Dear all,
the following message was sent by me to the TC6 delegates and also to - basie@rau.ac.za - eduard.dundler@ifip.org - Ifip_tcchairs@ifip.org - brunnstein@informatik.uni-hamburg.de:
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Dear Basie,
thank you for your quick reaction on our (admittedly not too diplomatic) statements about the "New IFIP".
From my point of view I have to confess that I couldn`t
devote too much time before for the study of that document. This has turned out now as being a big mistake since I didn`t pay too much attention to what was maybe too harshly said by some delegates.
But now to your comments: - You say that your statement "IFIP must exploit its position as the ONLY trusted budy..." was only a combining of TC's reactions and that it has never been used any more in the following. In this respect I want to remark that section 1 of a document is usually the one which gets particular attention. Thus to bring this formulation in section 1 is extremely questionable (at least if a reader doesn't read the document line by line very carefully). We might come to the conclusion that this whole section is superfluous if statements mentioned there are to be considered as null and void (?!). Needless to say that any claim of exclusivity of IFIP in the ICT world contradicts clearly point 4 in the annex, namely: "use ACM and IEEE as case studies" (i.e. as rather good examples). And one more point: Before citing this incredible word ONLY you mention that it is among the central "golden line" running through all received inputs from the TC's. I urge you to extinguish this strange formulations; it would be better to cancel the whole section 1 of the document! But even if you don`t repeat this incredible word "ONLY": Why did you mention it at all? Why do you write at least four times(!): "IFIP must be *the* first (preferred) choice for ICT" and - to mention some other exclusivity claims - "IFIP must be *the* preferred choice to be consulted", "*the* internationally trusted inter- mediate", and so on? This choice of the article *the* is extremely questionable and as suspicious and unrealistic as if Austria would say: "We are the(!) most important country in Europe". Once again: much better and more realistic formulations are needed here.
- I come back to the TC6 comments concerning the market manager (isn?t that word *absolutely* misleading since a marketing manager will have to market something but you claim the opposite?). Ok, let's forget about the questionable naming. It is more astonishing which requirements this person must(!) have: Among others, she or he "must also be *totally up to date*(!) on the TCs and particularly WGs..."!! Such a person doesn`t exist in the whole universe and even if this person would exist then: a. her or his salary requirements would be outrageously high b. and this person would obviously refuse any possibility to become fired after one (or maybe two) years.
I admit that our formulations are overly crude but your whole document suffers heavily from a "dreamish" style - and this style was at least partly responsible for the reaction of TC6. To our firm opinion, IFIP has much more vitally important problems than to deal with such unrealistic "visions" which are expressed in the "New IFIP document". For example, finding a way how to build a stable and manageable + attractive digital library despite the restrictions imposed by the Springer-Kluwer contract will be difficult enough.
I`m not sure whether this answer was "better motivated" or "less "unacademic" (can you explain, please, what this word means?) or perhaps "more scientific". Probably this is not the case.
Best regards Otto