After spending the past thirty years on the sidelines of C++, I joined the ISO C++ Standards Committee (AKA WG21) this year. My first official meeting as a member will be in Cologne, Germany July 15-20, 2019.

For those of you that haven’t been involved with the committee’s work, this is no small decision.

First, there is the large commitment of time. At any given time there are two dozen or more papers under active consideration. Each is analyzed by one or more study groups, presented, updated and ultimately either accepted into the standard or not. These are papers written by the best and the brightest and are non-trivial to read and absorb. Getting them into the standard is neither easy nor quick since the implications of each decision affects the lives of 5M+ C++ developers. Add to that the three official week-long meetings each year.

Then there are the costs of travel to the meetings and the cost of joining the committee. For travel, it’s between $2,000 and $3,000 per meeting depending on the location. And there is the yearly fee to be on the committee which is about $1,300.

This is an all volunteer committee where only the truly committed become involved. I’m looking forward to my first official meeting and becoming part of the group of people I have relied on for the past few decades to make the right decisions about the language I use every day.

If you’re interested in joining, please contact me at mbutler@laurellye.com and I’ll help you with the process.