Report from Ad Hoc Marketing Group

May 2000doc.: IEEE 802.11-00/118

IEEE P802.11
Wireless LANs

Report from Ad Hoc Marketing Group

Date:

8 May 2000

Author:

Tim Godfrey
Intersil
Phone: 913-706-3777
Fax: 913-664-2545
e-Mail:

802.11 AdHoc Marketing group meeting, 8 May 2000.

Present: Al Petrick, Thomas Krueger, Tim Godfrey.

Chair: Al Petrick.

What do we need to do?

We need to emulate the 802.15 model for marketing.

Press Releases – we need a small team to generate releases for IEEE publications, and external press.

There is a need for tracking conferences and other standards activities. For example we have a schedule collision with OFDM alliance. We need to understand the other standards and conferences to avoid this. With all these organizations, there is a likelihood of overlap. IE N+I, and ETSI BRAN in UK.

802.11 and 802.15 are both putting out stories into the market. We need to coordinate. The market wonders “why are there two (or three) standards.”

We need to set up a liaison with WECA. Parkervision is going to join. 802.11 needs to understand who these other organizations. This group would report back to 802.11/.15 in the joint session regarding other bodies and conferences that are upcoming.

We need to prevent conflicting stories being presented to the market.

We will generate a web site to present the 802.11 Marketing position. Currently, only the chair of vice chairs can speak on behalf of 802.11. We would like to open this up and allow the marketing group to also be able to present to the market.

EG – what is quality of service, and what are we proposing? There are many answers, and we need to make it consistent.

802.15 document 80 – Conferences and events of interest to 802.15 members.

Cellular events, Wireless broadband events,

Bruce Kreamer holds conference calls. This group could join them. We could update our own spreadsheet of conferences that are important to 802.11 marketing. Put it on the web.

We could make a pocket guide for 802.11. Market oriented, top level specifications.

Rob Keenen from Communications Design is going to have a monthly column on 802.11 and 802.15. Bob Heile will be the host on the column. It will be split between 802.11 and 802.15. Contributions will be accepted to be considered for publication. “Standards and Protocols” is the name of the column. Al Petrick will write for July issue.

We need coordination with HiperLan. Also OFDM Forum, which is an open group. Bruce Kreamer will get us information on OFDM Forum.

802.15 is working on trademarking all flavors of WPAN. 802.16 is trademarking Wireless HUMAN. We need to determine what should be trademarked for 802.11.

802.15 document 123r1. Bluetooth specification, pocket guides, Designers companion. 802.15 is working on comparable book to Al Petrick and Bob O’Hara’s 802.11 Handbook.

If we do a pocket guide, who pays for it? IEEE Press has technical books and standards. Two separate P&Ls. IEEE may pay writers to write a chapter. Pocket guides would complement the specification.

Recommendations:

Look at Bruce Kreamer’s files

Present to the WG what we are doing at the beginning of each 802.11 session.

Generate presentations in this group, present to WG for approval, and then put on the web site.

Initial information- what is a wireless LAN, Schedule, 802.11 tutorial (Al Petrick has generated). Pull materials from WECA? We need a hot-link to WECA from the 802.11 site.

Exchange ideas between meetings via emails.

How can we encourage companies to use the “Standard Story” for 802.11? Distill the latest Chair and Task Group reports into a bulleted presentation that can be put on the web site.

802.15 has had a problem with releasing press releases. There is a difficulty in the large number of approvals and steps that are involved. The web gives us a way to avoid this problem and delay.

Submissionpage 1Tim Godfrey, Intersil