[uf-discuss] meeting minutes: microformats needed?

[brush]

thanks, tantek and others.  i will go ahead and start the wiki process
with some of the research i've done already, and will invite you to join
me!

one thought about "role": is it appropriate to re-engineer the category
from what is apparently originally intended as a relatively static
feature (ie. "sales engineer" for a person or "green construction" for
an organization) to something relevant only in the immediate context
(ie. "notetaker" for a specific meeting, or "abstain" for a vote)?

if so (sounds good to me!), then it seems that in various configurations
microformats are being used in specific ways in which categories are
expressed in divergent "dialects" -- ie. from a parser's perspective,
a .hcard inside a .hminutes .participants (or whatever) is going to be
expected to use "role" in a different way than an .hcard inside a
.hresume, for example.

i imagine this is want tantek means by outlining contextually
appropriate values for "role"?

finally, a last question: anyone heard of any existing sgml or xml or
any other schema for meeting minutes, to avoid wheel-reproduction?  good
ideas for where to look?

thanks,
.b

On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 08:10:29AM -0700, Tantek ?elik wrote:
> Welcome "brush"!
> 
> As someone who has typed up (and published) *numerous) meeting minutes
> himself, I certainly recognize that this could be a useful microformat.
> 
> Regarding creating a new microformat, please read the following pages
> thoroughly:
> 
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/process
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/examples
> 
> Then, start the respective examples page:
> 
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/meeting-minutes-examples
> 
> and let folks on the list know that you have done so, and invite others to
> help document and analyze the examples.
> 
> If you want to capture your brainstorms (e.g. your "sense is that it could
> be as follows"), please do so on a brainstorming page, but keep in mind that
> you will need to research and document real world examples on the Web and
> pre-existing formats in order to give the brainstorms a good foundation, and
> that as a result of that research, the proposals will likely change.
> 
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/meeting-minutes-brainstorms
> 
> Finally, if you have any questions about the process, or how to proceed,
> please ask on the list, and I'm sure someone will help you move things
> along.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tantek
> 
> 
> On 5/3/06 3:29 AM, "brush" <brush at tryonfarm.org> wrote:
> 
> > hello all,
> > 
> > i have been perusing the wiki and related material recently with great
> > interest.
> > 
> > as a very brief introduction, i am involved in developing processes and
> > relationships to facilitate decentralized organization of a social
> > economy, or "open source" economy if you will, here in portland, or.  my
> > orientation to virtual tools to that end is to maximize smooth
> > emergence and functioning of real-world networks and communities.
> > 
> > i have been needing, then thinking about, and now working on a solution
> > to a relatively large source of unnecessarily "wasted" labor: meeting
> > minutes that are duly typed up (and sometimes posted to the web), but
> > with no semantic content.
> > 
> > meetings, for many organizations, are a deep source of meaning and
> > structure.  most particularly: decisions from meetings form the backbone
> > of an organization's history and memory (not mention legal process), and
> > action items from meetings (especially in less hierarchical
> > organizations) often form the core mechanism of delegating collaborative
> > labor and ensuring follow-through.
> > 
> > properly marked-up meeting minutes would allow a fairly simple web app
> > to automatically notify interested parties of relevant decisions
> > (including in "proposal" form), to add "to-do" items to personal lists,
> > and to provide archives that could be transected and analyzed in a great
> > many ways more valuable than all existing archives i've discovered so
> > far.
> > 
> > i have not discovered a microformat, or indeed any existing schema
> > (help me on this one, i'm sure i'm missing something), that addresses
> > this opportunity.
> > 
> > my sense is that it could be as follows:
> > 
> > * hminutes root format
> > -hcalendar for meeting location, time, description, etc.
> > -hcard for organization -- maybe new class for "department"?
> > *new microformat?: hparticipants (multiple hcards plus class="role")
> > -- could be useful in many other circumstances
> > -then multiple "content" items
> > -could include "hchat" or whatever for transcripts
> > -or "discussion" for general summaries of discussion items
> > but specifically:
> > *hdecision: include decision-type (ie. robert's rules, consensus,
> >   supermajority, etc.), potentially what the votes were (hparticipants
> >   with particular roles?), tagged subject matter, and result (approved,
> >   denied, proposed, tabled, sent to committee).
> > *htask: hparticipants for who, tagged subject, dtdeadline (or
> >   reportback ;) -- maybe percent complete?, parent task somehow?
> >   (obviously, this should also work for project mgmt in general)
> > 
> > [hdecision and htask could be standalone root formats -- some decisions
> > come without meetings, and also, alas, do tasks.]
> >   
> > what do folk think?  is there something like this out there already?  i
> > know it's a bit of a big hunk to chew for microformats, but the potential
> > is enormous: imagine if all your various meetings were reported in
> > hminutes rss streams, that were automatically funneled into your to-do
> > lists and important decisions flagged for attention and review?
> > reminders and all.  ;)
> > 
> > i would like to implement something on this standard for our organizing
> > efforts here, fairly soon.  would much prefer to be with feedback and in
> > direction of open standards.  should i wiki?
> > 
> > thanks, and blessings.
> > .b
> > _______________________________________________
> > microformats-discuss mailing list
> > microformats-discuss at microformats.org
> > http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
> 
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