The Baton Rouge section had the distinct pleasure of having members of the 802 IEEE Standard travel from various parts of the world to come lead a workshop on standards and consensus building. A brief synopsis of our guests:

David Law is a Distinguished Engineer at Hewlett-Packard Ethernet products since 1989. Throughout that time he has been a member of the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group where he has held a number of leadership positions.

Steven B. Carlson is the President of High Speed Design, Inc., a Portland, Oregon-based consulting company. He currently serves as the Chair of the IEEE P802.3bp Reduced Twisted Pair Gigabit Ethernet Task Force and is the Executive Secretary of the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group.

Yatin Trivedi is Director of Standards and Interoperability Programs at Synopsys. He is a member of the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board (SASB), Corporate Advisory Group (CAG), New Standards Committee (NesCom), Audit Committee (AudCom), Chair of the IEEE Standards Education Committee (SEC), and serves as vice-chair for Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC).

Our valuable IEEE staff from Piscataway, New Jersey: Susan Tatiner and Jennifer McClean.

The attendees came from all backgrounds: LSU faculty and staff, students, section leadership, members in the profession. They participated and collaborated in group exercises meant to exemplify how standards come about. A noteworthy exercise was the one where we were sent to colonize Mas and we had to decide which side of the road to drive on, battery charger speed for our vehicle, receptacle material to use, and wireless versus wired communication technology. Every member in the group was assigned a role: time waster, chair, startup, big company, regulator, to mention a few. This led to very engaged talks, backdoor dealing (a.k.a consensus), and compromising. Overall, every one enjoyed the exercises. The debrief from each group was fun and entertaining because it revealed a person’s role and what actions led to a compromise; who were the winners and losers. Below are a few pictures that show how the event went.

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