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Publishing Steering Committee Telco — Minutes

Date: 2017-10-03

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Dave Cramer, Rick, Ivan Herman, Luc Audrain, Leslie Hulse, Bill McCoy, Bill Kasdorf, Daihei Shiohama, Garth Conboy, Tzviya Siegman, George Kerscher

Regrets: Paul Belfanti, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Mike Baker, Cristina Mussinelli

Guests:

Chair: Rick Johnson

Scribe(s): Graham Bell

Content:


Rick Johnson: right now, I’m alone on the webex

Bill McCoy: Daihei Shiohama is assisting Junichi Yoshii of Kodansha

Bill McCoy: he is also managing director of Media DO (TPI member)

Rick Johnson: opened meeting and listed apologies

Rick Johnson: noted agenda had been distributed and asked if any additions. No.

Garth Conboy: (I muted)

1. BG meeting cadence

Rick Johnson: previous meeting had talked about reducing frequency to monthly. Rick asks for further comments

Luc Audrain: Once a month is ok for me

Bill McCoy: O'Leary had commented that monthly seems comfortable, but means that you must make an effort never to miss, as this creates too long a gap

Ivan Herman: is ‘lukewarm’ about monthly, as the group has almost exclusively talked about ISO standardisation. A single topic like that may not justify even monthly meetings

Bill Kasdorf: notes that real activity happens in task forces / working groups, and that the parent group may meet less frequently

Rick Johnson: asks Bill K what he sees as the relationship between Business SC and the Business Group itself?

Garth Conboy: I do tend to think the SC should have that oversight role.

Bill Kasdorf: not sure on SC - Group relation. He notes that not all BISG committees (per Brian OLeary comment above) meet strictly monthly. Some meet less frequently. Others have concrete tasks (e.g. Subject committee) and do meet monthly

Bill Kasdorf: sees virtue in breadth of membership of the business group.
… (but question remains – how often should the business group meet?
… (and presumably, how often should the business group SC meet too?)

Garth Conboy: With the possible exception of Epubcheck, is the CG “very active?”

Ivan Herman: notes we have a list of topics that the SC feels should be addressed by the Business group. There are specific topics, and a few goals.

Bill Kasdorf: thanks for the correction dauwhe re the CG

Luc Audrain: yes I do

Ivan Herman: suggests we encourage the Business group to get task forces set up to progress the various tasks / goals listed
… and once they are working, the BG might not need to meet quite so frequently

Tzviya Siegman: a large part of the membership of the business group are not familiar with the aims of the BG, or not comfortable with the W3C process / with IRC / with …
… and we might need to be more active in welcoming and educating new BG participants

Dave: agrees with Tzviya, the BG participants are not all familiar with the mission and the method

Garth Conboy: +1

Tzviya Siegman: +1

Bill Kasdorf: sounds good to me

Luc Audrain: +1

Rick Johnson: summarises Ivan’s proposal - presenting the list of tasks to the BG, see which have enthusiasts to progress them, and get them going, then…
… reduce the frequency of the BG meetings

Rick Johnson: notes there should be SC members enthusiastic for each of the tasks too

Bill Kasdorf: clarifies that while the BG must have enthusiasts to carry work forward, not all work need be done solely by members of the BG - it might be devolved to outside organisations or to other parts of the W3C
… for example BG members are not going to solve issues with MathML, but might help focus attention on particular problems with MathML and provide impetus for solutions to be developed by otherss

Graham Bell: George - the marketing group didn’t ‘take’ well in IDPF either

George Kerscher: must be careful when handing off to (for example) BISG or another group. Must not simply say ‘join BISG and get the work done there’

Bill Kasdorf: +1 re BISG is North Am and book focus–we forget that

Bill McCoy: notes BISG is overtly a North American org, and W3C must not be exclusively North American. it must tackle problems of a global natgure

Luc Audrain: +1 for global

Rick Johnson: can we identify at least on person on the SC to be the champion for each of the issues and tasks identified

Rick Johnson: 1. creating best practices. Bill K has been vocal in the past on this topic

Luc Audrain: we had many regrets for today

Bill Kasdorf: in the absence of other volunteers, though these things (best practices) are often progressed via BISG. But BISG is (as well as being North American) is also purely book-focused

Rick Johnson: and Bill K note that Rachel might well be a good person to progress this

Garth Conboy: I think the best practices done by BISG for Fixed Layout worked out pretty well (and wasn’t really US focused).

George Kerscher: notes DAISY has a knowledgebase of ‘how to’ answers. It may be possible to extend this

Garth Conboy: We need to need create only best practices content for which there is really an audience. We have had examples of getting all dressed up for no party.

Graham Bell: +1 to Garth’s comment

Luc Audrain: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Rick Johnson: 2 - taking the pulse of EPUB across the marketplace. What are people doing with EPUB and how are they integrating it into their publishing plans

Luc Audrain: is keen to champion ISO issues and accessibility in the BG

Bill Kasdorf: best practice for what? is a key question

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to Tzviya’s suggestion

Tzviya Siegman: had in mind building an online place to collate all material but to arrange it by topic (and keen not to reinvent best practices that already exist, so would link out to other W3C resources)

Ivan Herman: (notes that some W3C best Practices are somewhat questionable)

Rick: proposes collating all this in a Google Doc so that SC members can identify tasks that they want to champion

2. George’s recommendations on ISO

George Kerscher: the subgroup has recommended the approach that is the most work

Rick Johnson: vote agains 3.0.1 as a TS, vote for 3.0.1 as an IS
… start process for EPUB Accessibility to become an IS
… and start process for 3.1 to become an IS
… (in that order)

George Kerscher: there is a significant amount of work to get the specs into ISO language, which should be carried out by the Community Group

George Kerscher: and Matt Garrish (?) would be able to help with that

Ivan Herman: previous experience with ISO standards suggest that publication rules and requirements are stringent. Not sure that time and energy to do that will be available
… Can we clone Matt?

George Kerscher: asks Bill M how SC34 standardised 3.0 as a TS. Would it be possible to put 3.0.1 forward as an IS without significant work because it is already a Korean national standard?

Tzviya Siegman: standardising 3.0 as a TS required resolving hundreds of issues

Graham Bell: Bill M: most of those issues are no longer present in 3.0.1

George Kerscher: 3.0.1 will be moved forward as an IS (and will be fast tracked because it is a Korean national standard)

Bill McCoy: but this doesn’t solve the question of 3.1

George Kerscher: can we then kick off the 3.1 IS process when Matt has some free time

Garth Conboy: Isn’t Japan pretty firmly against proceeding with 3.1? I still think it’s not insane to redefine the version of 3.1 to be “3.0”, to perhaps make the Japan folks happier.

Graham Bell: need to outline the process publicly up front (so as not to hide the 3.1 process from view)

Ivan Herman: cautions against putting too much pressure on Matt. Need to recruit alternatives, as it is unlikely he will EVER have time

Garth Conboy: (as above) Japan seems to be against 3.1, should consider the version string in 3.1 to “3.0” which would (it seems) negate most of Makoto’s issues

Luc Audrain: I support this idea

Rick Johnson: George - so what is our next step?

Luc Audrain: It would solve epubcheck issue too ?

Garth Conboy: It would help

Rick Johnson: is there a clear recommendation from the SC

Graham Bell: moving on all three seems the best way

Tzviya Siegman: modifying the version string in 3.1 in order to allow the Japanese to support 3.1 might be a good way forward

Tzviya Siegman: particularly as when the “3.1” version string was chosen, 3.1 was envisioned as a much ‘larger’ update

Rick Johnson: suggests the Sc should recommend that we move forward with 3.0.1 standardisations, and that the 3.1 standardisation wait until until we have discussed the version string issue

Bill McCoy: preferred that this should be passed through W3M first, and that ISO communication happens through that management group

Action #1: Bill McCoy to get W3M approval and move forward to notify ISO that we agree to move forward with 3.0.1 update, potentially omving from TS to IS at the same time

George Kerscher: (garbled) possibly relating to NISO group… needs to be moved quickly

3. Mini SMIL

Ivan Herman: do not call it MiniSMIL…

Garth Conboy: “mini-SMIL” == “grin"

Bill Kasdorf: media overlays?

Garth Conboy: Yep, +1, to Media Overlay, and “grin” informally.

Tzviya Siegman: Mo for short

Luc Audrain: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1


4. Action Items