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The CalConnect Distinguished Service Award
The CalConnect Distinguished Service Award was created by the Board of Directors in 2011 to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary and/or exemplary service to CalConnect and to interoperable calendaring more generally. Any participant from a member organization in good standing is eligible to be nominated and receive the Distinguished Service Award. The Executive Director nominates a candidate to the Steering Committee based on the following criteria:
- Roundtable Attendance
- Roundtable Participation
- Interoperabilty Test Event (IOP) Attendance
- IOP Participation
- Service
- Technical Committee participation
- Steering committee Participation
- Leadership
- Collegiality/Professionalism/Code of Conduct
- Promotion of CalConnect
- Length of Service
- Other service activities
- Overall Contribution furthering CalConnect's goals, objectives, and activities
The Steering Committee votes on the nomination and, if the candidate receives a majority of yes votes, recommends the nomination to the Board of Directors who vote upon the candate in a similar fashion. The recipient of the CalConnect Distinguished Award is honored at the next immediate Roundtable. A representative of the Board of Directors, or the Executive Director when no Board members are present, presents the award. The recipient receives a single Roundtable registration fee waiver, and the event is recognized by notification to CalConnect, a posting in the CalConnect blog, and a report in the subsequent CalConnect Minutes newsletter.
Bernard Desruisseaux - Roundtable XXIII, February 2012
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Bernard Desruisseaux of Oracle was the first recipient of the Distinguished Service Award. Bernard has been active in CalConnect since its founding in 2004: he was one of the original Oracle team at the very first IOP test event, and helped to host the original CalConnect Roundtable in Montreal in 2004. He has chaired TC CalDAV and TC iSCHEDULE since their inception. In addition, he served on ad hoc committees and was most recently Oracle's representative to the Steering Committee. Bernard has authored, edited, and contributed to numerous IETF and CalConnect specifications. He has recommended possible new members to us and us to them. Bernard has attended almost every Roundtable, and most of the interoperability test events, up to this year, when his job responsibilities have drawn him away from direct involvement in CalConnect.
In doing so, Bernard always displayed both great integrity and great collegiality and comradeship. He masterfully has balanced the interests and obligations of his employer with that of the greater good of the IT community and interoperable calendaring. As a Chair and contributor in Technical Committees, Bernard has always been able to express his opinions and positions strongly, but willing to adjust those positions and be convinced of other approaches when appropriate.
Bernard's duties have drawn him away from calendaring and from CalConnect, but we are much richer for his contributions and his presence, and hope that some day we may see him active once again.
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Patricia Egen - Roundtable XXIV, May 2012
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Pat has been involved with calendaring and scheduling for many years, and was responsible for a mainframe calendaring system, yes — such things really existed, some years ago. She became a champion for users and interoperability long ago, leading to her involvement in calendaring and scheduling standards in the IETF, which took over the original calendaring specification and established the CALSCH Working Group to move forward with calendaring standards. Pat became co-chair of CALSCH in 1999, and she organized the initial interoperability testing efforts.
When work on calendaring standards, CAP, iCalendar, iTIP and iMIP, stalled in the IETF in the early 2000s, Pat realized the need for a separate organization or entity to somehow "jump start" the calendaring effort, and set out to find other like-minded individuals to work on, and establish, what would later become CalConnect, starting with the first CalConnect Roundtable in Montreal in 2004, hosted by Oracle. Pat became the Interoperability Test Manager for CalConnect for the inaugural CalConnect event in January of 2005, and managed every interoperability test event until late 2011, when the press of business and schedule necessitated passing that responsibility on.
During the nearly seven years that Pat served in this position, in addition to running the interoperability test event, she compiled and published the post-event reports. Pat has served as a Director of CalConnect since its inception, most recently as Chair of the Board of Directors. Pat has also served on the Steering Committee since its inception. Pat was the chair of TC IOPTEST since its inception, and has participated when her schedule permitted in the work of other technical committees.
As Pat's own business grows and prospers, she has less time to be actively involved with CalConnect, but she has always had, and retains, a strong interest in the purpose, the work, and goals of CalConnect, and remains a passionate supporter of CalConnect and of interoperable calendaring and scheduling. With this award, we recognize Pat for the seminal role she played in the creation of CalConnect, and for service in many different roles over the last eight years. However, the Patricia Egen story has another aspect, that of a tireless advocate of the customer's and user's needs in calendaring and scheduling, who unceasingly supported that perspective in discussions with vendors and customer members of CalConnect, reminding all of us of the many ways we can contribute with the unique skills and perspectives each of us has. Perhaps this thought, attributed to Margaret Mead, sums it up best, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Thank you Pat, for your commitment to changing the calendaring world.
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