Re: [ddlm-group] Stakeholders

Dear John,

  I understand your point.  You are espousing the classic hierarchical
view of software engineering as seen in joint application design and other
middle-manager-to-middle-manager design protocols.  I am espousing the
Scandinavian method, also called participatory design, in which
implementors deal directly with users.

  Both approaches have their passionate adherents.  I suggest the
following compromise to allow us to benefit from the virtues of both
approaches:

  1.  Whatever the current state of the design of CIF2 and CIF 1.5, the
essential user externals issues be summarized in a "one-pager" to be
reviewed and approved by this group, hopefully within the next week.

  2.  Then James, in the name of this group, forward that document to the
appropriate managerial level contacts for the stakeholders, asking them
for their thoughts and comments, say by the beginning of the new year.

  3.  Then, in response to that feedback, that this group try to have a
revised one-pager vetted both by this group and by any interested
managerial level contacts, say by the beginning of February.

  4.  Then, the revised one-pager be posted to the appropriate lists for a
six-week comment period.

That should then put us in good shape to have something to discuss with
people at the ACA meeting in summer 2010.

  Regards,
    Herbert

=====================================================
 Herbert J. Bernstein, Professor of Computer Science
   Dowling College, Kramer Science Center, KSC 121
        Idle Hour Blvd, Oakdale, NY, 11769

                 +1-631-244-3035
                 yaya@dowling.edu
=====================================================

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009, John Westbrook wrote:

> The wwPDB will provide collective comment on issues of policy with
> respect to its use of CIF.   wwPDB should include the BMRB as an
> organization as well.
>
> Comments to lists regarding changes to CIF or mmCIF need to be vetted
> carefully by all of these groups prior to any public announcements.
> To give the impression that CIF is suddenly changing may be very
> detrimental to the entire CIF/mmCIF enterprise and could well reverse
> the progress in adoption of this format.
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>
>
> Herbert J. Bernstein wrote:
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>
>>    Before this discussion goes much further on any of its threads, I
>> would suggest agreeing on a list of stakeholders and consulting them
>> on what has been proposed and trying to come up with an external
>> user specification that they understand and agree to.  Some of
>> the stakeholders that come to mind are:
>>
>>    1.  The PDB in Rutgers
>>    2.  The PDB in Europe
>>    3.  The PDB in Japan
>>    4.  People to speak for the Powder diffraction community
>>    5.  People to speak for the NMR community
>>    6.  The IUCr journal operation
>>    7.  CCDC
>>    8.  The writers of the various structure solution packages that
>> write (and in some cases read) CIF files
>>    9.  The writers of visualization programs that read (and in some
>> cases write) CIF files
>>    10.  The synchrotron data collection community.
>>    11.  Service crystallographers
>>    12.  Diffraction equipment vendors
>>
>> I expect I have missed some and hope that others will add to this list.
>>
>> I would suggest we prepare a summary of the current best definition of
>> CIF 2 and, if this groups accepts the idea, CIF 1.5, and send it out
>> the lists that cover these stakeholders, starting with the PDB and CCP4
>> lists, and see what feedback we get.
>>
>> Regards,
>>    Herbert
>>
>> =====================================================
>>   Herbert J. Bernstein, Professor of Computer Science
>>     Dowling College, Kramer Science Center, KSC 121
>>          Idle Hour Blvd, Oakdale, NY, 11769
>>
>>                   +1-631-244-3035
>>                   yaya@dowling.edu
>> =====================================================
>>
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