), John S.
Quarterman, Deborah K. Scherrer, Waldo M. Wedel -- Directors
[David A. Yost was working on the FaceSaver project during most
of the meeting]; Rick Adams, UUNET; Eric Allman, Phoenix program
chair; Judith F. DesHarnais, Conference Coordinator; John L. Don-
nelly, Tutorial and Exhibit Manager; Betty Madden, Office
Manager; Mike O'Dell, UUNET; Jeannie Patton, Wells Communica-
tions; Peter H. Salus, Executive Director.
Meetings
Rob Kolstad will be the Program Chair for the Dallas 1988
technical conference, which will be held concurrently with Uni-
Forum; Sam Leffler will be the Program Chair for the San Fran-
cisco, summer 1988 conference. Jim McGinnis has agreed to chair
a POSIX Implementors Workshop.
There was a discussion of the reception of the past graphics
workshops. Tom Duff will chair the October 1987 Graphics
Workshop. Yost is working on a C++ Workshop. Salus and Marc
Donner are meeting with IEEE on a possible joint Real Time
Workshop in May 1988. The Philadelphia Systems Administrators
Workshop was enthusiastically received by the attendees. There
was discussion of a second System Administrators Workshop as well
as future Graphics workshops.
UUNET
After one month in service, UUNET has 50 actual subscribers.
Furthermore, as a result of lengthy negotiations, Adams has been
authorized by DARPA to make UUNET a DARPA gateway for an experi-
mental period of three years.
The Board decided to extend the UUNET experimental period to
October 31, 1987. Johnson, Quarterman, Scherrer, and Wedel will
act as a Board subcommittee to oversee the experiment. Salus is
to confer with the Association's lawyer concerning UUNET's
independent, non-profit incorporation and other legal matters.
It was announced that a usenix.org domain had been set up
and would be run by Adams and O'Dell. Further the comp.std.unix
archives will be placed on the UUNET machine.
net.sources
Kolstad reported on the progress of collecting, unpacking,
sorting, and canonicalizing net.sources and mod.sources and an
assortment of other publically-available software. It appears the
project will be complete within two months, and will include some
1200 software packages. The results will be made available via
distribution tapes. There was a good deal of discussion concern-
ing permissions. Wherever possible, authors will be asked for
permission to redistribute materials which had been posted.
Public Relations
There was a lengthy discussion of the performance of Wells
Communications on behalf of the Association. Wells has been
retained as Public Relations consultants to the Association over
the past year. It was agreed that /_e_t_c/_m_o_t_d (the daily newspaper
at the Phoenix conference) was a success as was the Editorial
Roundtable, set up by Wells to enable a limited number of media
editors to confer with some of the USENIX Board. Other activi-
ties had been less successful. It was decided to reduce Wells
Communications' activities in some areas, but to retain them in
others which had shown benefits.
It was noted that Jobs' keynote and the FaceSaver also
served as public relations vehicles for the Association.
Membership Categories
Scherrer presented her recommendations on membership
categories, services, and fees for 1988. The addition of several
new services, including distribution of the new technical jour-
nal, was proposed. Consideration of fees was postponed until the
October Board meeting, when a more definite statement on the
costs of the new services would be available.
There was a discussion of manual sales. It was decided that
if the lawyers agree, individual members should be permitted to
purchase manuals.
Women's BOF
There was a discussion of the Women in USENIX BOF and of the
exchanges that had appeared in comp.org.usenix. There was support
for the BOF and for the ideas and information to be gained from
it. [The Executive Director and six of the eight Board members
attended the BOF.]
Journal
There was a discussion of the proposed new technical quar-
terly including the nature of the editorial panel and the fact
that submissions would be fully refereed. Salus presented propo-
sals from several publishers who were interested in the USENIX
quarterly. The Board authorized him to pursue several of these
publishers and to thank the others for their interest.
2.10BSD
It was reported that the Computer Sciences Research Group of
UC-Berkeley would like the USENIX Association to distribute
2.10BSD (formerly 2.9). This is the PDP 11/70 version of UNIX.
It was decided that this might be possible through the normal
USENIX tape distribution mechanism. was asked to pursue this with
the Berkeley Software Office.
Current Meeting
There was a discussion of the current meeting. It was felt
that /_e_t_c/_m_o_t_d and the WIP sessions had gone well, as had some of
the Public Relations activities. The great success had been the
FaceSaver project, which had been widely acclaimed. Yost and
Katz were asked to make the FaceSaver available to the Associa-
tion in Dallas and in San Francisco next year.
|