[thelist] Re: Why code for standards

Bev Corwin bev at enso-company.com
Tue Feb 5 08:35:01 CST 2002


Hi Martin,

That's a good question.  I've only studied these organizations over the past
4  years,  trying to keep up with things, mostly to help my clients, and
some non profit orgs.  The majority of my clients are small businesses,
most of them do not have IT staff, and the one's that do have IT staff are
terribly frustrated with the general scheme of things.   As far as what I,
personally, have tried.... well... I'll try to give you a brief outline,
since I have a few minutes here.... and since you asked... as if any answers
would legitimize for you my right to have my opinions or whatever..... in
any case...... I think I'm speaking for many others,  expressing a general
view of a general group of those who feel "outcast" by the current org.   I
don't think it has much to do with me, personally,  but for the record:

I follow the standards orgs closely, and I also follow the W3C closely.  I
read a lot of the various publications and I subscribe to the lists that are
permitted, especially in the internationalization and globalization areas,
since that is my particular area of interest...... and also a significant
number of my clients services are in that area.

I follow Unicode, LISA, W3C, ISO and other news.... I'm a member of about 15
different lists relating to various projects, etc.... and I'm helping to
form a new professional organization,  the Professional Association of
Localization,  www.pal10n.org , which I hope will help to create a voice for
individual professionals,  contractors, small businesses and educators.  I'm
helping to establish courses and curriculum for the University of
Washington's Localization Programs and classes. (I was a technology and
language teacher before I started my business).   I helped to found another
non profit organization that is a school.  In the school,  we teach not just
Microsoft and Macintosh technologies,  but we also have Linux and various
varieties of Unix systems classes, etc.  I subscribe to publications that
try to keep up with these groups, also.... they are various professional
pubs.  Multilingual Computing & Technology,  Artificial Intelligence
Journals, ATA, NOTIS, etc., etc., etc.

As far as the W3C is concerned,  I've been following the voice, i18n,
locales and XML groups.  I try to contribute when I can.   I've offered to
volunteer for the past few conferences but never received any response.   My
translation agency has voluntarily translated documents for various open
source efforts over the past 4 years,  and my company offers open source
information,  especially for our numerous non profit organizations.   I am
very interested in emerging economies, and have worked closely with
technology transfer, especially with medical orgs like PATH,  www.path.org
....... and others, so I've been following all the work regarding the
digital divide w/ various orgs, as well.

If the various conferences and memberships were more affordable,  I would
have joined Unicode, LISA, W3C and the likes years ago.   Unfortunately,  my
company falls over the $50K/year limit for the cheaper memberships..... and
unfortunately,  I cannot convince our company Board of Directors that the
additional $20K expense to join these orgs would be a worthwhile expense,
when we are trying to offer benefits for employees, etc.  It seems
outrageous to spend that much on these memberships.  In addition,  we
already have many other professional organizations that we support,  so the
budget monies for such things tends to be spent.   The only organization
that we are a member of that requires a large fee is PBEC,  www.pbec.org ,
and we've worked out a trade of services for 50% of their annual $6K
membership.  I have around 850 or so small businesses that are my
clients.... there is just no way any of them could ever participate in these
organizations, even if their owners are IT people or not... some are, some
aren't.

As far as my personal contributions...... I've tried to participate,  but
haven't found much of a response to my offers.  I've contacted Unicode,
LISA, W3C especially about being more involved,  but usually people just
laugh at me..... I think they think I'm a whako or something.  There's a lot
of prudishness and big decimation attitudes in these orgs.   I know a lot of
professionals, educators, students, small businesses who are really put off
by some of the people in these orgs..... I certainly am.

In any case..... thanks for your interest.

Enjoy you day!

Sincerely,
Bev

----- Original Message -----
From: <martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 2:43 AM
Subject: Re: [thelist] Re: Why code for standards


>
> Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers
>
> -------------------- Start of message text --------------------
>
> Hi Bev
>
> What efforts do *you* go to to make your voice heard? What have
> *you* tried?
>
> Sounds like via the W3c lists, there *is* a forum to get your PoV across,
> but are you using it?
>
> Cheers
> Martin
>
>
>
> To:   thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject:  Re: [thelist] Re: Why code for standards
>
>
> It is true that the W3C is very generous in its final publications of
> standards and standards information as decided by their exclusive groups.
> Unfortunately,  the W3C does not go to any great lengths to recruit the
> efforts of small businesses,  educators or contractors in the development
> of
> their standards.  I believe this is very short sighted and excludes a very
> large segment of business world.  I, for one, do not feel that such an
> organization will achieve the best results when building a system of
> standards by excluding a large and significant segment of the industry
from
> any input in the development stages of these standards.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "aardvark" <roselli at earthlink.net>
> To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
> Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 11:36 AM
> Subject: Re: [thelist] Re: Why code for standards
>
> > unlike COPC, ISO, and others, the W3C is comparitively easy to
> > access as both a resource and as an organization to influence, for
> > any size organization...
>
>
>
> --------------------- End of message text --------------------
>
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