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Dear MEI Community,
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this week, we had a great Music Encoding Conference here in Charlottesville, and those of us who had the opportunity to get here - including myself - were all overwhelmed by the progress that MEI has made since last year. We clearly have a momentum to continue. Consequently, there was huge interest in having another iteration of the conference next year, and we also had an offer to host it in Europe. The offer will have to be confirmed, but watch out for news about this at some later point.
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We also had a lively discussion about community organization models, and eventually came up with a consensus *among the participants of that meeting*. As head of the Strategy Group that prepared this discussion, Benjamin volunteered to lead the effort to summarize the agreed-upon model in a white paper, which he will send out to the list in the next two weeks or so. Since the goal is a consensus of the whole community, we want all of you to check that model carefully and speak up with potential criticism asap. We will collect feedback and discuss for four weeks. If we have a consensus by then, we will install this model. Otherwise, we will modify the model accordingly and have another four weeks of discussion. While these time spans are somewhat lengthy, they will ensure that everyone has the opportunity to have a say in this. If you don't speak up, we will take your silence as approval.
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In a separate draft, the Strategy group will also come up with a procedure for the elections. I think it is very important to not conflate the discussion about election processes with the discussion about the organization model itself. Of course, please provide feedback on that one as well. I assume we don't need to have these strict four-week-iterations here.
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Finally, I want to thank everyone for a great week in Charlottesville. The team here was great - big thanks to Ruth, Sarah and Lucy, who made being here so easy. Thanks to all the authors for all the great papers we had, and to the PC, headed by Giuliano, for putting this program together. Finally, I'd like to thank Perry for the fifteen years of preparation that he invested into this conference. It was a great pleasure, and I'm already looking forward to next year's conference :-)
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Johannes
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