Points of Interest Working Group Charter (draft)

The mission of the Points of Interest Working Group is to develop technical specifications for the representation of "Points of Interest" information on the Web. The Working Group will develop specifications for Points of Interest data that will have many applications such as Augmented Reality browsers, geocaching and "checkin" games, mapping and navigation systems, and many others.

Join the Points of Interest Working Group.

End date: @@date@@
Confidentiality: Proceedings are public
Initial Chairs
Initial Team Contact
Usual Meeting Schedule Teleconference: Weekly, Face-to-face: 3-4 per year

Scope

The Points of Interest (POI) Working Group will develop a specification for representing Points of Interest, including common properties such as the name, location and shape, while also ensuring extensibility.

For the purposes of this Working Group, a "Point of Interest" is defined simply as an entity at a location about which information is available. For example, the "Stata Center" could be a point of interest, located at 42° 21ʹ 42ʺ N, 71° 5ʹ 26ʺ W in the WGS84 geodetic system. Additional information could be associated with it, such as: its full name "the Ray and Maria Stata Center", that it is also located on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that it has a particular shape, etc.

Points of Interest information is used in a wide variety of applications such as: Augmented Reality ("AR"), mapping and navigation systems, geocaching, etc.

This group will primarily focus on POI use within AR applications but will strive to ensure reusability. (For the purposes of this charter, the term "Augmented Reality" is used to refer to applications that combine a view of the physical world with information.) @@sufficient?@@

The objective of the POI WG is to develop a Recommendation(@@s?) that defines a POI data format that allows digital content publishers to effectively describe and efficiently serve points of interest data. In addition, the WG may develop additional Recommendations and Notes that extend the format for particular use cases, such as AR. The WG is also expecting to produce Notes about Augmented Reality and how best to re-use and/or influence current and future W3C Recommendations.

W3C Workshop Augmented Reality on the Web

On June 15-16, 2010 in Barcelona, Spain, the W3C conducted a workshop on Augmented Reality on the Web. This Workshop was held to discuss whether and how the exciting opportunities offered by Augmented Reality can benefit from Web technologies. At the workshop, there was a call to action to form a W3C Working Group with the goals of standardizing the format for Points of Interest information and to determine how the AR industry could best use, influence and contribute to Web standards.

Success Criteria

The POI WG will be a success if it produces a Point of Interest format Recommendation that has two or more complete, independent and interoperable implementations, where there there is at least one AR application and at least one non-AR application.

Out of Scope

@@TBD@@: Describe areas of work that are not in scope.

Deliverables

The Working Group will deliver the following documents: @@TBD: names of specs, notes vs recs?@@

Points of Interest Recommendation: This Recommendation defines a format for the common components of a Point of Interest
Augmented Reality POI Vocabulary @@Recommendation/Note@@: This @@Recommendation/Note@@ defines a vocabulary of properties specific to Augmented Reality that may be attached to POI data.
@@Augmented Reality and Web Standards@@ Working Group Note: This note details how Augmented Reality applications may best re-use and/or influence current and future W3C Recommendations.

Other Deliverables

@@TBD: names of specs, notes vs recs@@ In addition to the deliverables listed above, the Working Group is intending to produce a test suite for the @@POI Recommendation@@, an @@AR Vocabulary@@ to assist in ensuring interoperability in AR applications, and a @@Social Vocabulary@@ which defines social media related properties that may be associated with points of interest. The WG may also publish primers and best practices for using the @@Points of Interest format@@ as Working Group Notes.

Milestones

@@TBD, all dates, names of specs@@

Milestones
Specification	FPWD	LC	CR	PR	Rec
Note: The group will document significant changes from this initial schedule on the group home page.
@@POI Recommendation	Month YYYY	Month YYYY	Month YYYY	Month YYYY	Month YYYY
@@AR Notes@@	Month YYYY	Month YYYY	Month YYYY	Month YYYY	Month YYYY

Note: The group will document significant changes from this initial schedule on the group home page.

Timeline View Summary

@@TBD: dates, names, the whole thing really@@

Month YYYY: First teleconference
Month YYYY: First face-to-face meeting
Month YYYY: Requirements and Use Cases for @@POI format@@
Month YYYY: FPWD for @@POI format@@
Month YYYY: FPWD @@AR Vocabulary@@

Dependencies and Liaisons

Liaisons with W3C Groups

This Working Group expects to maintain contacts with at least the following groups and Activities within W3C (in alphabetical order):

Geolocation Working Group
- This group maintains an API for determining the location and orientation of a browser user, which could be used to find nearby Points of Interest.
Device APIs and Policy Working Group
- This group standardizes browser features that are of use in AR applications, including the Capture API, System Information and Events API, and others.
HTML Working Group
- TBD
Internationalization Core Working Group
- TBD
Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group
- TBD
Social Web Incubator Group
- TBD
Web Accessibility Initiative
- TBD
Web Applications Working Group
- TBD
Semantic Web Interest Group
- TBD

Liaisons with External Groups

The following is a tentative list of external bodies the Working Group should collaborate with:

Open GeoSpatial Consortium
IETF GeoPriv Working Group
- The IETF GeoPriv Working Group is working on the format, security/privacy implications, and protocols for exchanging geographic location information.
Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)
- The OMA is developing specifications that are related to Mobile AR
ISO/IEC JTC-1/SC-24
Web3D Consortium
- The Web3D Consortium develops X3D, a format for 3D data
OStatus
- OStatus is developing a specification for distributed status updates used in social networks.

Participation

Effective participation in the AR Working Group is expected to consume one work day per week for each participant.

Participants are reminded of the Good Standing requirements of the W3C Process.

Communication

This group uses the public mailing list public-poiwg@w3.org (archive) to distribute all documents and for discussions about everything except logistics and “exceptional” technical discussions

This group uses Member-only, member-poiwg@w3.org (archive) strictly for discussions about logistics and “exceptional” technical discussions; all other discussion takes place on the public list.

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Augmented Reality Working Group home page.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

About this Charter

This charter for the Points of Interest Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

@@Authors@@