Technical committee

["Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>]

Martin,

I believe that Dick Gabriel contacted you some time ago to see if you
would be willing to serve on the Technical Committee for Common Lisp
(part of the ISO standardization effort).  We are trying to put together
a group that satisfies two sets of constraints at once: on the one hand,
each member should be a person who is well-known and respected in the
Lisp community, who has some corporate or personal commitment to Common
Lisp, and who has experience both in language design and in the details
of Lisp implementation; simultaneously, we are trying to get people who
represent as many distinct segments of the community as possible, since
we can't include someone from every company and university.  We feel
that you meet both sets of criteria: your work on PSL is well-known, and
we would like to get another person from a big manufacturer of stock
hardware.

I believe that you had some question about the time commitment that
serving on this technical committee would entail.  Some of us are
putting in a LOT of time, but not everyone needs to do this.  I think
that the minimum time commitment for being on the technical committee is
the time it takes to read all of the mail that goes by on the list and
to think about what is being said at least enough to know whether you
agree or disagree with the rest of us.  (And, of course, if you do
disagree or want to add something, the time it takes to compose a
message.)  Add to this the time it takes to get to the face-to-face
meetings, which I fervently hope will be as few and as short as
possible.  I'm hoping that there will be no more than two technical
meetings a year.  You can see for yourself what the volume of mail is.

We'd very much like you to participate in this effort, but if you feel
you cannot find the time, please let us know.  Because the ISO process
is now moving forward, we need to announce a committee very soon.  If
we cannot make contact with you in the next few days, we will have to
move on to other people on our list of candidates.

Best Regards,
Scott