This document describes the Governance arrangements for the International Telecom Sync Forum - ITSF. And identifies the key organisations involved in running the ITSF annual event.
Background
The ITSF was conceived in 2000 by Charles Curry bringing together a group of industry experts to emulate (from a European perspective) the US Workshop on Synchronization in Telecommunications Systems (WSTS) held annually in Boulder, Colorado. The first ITSF workshop was held in March 2001 at The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London. Although originally conceived as an annual event - the severe recession in the telecom sector meant that the 2002 and 2003 workshops were cancelled. ITSF was held in London in 2004 and 2005 and was hosted by the Institution of Engineering and Technology at their Savoy Place HQ in London. ITSF06 was held in Prague and attracted 130 delegates. In 2007 the event was again hosted by the IET at their headquarters at Savoy Place, London and was attended by 135 delegates from 17 countries.
The ITSF exists to create an annual three day papers driven telecom industry forum and workshop (event), focusing on developments, techniques, issues, problems and solutions relating to time, timing or synchronisation (sync) applicable to the Telecoms industry.
Governance Structure
The ITSF direction is managed by a Steering Committee.
The ITSF Steering Committee sets the strategic priorities for the event and agrees the main topics upon which to focus each year. The Steering Committee is composed of synchronisation experts representing a cross section of users, manufacturers and professionals associated with telecommunication network synchronisation.
Membership of the Steering Committee is open to any individual who can demonstrate knowledge of and a contribution to the need and understanding for sync in Telecom networks. Members may be elected onto the Steering Committee by being proposed and seconded by existing members and having gained the support of at least 75% of members.
The Steering Committee meets as often as necessary (either physically or via conference call) to set the goals and objectives and create the detailed speaker schedule for the next annual event. The committee is split into sub-committee working groups to establish individual themes for both the 2 day Forum and accompanying Workshop.
A duty of the Steering Committee is to select an organisation to run the event, and decide where the venue will be for the next annual event.
The ITSF has a mutual recognition understanding with the annual US Workshop on Synchronization in Telecommunications (WSTS) hosted by NIST-ATIS in Boulder, Colorado, who also contribute an occasional member onto the steering committee.
Figure 1: ITSF Governance Structure
Telecom