[Uni-verse] Members to the advisory board

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi all,

In an online meeting with Gert I asked him to contact this list to  
explain the Advisary Board idea further, and propose how to proceed  
with the idea. The reactions from Torbjorn and Lauri until now really  
worry me... we are going far beyond what is reasonable or manageable,  
and shouldn't start something presumptious we cannot realize and in the  
end will only lead to disappointment or to problems with the EU due to  
delivery failures.

Here's the advisary board text as included in the original Universe doc;

---------------
A board of advisors will be created within the framework of the  
project. The members will be representatives from companies especially  
SMEs and from the open source community with experience from designing  
products based on 3D graphics and games and communication services.  
Many of them haven’t succeeded the way they hoped for. One of the major  
reasons is that the platforms that are ready to use today do not offer  
modular and scaleable functionality. The services and products have  
limited functionality and the cost to ad functionality is immense. The  
board will give the project most valuable end-user input and advice  
about how Uni-Verse should work.
------------------

This text is very general, and doesn't imply to start up something  
ambitious. It also can be exactly the 'Architecture Review Board' as  
Eskil already mentioned in the first workshops.
Or, if this is something else, we have to clearly map out the  
responsibilities of both boards.

I advise to stick to the KISS strategy here, and define the absolute  
simplest most feasible concept for this board. For simplicity I also  
think we can stick to a single board, targeted to provide feedback to  
*Verse* as protocol (not uni-verse, that's us). The board also is part  
of the future exploitation, and cannot be a dissemination target.  
Actually, it's a result of succesful dissemination.

For the exploitation/dissemination plans we then only have to sort out:

- what exactly the role of the board will be
- that the first members of the boards are some of the uni-verse  
partners
- that new members will be found and appointed, based on past Verse  
experience and/or contributions to Verse.

The way how OpenGL or other Open Standard consortiums organize can be  
used as an example here. We need to be ready for installing such  
boards, but I don't like it as a means to advertise Verse and ask  
famous people to join... if we want that as a dissemination force,  
let's call it the "Endorsement Committee" or so.

I also like to see Eskil's input on this, since he has ideas on the  
Architecture Board since the beginning.

-Ton-



On 29 Jan, 2005, at 20:28, Gert Svensson wrote:

> Dear Friends,
>
> in the contract we have promised to set up an advisory board.
> We haven't done much about this yet but time has now come to address  
> this.
>
> The advisory boards will meet a couple of times during the lifetime
> of the project possible in connection with some other large events  
> (maybe SIGGRAPH).
> The role of the board is to give advice on the development work in the  
> work and also
> about dissemination and exploitation.
>
> The members of the board shall be experts with broad experience in 3D  
> Graphics, Games, VR, Audio etc.
>
> I have promised Ton and Angela to help setting up this board.
>
> The next step would be to list companies and organizations to ask to  
> be members of this advisory group.
> I would like to include those POTENTIAL names in the dissemination and  
> exploitation plan.
>
> So if each person/partner/group could come up with some potential  
> contacts which we will prioritize and
> address later.
>
> Please send the name of the companies/organizations together with a  
> short description to me within a week from now.
>
> I have talked to some experiences project managers and they claimed  
> that such a group had given them invaluable
> input in previous projects.
>
> Best Regards
> Gert
> _______________________________________________
> Uni-verse mailing list
> Uni-verse at projects.blender.org
> http://projects.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/uni-verse
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
http://www.blender.org