RE: PWG-ANNOUNCE> URGENT - WASHINGTON D.C. MEETING CANCELED

Harry,

 

American Airlines will allow  the ticket price to be applied to a rescheduled flight (or presumably a reservation for  a different flight), provided that this rescheduling is done prior to the end of the originally scheduled departure date. Your  message  indicated that the entire PWG schedule is changed. Is there any chance that the PWG will have the new meeting schedule sufficiently firm by 29 Mar so that the flight to a new meeting can be scheduled? (100% confidence is not expected...80% or so would be sufficient)

 

Thanks.

 

Bill Wagner

-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Lewis [mailto:harryl@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 6:25 PM
To: pwg-announce@xxxxxxx
Cc: Claudia Alimpich; shawn_pratt@xxxxxx
Subject: PWG-ANNOUNCE> URGENT - WASHINGTON D.C. MEETING CANCELED
Importance: High

Dear PWG Colleague,

The start of military action in Iraq, and heightened terrorist alert status in the U.S., has forced some of our member companies to change their travel policies, restricting travel. Although other company’s travel policies remain unchanged, travel at this time is viewed as tenuous by many of our regularly attending members. This has resulted in a substantial reduction in attendance for the Washington D.C. meeting from what was originally planned.

In many cases, working group chairpersons, editors and key contributors have had to de-commit which has resulted in cancellation of entire working group meetings. The reduction in numbers and key personnel is disruptive enough to the agenda that the Printer Working Group, along with FSG and CIP4 have decided to cancel the meetings that were to be held at the Wyndham Washington D.C. on March 31-April 4, 2003.

To compensate for this sudden change in plans we will attempt the following

1. We will try to arrange phone bridges so that anticipated work efforts may still be accomplished via teleconference (WG chairs to coordinate with PWG chair and ISTO)
2. We will reschedule our July meeting to occur earlier (May/June) and likely in an easy access west coast U.S. location (ex. Seattle, San Jose etc.).
3. We will attempt confluence of PWG, FSG and CIP4 such as would have occurred in D.C. if at all possible
4. We will rearrange our remaining 2003 venue by moving October from NYC to Provo (Novell hosting) and December from Provo to (likely) Vegas.

Most airlines are handling travel cancelations at this time by allowing passengers to reschedule w/o penalty within a specific time frame (ex. with Frontier it is May 1) and complete travel by year end. Check with your airline.

You are responsible for canceling your own hotel reservations!

For those of you who have registered with the ISTO for the D.C. meetings, your credit card will "NOT" be charged any fees by the IEEE for this meeting.  If you do see a charge please notify Ami Patel right away. Please see her contact information below:

Ami Patel
a.s.patel@xxxxxxxx
Phone: +1 732 465 6477
Fax: +1 732 981 9473

If anyone has any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact either myself or Ami.

With Kindest Regards,

Harry Lewis
IBM
PWG Chairman
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Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
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