From: Laurent Vuilleumier < >
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 10:37:43 -0700
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Status: RO

Hello everybody,

Recently, we (the group of people most active in the swiss-
list) felt the need to write down what the purpose of the
swiss-list is, what we think it should do, and how it is
done. This text is meant to be first a reference for the
swiss-listers so that they can check what they enrol in,
second to be used to present the swiss-list to outsiders.

Before to publish it, we wanted to submit this text for
comments by the swiss-listers. We want this text to be
concise; the original is an RTF Word file and an HTML
version is available at http://www.swiss-list.com/swl_goal.html
The HTML version is as close as possible to the original
version. Some formatting (space before paragraph, etc.)
has been lost.

My experience is: it is almost impossible to have a group
of more than 10 people agree completely on a text. I
think we will change that the only if feedback shows
we missed something obvious or if there is an uproar
about something we wrote. However, we are very
interested in (polite) comments. It gives us a feeling
of what swiss-listers feel important.

This text spells out what we think the swiss-list should do,
Hence, it reflects what we agree to do. In a typical Swiss
manner, the swiss-list works in some sort of militia system;
that is, there is no professional swiss-lister. Most of us beeing
post-doc or with a similar status, we all are quite busy. If
someone has great ideas about what should be done, it has
either to be simple or (s)he has to be ready to take the
workload on her/himself.

Let me encourage people with entrepreunerial spirit to come
forward. The swiss-list is very flexible. Even our militia system
is not engraved in marber (even though it might be in our genes ;-)
If somebody has big project for our group, (s)he is welcome to
convince her/his fellow swiss-listers. The possibilities are:
1) Send propositions on the mailing list or email directly one
   the most active persons.
2) Become involve punctually by realising one specific project.
3) Become more permanently involved by joining the so-called
   group of most active guys (in its Californian non-gender
   specific meaning :-). We welcome new blood!

Finally, I want to mention that the Swiss Embassy in
Washington DC was kind enough to link the Swiss-
List web site to their site, both in their list of Swiss clubs
( http://www.swissemb.org/clubs/html/listing.html ) and in
the external links of the SciTech Office
( http://www.swissemb.org/scitech/ ).

Laurent

--
Laurent Vuilleumier               e-mail: L_Vuilleumier_at_lbl.gov
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory      phone : (510) 486-6108
1 Cyclotron Road, 29C             fax   : (510) 486-7303
Berkeley, CA 94720
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