Other responses

Several more people responded including:

Ramesh Jain
Klara Nahrstadt
Ketan Mayer-Patel
Gerald Friedland
Gene Golovchinsky

saying that it sounded like a good idea.

Ketan asked “what do you suggest as the best way to move forward?”

We need to put together a list of services that would be useful to include and a plan for implementing some of them for MMSys. Then we need to figure out who will implement what and how it will be done. And finally, identify what will be tested/trialed at MMSys.

To start off with, we need to brainstorm some ideas. I doubt we can all get together to do this, so we need to do it remotely and probably asynch. I suggest we setup a limited access blog with discussion threads that we can all post ideas to – we should make it possible to mail an entry to the blog too.

Let’s spend a week or two allowing people to suggest ideas. Then, we can hold a video conference with audio participation by folks who do not have the necessary equipment to work out a plan.

We need to figure out who wants to participate – no watching the activity without contributing. We should also decide if there are other people we should invite to participate. I don’t want to do a general mailing since we’ll get lots of people watching and talking but not doing anything. Right now – “doing something” is much more important than “figuring out the answer to everything.” Our time and resources are limited, so let’s keep it easy on ourselves.