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- <h1>C++ Committee Meeting FAQ for Boost Members</h1>
- <p><b>Who can attend C++ Committee meetings?</b> Members of
- J16 (the INCITS/ANSI committee) or of a WG21 (ISO) member country committee
- ("national body" in
- ISO-speak). <a href="http://www.ncits.org/">
- INCITS</a> has broadened J16 membership requirements so anyone can
- join, regardless of nationality or employer.</p>
- <p>In addition, a small number of "technical experts" who are not committee
- members can also attend meetings. The "technical expert" umbrella is broad enough to cover
- the
- Boost members who attend meetings.</p>
- <p><b>When and where is the next meeting?</b> There are two meetings a year. The
- Fall meeting is usually in North America, and the Spring meeting is usually
- outside North America. See a general
- <a href="http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/meetings">list of meeting locations and
- dates</a>. Detailed information about a particular meeting, including hotel
- information, is usually provided in a paper appearing in one of
- <a href="#Mailing">mailings</a> for the prior meeting. If there isn't a link to
- it on the <a href="http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/meetings">
- Meetings</a> web page, you will have to go to
- the committee's <a href="http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/">
- Papers</a> page and search a bit.</p>
- <p><b>Is there a fee for attending meetings?</b> No, but there can be a lot of
- incidental expenses like travel, lodging, and meals, and there is a $US 800 a
- year INCITS fee to become a voting member.</p>
- <p><b>What is the schedule?</b> The meetings start at 9:00AM on
- Monday, and 8:30AM other days, unless otherwise announced. It is best to arrive
- a half-hour early to grab a good seat, some coffee, tea, or donuts, and to say
- hello to people. (There is also a Sunday evening a WG21 administrative meeting,
- which is closed except to delegates from national bodies.)</p>
- <p>The meetings generally end on Friday, although there is discussion of
- extending them one extra day until the next standard ships. The last day the meeting is generally over by 11:00AM. Because
- the last day's meeting is for formal votes only, it is primarily of interest only to
- actual committee
- members.</p>
- <p>Sometimes there are evening technical sessions; the details aren't
- usually available until the Monday morning meeting. There may be a
- reception one evening, and, yes, significant others are
- invited. Again, details usually become available Monday morning.</p>
- <p><b>What actually happens at the meetings?</b> Monday morning an hour or two
- is spent in full committee on administrivia, and then the committee breaks up
- into working groups (Core, Library, and Enhancements). The full committee also
- gets together later in the week to hear working group progress reports.</p>
- <p>The working groups are where most technical activities take place. Each
- active issue that appears on an issues list is discussed, as are papers from the
- mailing. Most issues are non-controversial and disposed of in a few minutes.
- Technical discussions are often led by long-term committee members, often
- referring to past decisions or longstanding working group practice. Sometimes a
- controversy erupts. It takes first-time attendees awhile to understand the
- discussions and how decisions are actually made. The working group chairperson
- moderates.</p>
- <p>Sometimes straw polls are taken. In a straw poll anyone attending can vote,
- in contrast to the formal votes taken by the full committee, where only voting
- members can vote.</p>
- <p>Lunch break is an hour and a half. Informal subgroups often lunch
- together; a lot of technical problems are discussed or actually solved at lunch,
- or later at dinner. In many ways these discussions involving only a few people
- are the most interesting. Sometimes during the regular meetings, a working group
- chair will break off a sub-group to tackle a difficult problem. </p>
- <p><b>Do I have to stay at the main hotel?</b> No, and committee members on
- tight budgets often stay at other, cheaper, hotels. (The main hotels are usually
- chosen because they have large meeting rooms available, and thus tend to be pricey.)
- The advantage of staying at the main hotel is that it is then easier to
- participate in the off-line discussions which can be at least as interesting
- as what actually happens in the scheduled meetings.</p>
- <p><b>What do people wear at meetings?</b> Programmer casual. No neckties
- to be seen. </p>
- <p><b>What should I bring to a meeting?</b> It is almost essential to have a
- laptop computer along. There is a committee LAN with a wiki and Internet connectivity.
- Wireless connectivity has become the norm, although there is usually a wired hub
- or two for those needed wired access.</p>
- <p><b>What should I do to prepare for a meeting?</b> It is helpful to have
- downloaded the mailing or individual papers for the
- meeting, and read any papers you are interested in. Familiarize yourself with
- the issues lists if you haven't done so already. Decide which of the working
- groups you want to attend.</p>
- <p><b>What is a "<a name="Paper">Paper</a>"?</b> An electronic document containing issues,
- proposals, or anything else the committee is interested in. Very little gets
- discussed at a meeting, much less acted upon, unless it is presented in a paper.
- <a href="http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/">Papers are available</a>
- to anyone. Papers don't just appear randomly; they become available four (lately
- six) times a
- year, before and after each meeting. Committee members often refer to a paper by
- saying what mailing it was in: "See the pre-Redmond mailing."</p>
- <p><b>What is a "<a name="Mailing">Mailing</a>"?</b> A mailing is the
- set of papers prepared four to six times a year before and after each meeting,
- or between meetings. It
- is physically just a
- <a href="http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/mailings/">.zip or .gz</a>
- archive of
- all the papers for a meeting. Although the mailing's archive file itself is only available to committee members and technical
- experts, the contents (except copies of the standard) are available to the
- general public as individual papers. The ways of ISO are
- inscrutable.</p>
- <p><b>What is a "Reflector"?</b> The committee's mailing lists are
- called "reflectors". There are a number of them; "all", "core", "lib", and "ext"
- are the main ones. As a courtesy, Boost technical experts can be added to
- committee reflectors at the request of a committee member. </p>
- <hr>
- <p>Revised
- <!--webbot bot="Timestamp" S-Type="EDITED" S-Format="%B %d, %Y" startspan -->April 17, 2005<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" endspan i-checksum="17669" --></p>
- <p>© Copyright Beman Dawes, 2002</p>
- <p>
- Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See
- accompanying file <a href="../LICENSE_1_0.txt">LICENSE_1_0.txt</a> or copy
- at <a href=
- "http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt">http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt</a>)
- </p>
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