Michelle: Yes, it would potentially have been a good idea to get more institutions targeted to give a broader sample. I believe the IP addresses might be recorded, so I contemplated doing some basic statistics on location, especially for those who felt P4 support was important. But you are right, that it is a smaller sample so extrapolating is fraught with dangers.

Finally, depending on how Dot responded, here’s an example where you may have received duplicate information.

On 20/09/11 20:01, John A. Walsh wrote:

> > 1) Should the TEI cease to collect membership fees, and cease to pay
> > for meetings, publications, services, etc.?

“The TEI” which collects membership fees is not the same as “the TEI” which pays for meetings etc. so I am not quite sure how to answer this question. It has always been the case that the TEI products and services are free at the point of delivery, and I think this should continue.

I think we should work towards a “contribution” rather than a “membership” model, as with other open source projects. A hundred members at $50 each, is financially equivalent to the $5000 a single “partner” contributes. If money is all we care about, I cannot see the point of collecting individual membership fees: we should be trying our hardest to get more rich partners. If however we care more about community involvement and participation, we should be trying to build individual membership and hoping that either the money will follow eventually, or we won’t be the ones needing to find it (because there will be such pressure to do TEI-related work / provide TEI-related services on those who do have the money and the responsibility to
support our community).

> >
> > 2) Assuming paid membership continues. should institutional members
> > have a choice between paying in cash and paying by supporting the
> > travel of their employees to meetings, or committing time on salary to
> > work on TEI problems?

Agencies which have a major investment in TEI may reasonably be expected to contribute financially or in whatever ways they find most convenient or appropriate. The notion of “TEI partner” as currently defined seems a very good one. I think attendance at TEI meetings etc. should so far as possible be funded by the attending person (or their employer). Underwriting such costs might however be something a TEI partner would be willing to do.

> >
> > 3) Should the TEI have individual members (paying or not) who can vote
> > to elect people to the board and/or council?
Yes.

> >
> > 4) Should the email discussions of the TEI Board be publicly accessible?
> >
Yes.

> > 5) Should the Board and the Council be combined into a single body,
> > with subsets of that group having the responsibilities now assigned to
> > each separate group?

I don’t have strong views on this. Obviously one body with two subsets costs less in administrative overhead than two bodies. On the other hand, cluttering up the Council’s already overburdened agenda with administrivia doesn’t seem like a smart move.
> >
> > 6) Assuming we continue to collect funds, we will still have limited
> > resources. Given that, in the next two years, which of the following
> > should be the TEI’s highest priority? Pick only one:

> > e) developing a roadmap for P6 that positions the TEI in
> > relation to other standards (HTML5, RDF, etc.)

(If we don’t do that, no-one else will. Other things on this list, though highly desirable, could be picked up by other agencies than the TEI)

Yep, this is a critical program management piece that seems to be missing with many DH studies: Defining the needs of the users. It’s not just the technology, but how technologists and scholars can effectively work together to develop and apply digital technologies to real-world user needs.