🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello Nathaniel -- There is no published plan (as yet) for an MMM
Workshop in the list of planned workshops to be held on Thursday
Afternoon (October 4) but we can easily add one after the fact, and
include it in our plan.  

We will be pleased if you will assume the Chair of an MMM Workshop on
October 4.  What we would like you to do in preparation is to develop or
obtain (from wherever) one or more discussion paper(s) to provide grist
for the mill, to be handed out in advance of the workshop, but not
included in the proceedings preprint.  A report of the workshop, if it
jells and produces reportable results, will be added to the finally
published (by North-Holland) proceedings.  


The results that we seek are to form a working subgroup with a set of
work items and a plan to produce some useful pre-standards documents
wihich can form the basis of further work in the standards bodies.  When
the work shows that there is indeed a reasonable basis for regular
standards body work, it should be packaged as a contribution and
contributed in some way so as to facilitate the standards process.  

You might want to use the MMM mailinglist discussion here as a forum for
developing a disucsion paper that delineates the issues.  What IFIP
would be adding to the current effort (open discussion in this forum)
would be a means for focusing the results into a serious pre-standards
contribution to the standards bodies.  

I should note that the X.400 mail paradigm was first conceived in the
internet (SMTP.  MMDF, HERMES, MM, XMAILR, and passed through IFIP on
its way to CCITT, starting in 1977.  It was this head start provided by
the INTERNET, via pre-standards work in IFIP WG 6.5, that allowed X.400
to be first delivered in 1984.  

It is very important sometimes to first iron out teh basic conceptual
modelling issues in a neutral arena like an IFIP working group, than to
try to do it in politically charged standards group meetings.  

IFIP operates in a non-political framework, open to all interested
parties, with no authority to impose anything on anyone, but with
standing before the standards bodies so results can be contributed to
stand on its own merits.  Wehn such work is contributed to the standards
boides, with a good concensus behind it, it is pretty good bet that it
will progess well.  

Best...\Stef