In throwing out the charter, this effectively disbanded any "formal"
board of directors. The steering committee consists of:

                Tom Huber, chair and echolister
                Tom Almy, hatchmeister
                Dave Bealer, NC and hatchmeister
                Rick Arnold, promotion et al

Frank Arnaud is invited to join in the steering committee, but if
nothing is heard within the next couple of weeks, we'll take his
non-response as a desire to "bow out" of the net's leadership.

Todd Jacobs, since he never resigned or tendered a resignation, also has
the same invitation open to him.

Basically, I am acting as the head of the net, meaning that I will wait
for input, and then make a decision based on my own feelings, but taking
into account, the counsel offered by the rest of the committee.

We have now, as of this message, extended an invitation to all of the
sysops in the net that are interested, to provide us with your thoughts
and input.

So, to recap:

        There is no more "formal" charter in EPubNet

        There is no more "formal" board of directors, or fixed number of
                leaders at the head of EPubNet.

        EPubNet continues to exist under the direction of a steering
                committee. Invitations may be extended to others to join
                in an official capacity.

        All EPubNet sysops are invited to provide the committee with
                their input on all issues. They are also invited to
                suggest any proposals that they may think pertinent
                to the net.

        Final decisions on any Echo rests, as it does in the fidonet
                world, with the moderator. Right now, I have listed
                myself as key moderator for all current echoes. As
                moderators, or more properly, echo facilitators are
                appointed or volunteer, they will have this "authority"
                transferred to them.

        Final decisions regarding the nature of the net rests with me,
                simply in order to keep things moving. As the committee
                now realizes (I hope they do), I tend to get input from
                all interested persons before I make any decisions. I'm
                also very prone to reversing decisions, should a reasoned
                argument be present to me.

The net now has an important matter to decide upon and that is, a
"mission statement," in leiu of any formalized charter. Right now, the
committee is leaning toward a short, sweet, and to the point, statement,
which says, in effect:

        EPubNet is a network, formed by VOLUNTEERS, which provides
        distribution and discussion of electronic books, magazines,
        information, and other electronic media.

The echoes are as follows:

        EP-ANNOUNCE - Read-only conference for all users except those
        appointed to feed back a listing so that those hatching files
        will know that the file has made it "through the system."

        EP-GENERAL - General chat/discussion conference.

        EP-PUBLISH - The Business of Electronic Publishing.

        EP-SYSOP - EPubNet sysop echo, used for discussing any matter of
        concern to the net.

        EP-BOARD - Now inactive, but considered part of the net.

The first four echoes are carried on Planet Connect and will continue to
be carried by that means.

Planet Connect lists several other echoes as part of EPubNet. I will
review the purpose of these echoes. If I feel we may have a need for
these echoes, I'll add them to my monthly ELIST update.

So there you have it. A lot of discussion centered around the decision
to bring the discussion in front of all sysops. However, I wanted a
method to keep some semblance of order, and therefore, asked the former
board if they wanted to continue participating as a steering committee.
I received positive support from each of them.

My listing shows four echoes that we have abandoned:

        EP-ADMIN
        EP-AUTHOR
        EP-BOOKSTORE
        EP-TOOLS

Should we decide, as a group, to seek out other networks that have an
interest in Electronic Publishing, either as a primary objective or one
that is ancillary, then we may need these. Here's what I see as
potential purpose:

EP-ADMIN - to deal with administrative issues, primarily as a "public"
form of EP-BOARD. Given the new organization of the net, I'm going to
ELIST this, just to establish a "placeholder." For now, EP-SYSOP carries
any and all traffic that might be associated with this echo.

EP-AUTHOR has a great deal of interest to me, since I "are" one <grin>.
I see this as a potential place for authors to discuss there concerns.
Not only am I going to ELIST this, I'm going to activate it as part of
my system. If others want to reactivate this echo area, that's fine. At
least, we'll have an echo in place for author-to-author discussions,
which does not have to be limited to electronic publishing.

EP-BOOKSTORE. I'll ELIST this, just to establish a placeholder. If we do
join with another net, this will serve for announcements of publications
that are not part of our FDS (file distribution system).

EP-TOOLS. This is an echo that I'm also going to ELIST and activate. The
reason is that there is a lot going on in the electronic world,
especially in the internet. I have the full text for the proposed HTML
Version 3.0 standard. There are things happening in stand-alone readers,
and ways to use internet browsers, locally.

While these things could be covered in either EP-PUBLISH or EP-GENERAL,
I can see the possibility of needing this as a stand-alone forum.

Now, let no one say that I'm standing still on the issues of echoes.
While I certainly see no need to expand to the degree that Sandie did
with her AuthorsNet, I see several other possible echoes:

EP-EDIT - for editors to discuss editing techniques, the current state
of the industry (as far as editors go), and how an editor can hope to
survive - perhaps for the purpose of getting involved with production of
multimedia, on-line manuals, and so on.

EP-PROGRAM - for programmers to discuss programming in the new
"languages" of electronic publishing, specifically in developing macros,
templates, readers, etc., that will recognize or be recognized either
independently of the internet, or in stand-alone situations. This could
and would include discussions of BBS Doors, though I would prefer to see
emphasis to downloading the material, and then reading the electronic
publication off-line. But that's just me.

EP-MULTIMEDIA - for discussion about the problems that this form of
publishing provides. There may be suitable fidonet echoes (I'll have to
check my latest listing) or there may be independent "nets" established
for this purpose already. There is no reason why they couldn't be
invited to join the net.

I'm not suggesting that we establish these echoes yet, but certainly
feel they need to be given some serious consideration, especially by
those systems that are lurking and may be looking for something like
this.

If I don't hear dissenting votes that present reasoned arguments against
establishing these echoes, I'm going to ELIST them (probably in
February), just to establish placeholders.

Who is our link to Planet Connect? What would be the problem of adding
these to the current crop of echoes that they carry for us? Are there
limitations as to the number of echoes that we can put into the system?