bendavidson@totalise.co.uk:

Back in October there was much discussion on this list about the availability of papers from the Maastricht conference online. Or rather, there was much discussion about the fact that they weren't available.

Indeed. I think part of the difficulty, though, was in folks talking past one another. For example, Ben, you remember a discussion that went like this:

A number of listmembers argued that putting them online was a simple process that should take no time and were critical about the fact that this wasn't done. Others appreciated there were two significant reasons for this not having been done - 1/ permission had not been sought from presenters and 2/ it would actually take a lot of planning and implementation time.

On the other hand, what I recall is a discussion of conference papers that had been placed online. (Specifically, there are 112 PDF, html, and SIT [unzippable] files available at http://aoir.org/members/index3.html. They include full papers and extended outlines from AoIR 3.0.) The fact is that they were password-protected. The discussion I was interested in was around whether they should be. (The consensus, as I understood it, was yes.) The difference between the two discussions is the difference between building a house, and unlocking a door. I think you will agree that the latter requires considerably less effort than the former.

What is actually included on the CD and produced for online consumption will most likely depend on the amount of work we might expect from volunteers in putting together the relevant material.

Sure, and I'll e-mail you off-list to volunteer. Speaking personally, though, the existing format at http://aoir.org/members/index3.html works just fine for me, and I'd just as soon volunteer my time to reproduce an /index4.html. Hence ...

to create a CD-rom of proceedings (including videos of keynote speeches), that could be available for sale after the event, with proceeds paying for costs of production both of the CD and of online versions of papers etc

... I'm happy to help build something fancier, if that's what's proposed. But I don't think that the discussion to which you refer is a reason to get fancier. Fancier takes a lot of planning and implementation time. cheers Bram