Re: "checklist" for NIR Report

[Ton Verschuren <[e-mail]>]

April,

As I was one of the volunteers in Amsterdam, I sure should be
replying. So here are my comments.

As you may know, last week in Warsaw there was a meeting of the
European part of the NIR group under the RARE ISUS umbrella. We
discussed the NIR report as well as the evaluation follow-up activity.
At that time I hadn't yet read your checklist. As I see it now
(because this whole activity has not been the one with a prize for the
clearest purpose and goals ;-) there are two issues:

1. take the NIR report and collect and present the info in there in a
more schematical (is this English?) way. That is essentially what you
did. After a discussion on the list, this checklist could soon be
finalized, because it is limited to the info in the report.

2. collect (how remains to be discussed) all relevant information
about the NIR tools and present them in a easy to browse (checklist
like form) way. This "checklist" includes issues brought up by Karen,
like what underlying stacks does the software need, will we present
the software by platform or by application (I think the latter) and
issues like:  what external software (or hardware) do you need
(viewers, audio cards, etc.). This checklist is not so easy to set up.
Especially the question comes up: who is going to fill out this list?
This will be a problem, I think. Although the information in this
checklist will be very useful to user support staff AND end users, it
will be difficult to have such a list within a limited time span.

So, what can we do? Well, as you may know, there has been a discussion
on the UNITE list (also a RARE TF under the ISUS umbrella) from which
one could distillate checklist2-like info. George Munroe (UNITE TF
chair) is working towards such an approach. In Warsaw he proposed that
there would be monthly volunteers who follow all discussions on the
list, summarize it afterwards (monthly digests) and fill out a bit
more of the checklist from these discussions on capabilities of
clients (they focus on clients).

My proposal now (after this very lengthy intro |-) is to leave the
NIR client evaluations to UNITE and to create a checklist in form 2.
We (IETF NIR) will complete the checklist as you proposed (that may be
done during the Houston IETF: all mayor players will probably be
there) and then close this item.

In Warsaw there was yet another area that could be taken up by NIR:
server evaluations: what kind of servers are out there, what kind of
capabilities do they have, to what do they interface, on which
platforms do they run, etc. We won't be creating evaluation forms to
be filled out, but start (like UNITE) discussions on the NIR list,
have monthly volunteers to summarize the discussions and create a kind
of a checklist step by step.

What do you (NIR group!) think of this. Is this a viable approach?
I won't be in Houston, but Jill Foster will (and this msg should not
contain surprising elements to her :^), as co-chair of NIR.

Cheers,

Ton.