--On Sunday, July 24, 2016 14:39 +0000 Phillip Hallam-Baker
<phill(_at_)hallambaker(_dot_)com> wrote:
As a direct result of the Web, the majority of the reading
public no longer get their news in dead tree form. Classified
ads are gone. Demand for wood pulp is dramatically down over
the past 20 years. I did not bother to pick up a printed
agenda this time as I can't read the print any more.
Hyperbole is not, IMO, particularly helpful. With many
definitions of "the reading public", it is not clear that a
majority of them are even connected to the Internet in a
significant way.
I may just be showing my age (or the fact that I don't
particularly like smartphones), but I have yet to find an
application that adequately supports the types of ways I can use
and annotate paper or reference it.
Constructive suggestion (which might have been made before -- I
have not read this entire thread): if people think that paper/
tree-killing is significant enough, why not add a "do you want a
printed agenda" checkbox to the registration form for f2f
meeting attendance? Preparing packets individually based on
whether that was checked would probably be too much trouble, but
a rough count would at least provide the secretariat with
guidance about how many paper copies should be printed, reducing
waste. If, at some time in the future, only a handful of us
wanted them, then it might be time for them to go the way of,
e.g., CDs of proceedings.
john