Duties for Chairman

In general, the chairman of a technical committee does the things listed below. Keep in mind that you can--and should--delegate just about everything; your primary function is to make decisions and be the committee's interface with the Artemis Society's Office of Space Flight.

• Define a work plan
  The work plan defines what the committee will do, and what products it create. It's a living document, updated when something new comes up. Its purpose is to keep track of what needs to be done and who's doing what. Since we'll always want to do more than available resources allow, expect there to be a backlog. That backlog is very useful because you'll have a ready answer when someone joins the group and asks, "What can I do now?"
  The best way to define the work plan is to ask your team for inputs. Other committees will add to it by asking questions related to your committee's responsibility.
  The work plan should include a schedule, at least for any products that people are working on. That lets other people know when something will be available.
  
• Recruiting
  Recruiting new participants in each technical committee is usually a continuous operation. All members of the committee can help.
  
• Training
  Include some tasks to set up tutorials that would allow a new committee member to get up to speed in your discipline. Your goal is to create a cadre of experts in the committee's technical area.
  
• Staffing Project Teams
  As the Artemis Project grows, it defines major products that must be designed. This is done by the project teams. Each project team will need people from several technical committees.
  
  • Keep track of who's working on what. Get periodic feedback on progress. Make sure the quiet guy in the corner who's doing all the work isn't ignored.
    
  • Keep track of who contributed to the creation of a product. If the committee creates a marketable product, something that generates royalties from commercial business, we want to make sure the folks who put the work into it receive the royalties. ASI can't pay people directly to do these things, but the Society can assist in making contacts with commercial business participants in the Artemis Project.
    
  
  
  • NOTE: If someone doesn't want to receive royalties for work on Artemis Society projects, he has the option of donating that back to the Society; but nobody should feel pressured to do this.
    
• Draft a charter for your technical committee.
  The charter defines the committee's scope--reponsibility and authority.
  
• Maintain committee administrative information in the committee's organizational section of the Artemis Data Book.
  
  • Under section 6.7 of the ADB, each committee has its own designated area for keeping work plans, lists of committee members, procedures and processes, and any other administrative information that everyone needs to share.
    
  • If it's a new committee that doesn't have a section of the book, contact the Book Boss for the ADB. That's Simon Rowland (simon@eagle.ca).
    
  • The Administrator for the Office of Space Flight can help keep the committee lists and get stuff into the on-line data book for you. That's Candace Dicks (osf-admin@asi.org).
    
  • Maintain the committee's technical products in the appropriate sections of the Artemis Data Book.
    
  • While the committee's internal administrative information goes under section 6.7 (or 6.8 for project teams), documents which plan the space flight should be up front in the book under one of these sections:
    1. Project Overview
    2. Scenarios for Manned Space Development
    4. Reference Mission Development
    5. Mission Options
    
  • Scientific data about the moon go into Appenix M. That's the reference section where you can look up information about what the moon is made of and its physical properties.
    
  • A good way to start collecting information applicable to the technical committee's work is to do a World Wide Web search for related documents elsewhere on the web. Ask one of the committee members to organize these references into a web document.
• Provide an interface with the Electronic Communications Technical Committee (ECTC).
  
  • Our office is in cyberspace, and the ECTC is our facilities department. They provide the listservers, newsgroups, web sites, computer analysis engines, standard formats... the electronic version of all those support services any organization needs.
    
  • Ask the ECTC to set up a listserver for your committee. When they get the issues worked out for newgroups, they'll set up a newsgroup to run in parallel with each listserver. The ECTC takes care of archiving and web chat groups for you; all you need to do is ask. Currently (4/15/97) the only communication engines available are the listservers and the web site.
    
  • The ECTC will also help with getting your documents onto the web, converted to html, illustrations and photos scanned and put into an imagery library, artwork converted to standard formats. You'll find them to be a very valuable resource.
    
  • Designate a representative from your committee to interface with each of the other technical committees. The OSF administrator can keep a table of who talks to whom. That keeps the communication flowing. If you've decided there's no logical interface between your committee and one of the others, let's put a note to that effect in the table so we know it's not something we overlooked or accidently duplicated.
    
  • Encourage committee members to put a little biographical page on the web site, so everyone will know who everyone else is.