Consensus seems to be we go ahead with the meeting. Good.
We at UCL (I speak for me and Mark -- Alex?) can be flexible, as we said,
about whether this is in London or Cambridge. Sarah: your message implied
you assumed London.
- I propose we keep it to one day (Monday? Mark has a competing commitment
Tues p.m.). We need to be focused and there's a danger we wouldn't be if
we allowed things to ramble on over 2 days, especially as we're not as
advanced as we'd hoped, and some of us are going to have little chance to
do anything between now and Monday. Does this make a difference to the
suitability of London or Cambridge as a venue?
- Can we coordinate an agenda by sending specific items to the group?
I would like to include:
* design and recording of database: progress (hollow laughter)
* BT: how to involve them?
* if time, I'd like to clarify matters with York about feet, but that need
not necessarily concern the whole group.
(I know Mark would like to include a definition of linguistic structures,
but I'll leave him to define his own items.)
Setting up advance agendas for the meetings is an excellent idea in
principle. In practice we would doubtless have had to revise it because of
all the unforeseen hitches. But I agree we should give it a try in future.
Telephone vs e-mail: I believe there's a place for both. E-mail is much
more efficient when we need to communicate to the group, and when we need
to keep a record of our thinking. It helps us identify the decisions that
CAN be made through a phonecall. Calls CAN be intrusive, inconvenient, and
not give us the time to consider things properly. Properly used, on the
other hand, at a mutually agreed time, they can be highly productive.
I won't clog up your mailboxes further...
Jill xxx