Meeting

[Dick Gabriel <RPG@SU-AI.ARPA>]

It being a year since the last Common Lisp Meeting, I would like to
propose a second meeting. To be accurate, DARPA has suggested that
someone ought to propose a second meeting. I think we are in a position
to finally settle the following questions:

	1) How shall the charter be constructed for Common Lisp?

	2) Are we all agreed that the minor changes to Common Lisp,
	   especially the errata, are to be part of the Common Lisp
	   standard?

	3) Shall we adopt an error handling facility?

I think we can have reasonable discussions on the following:

	1) How shall windows be handled?

	2) Shall we agree to experiment with CommonLoops (appropriately
	   named) as the object-oriented programming paradigm?

There are several new topics that deserve discussion:

	1) What shall be our approach to ANSI standardization.

	2) How shall we handle changes to the Common Lisp book?
	   (This topic includes copyright questions that have come up).

I have some thoughts as to the organization of the meeting and other
administrative details. First, the meeting would best be held on the East
Coast - it was held in Monterey, California last year.  Second, attendance
should be limited to 2 or 3 representatives from each organization. This
rule will help us to keep the discussions from getting out of control.  I
would be willing to let more people attend the meeting, but restrict
commentary to a small number of people. If only 2 people are allowed, we
should probably leave the actual decisions to a written ballot after the
meeting, with advisory votes at the meeting.

Third, the meeting should be held at a location that is easily accessible.
Several possibilities that come to mind are Washington, New York, and
Boston.  Fourth, I think that the meeting should be held towards the end
of November, so that there is plenty of time to arrange schedules.  Fifth,
I think we should decide on the above before the end of September.

Please mail to me (RPG@SAIL) your responses to these ideas, and I will
attempt to coalesce them into some sort of decision or into a condensed
set of issues for all of us to consider - I want to keep the discussion
about the meeting streamlined.

			-rpg-