In general, you are right, but IEC TC108 and its Hazard-Based Standard Development Team, responsible for IEC 62368-1 is a special case. It has 122 members at present, so it's quite difficult to get a hearing in meetings; if every member had 5 minutes, the meeting would last nearly 11 hours, and even over two days, that's exhausting. It is much better to contribute by correspondence (email).
I've had no success at contributing by e-mail. If you are not at the meeting to defend your view, your proposal is given very little time at the meeting and has a very good chance of being rejected or ignored. (And, you get no feedback on your comment or proposal until the minutes are published; even then, you only get that it was accepted or not.) At TC108/HBSDT meetings, only comments from national committees are considered. Usually, only members of the national committee can present their proposal. Occasionally, a proposal from a committee member or other source may be discussed if the TC108 leadership considers the proposal to be germane. On the other hand, the TC108 leadership goes through each of the comments and proposals and suggests acceptance or not, and suggests which of the comments are worth discussion at the full committee level. Most members are simply listening and learning and voting, not contributing. Only a handful of members contribute to the discussions. While there are lots of folks in the room, the meeting proceeds according to the agenda and in the planned time. Rich - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://www.ieee-pses.org/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <sdoug...@ieee.org> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com>