A comparison of the membership in 1995 and 1996 shows an increase of 93 members. This increase is not reflected in the Treasurer's Report. The shortfall in dues income and/or the increase in members is due to an interruption in membership dues billings and proper tracking of unpaid members, respectively. Although the BeLux increase is confirmed. The use of a database in 1996 to track billings and payments should help to remedy this confusion.
| 7 | 5 | ||
| 57 | 79 | ||
| 3 | 6 | ||
| 1 | 1 | ||
| 6 | 5 | ||
| 1 | 1 | ||
| 8 | 7 | ||
| 3 | 4 | ||
| 5 | 4 | ||
| 24 | 23 | ||
| 1 | 1 | ||
| 2 | 2 | ||
| 1 | 3 | ||
| 14 | 16 | ||
| 1 | 2 | ||
| 2 | 2 | ||
| 1 | 1 | ||
| 89 | 134 | ||
| 43 | 47 | ||
| 1 | 1 | ||
| 3 | 3 | ||
| 3 | 3 | ||
| 4 | 5 | ||
| 210 | 232 | ||
| 53 | 49 | ||
| 543 | 636 |
Steve Downie
May 1996
Initial opening comments from Pam Gennusa indicated a 'drying up' of the flow of information from the Chapters and Vendors alike with respect to information concerning SGML implementations.
Charles Goldfarb then presented an eloquent case for the SGMLUG to be a more substantial part of the standards making process. It is clear that many companies have adopted SGML because it is a standard, and there is the ever-present threat from proprietary standards and proprietary vendor groups. The main problem is that actual participation has gone down dramatically in the participating ISO projects.
Resources of companies are restricted, and new standards are emerging. As a result, a smaller and smaller group of people are influencing the evolution and maintenance of the standard itself. Above the WG8 level in ISO there is almost a complete ignorance of the standard, which creates a dangerous situation. The cure to this is an increase in participation, by providing input to the various national committees on the requirements, and reviewing of input by various groups.
The suggestion from Charles was that the national chapters themselves should become the national equivalents of WG8, for there is no equivalent to WG8 in many countries. In other countries where there is an active WG8, the chapters can request an additional representation. This would lead to a direct vote, and some significant political clout in the standard making process. The danger being that in the 5-year life cycle of the standard, through neglect, the standard may be withdrawn.
The SGMLUG has a class A liaison to the WG meeting which entitles it to send delegations, but not to vote. Individual countries control the rules of their respective participation, but in all cases it involves bureaucracy and participation. The GCA has recently taken a more active role with respect of these issues, by acting as a host and sponsor for WG8 meetings.
One well received proposal was to set up a 'moderated' news group open only to SGMLUG to discuss and further 'flesh out' these issues. It was generally agreed that this moderated news group, available only to members, and focused on the furtherance of SGML as a standard, was a great way to return value to the members.
Pam Gennusa then presented the 'Restructuring Proposal' and Richard Light presented the new fee structure.
The bulk of financial support was coming, it was noted, from a small number of chapters. Individual presentations were received from Marco Meli from the Italian UG, Peter Sparkes from the UK pointed out that a single organization is significantly stronger than many smaller ones.
On a show of hands there was unanimous support for the proposal.
The Irish Group has had an Inaugural meeting.
The Norwegian Group has 65 member companies and 130 members. It has a web site, has had several meetings/workshops and produces a newsletter.
Peter Bergström reported a Swedish membership of 130 members, and an annual conference that had 160 attendees, and four working groups on HyTime, Publishing, DTDs, and databases.
The Finnish Group has 70 members, with a new board elected last month.
The Danish Group has 90 members representing 40 companies, and have four meetings annually.
Submitted by:
Stephen G. Downie
Vice President, Sales
SoftQuad, Inc.
Telephone: +1 416 239 4801
Fax: +1 416 239 7105
Internet: steve@sq.com
Contact Robin Cover with corrections and updates, or to submit contributions to the ISUG online document database.
