SAGE Status Update (07 Jul 2004)

To: sage-members@sage.org
Subject: [SAGE] SAGE Status Update
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 10:33:29 -0500
From: David Parter <dparter@cs.wisc.edu>

The SAGE Executive Committee held a conference call this afternoon to
take stock of where we stand after the events of the last week.

To recap: The SAGE STG structure has been dissolved effective 30 June
2004, replaced by a committee (appointed by the USENIX Board) which will
oversee existing SAGE services. The USENIX Board empowered the SAGE
Executive Committee to investigate and create a separate non-profit
organization, to which services and assets will be transferred.

The discussion touched on many issues, including the need to do a good
assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the SAGE Exec and SAGE of
the past few years.

The conclusion of the discussion is that moving ahead to form an
independent SAGE is the right thing to do.

The initial steps of that process are the formation of a core transition
team, and a wider advisory council.

The initial core transition team is Geoff Halprin, Trey Harris and David
Parter. A few additional members will be added.

It has been suggested that task-specific teams be formed (from the core
team, the advisory council and others) in order to best use volunteer
time and expertise, and avoid overloading the core team and prevent
general burnout.

We hope to have a small core team to get the job done efficiently, and
yet still invite wider participation from the community, which will be
necessary for SAGE's long-term success.

We will be recruiting both the wider advisory council and a few more
members for the core transition team between now and the end of the
month.  Both groups should be up-and-running by the end of July.

We will have some mailing lists and email aliases set up shortly.

Stay tuned.

Thanks for your continuing concern and input,

Geoff Halprin
Trey Harris
David Parter,
SAGE core transition team