Publishing Business Group Telco — 2018-01-16

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Publishing Business Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2018-01-16

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Avneesh Singh, Ric Wright, Luc Audrain, Rick Johnson, Jun-ichi Yoshii, Wolfgang Schindler, Junko Kamata, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Laurent Le Meurs, Jeff Jaffee, Tzviya Siegman, Bill McCoy, Ivan Herman, Dave Cramer, Rachel Comerford, Matt Garrish, Bill Kasdorf, Leslie Hulse, Karen Myers, Garth Conboy, Brian O’Leary, George Kerscher, Cristina Mussinelli

Regrets: Mateus Teixeira

Guests:

Chair: Liisa McCloy-Kelley

Scribe(s): Rachel Comerford, Dave Cramer

Content:


1. BG Leadership changes and goals

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: we have reformed the leadership of this group over the last couple of weeks
… paul and christina are stepping back
… I looked over some high level goals for the group and asked everyone to think about what is there and if there is anything missing
… list of 3 goals in 2018 (see below)
… we need to do work to coordinate with other standards bodies
… thoughts?

Luc Audrain: 1. Broaden and grow the community of publishing stakeholders in the BG who are collaborating and communicating business/strategic requirements and vision for the future of publishing and the Web Platform.

Luc Audrain: 2. Significantly accelerate the level and completeness of EPUB 3 adoption throughout publishing

Luc Audrain: 3. Support and guide the ongoing development of Publishing WG, EPUB 3 CG and other publishing related capabilities in the Web Platform and ensure publishing stakeholders understand the opportunities and implications of Publishing@W3C and OWP overall (other standard bodies?).

Dave Cramer: who are we asking to change what they are doing in order to accelerate epub production?
… how deep are we going with this push? Backlist conversions? In house communication user? etc

Tzviya Siegman: it’s a little unclear what we are supporting and developing and what other standards bodies we’re working with
… this may need to be a charter revision at some point

Luc Audrain: In answer to dauwhe - it’s a push to ebook producers to use epub3 and not epub2 - this can be simple and useful for simple text. In europe I try to push this idea to all the users in different countries.

Bill McCoy: I think we need to unpack the epub objective. we talk about broadening and deepening epub3 support. There’s convincing people with partial epub3 implementations to more fully embrace epub3. the objective there is not just content producers but reading systems.
… there is also the push for moving to epub at all (rather than just epub2 to epub3) because of the prevalence of pdf
… anyone can edit this google doc. I encourage editing

Garth Conboy: I think laudrain and BillM are correct. We are not looking for people to send memos in epub but we should be pushing for new consumer facing content to be epub3.

Bill McCoy: I am looking for people to send memos in something that’s web native and accessible, whether that’s EPUB 3 or PWP, but not as 2018 priority goal…

Bill McCoy: ;-)

Garth Conboy: I would like to see the BPG provide direction to the CG

2. establishing priority task forces

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: looking at existing task forces and launching new task forces
… we looked at the existing goals and new proposals for activity areas
… we are proposing we take the existing ones (accessibility with Avneesh and George as leaders)
… best practices (with rachel_ as a leader)
… synchronized media (led by Marisa)
… 2 new groups - epub roadmap (led by RickJ and laudrain)
… epub market needs (led by liisamk )
… what do we need to make sure epub stays ahead of where the market is going
… if we can get the requirements down, we can hand them off to the right technical teams
… also an i18n task force

Brian O: Is there a list of task forces, or are they the activity sets?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: (led by Bill_Kasdorf )

Tzviya Siegman: I am project managing epubcheck. Where does it fit into this. We are at a standstill right now.

Bill McCoy: I think that’s part of EPUB roadmap responsibility

Bill McCoy: (epubcheck)

Luc Audrain: I think it belongs to the epub roadmap to be clear how we cope with epubcheck development so that it is inline with most recent versions of epub

Tzviya Siegman: sign me up for the roadmap work, please

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: the other note there is that we are trying to avoid duplication of work done in other areas. We agree that we need to better support epubcheck but that is a part of the roadmap conversation

George Kerscher: George has lost sound, probably my connection problem. Following on IRC

Avneesh Singh: what is the function of a task force and how does it relate to the steering committee

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: we are trying not to duplicate efforts from other groups re: best practices or accessibility but that any solutions we come up with are coordinating well and that we keep the number of tasks that we are taking on for 2018 are manageable. As we move forward, we will see what else we can do.
… right now, we need traction on how these pieces will take off

Karen Myers: I have a question that is complementary - I think a lot about the w3c offices and they would like some basic information in order to explain to users what epub is and why it is beneficial - which task force would be looking at that kind of a deliverable

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: right now we do not have a clear home for that. Let’s take note of that and if anyone is passionate about helping, please join in.

Karen Myers: one of the contacts in australia is working with govts - what is the best on ramp for the interested parties? This is a different segment than we have often talked about

Bill McCoy: one of the goals here is streamlining the SC so the meaty discussion of issues can be discussed here. This is the watercooler whereas the task forces will be smaller groups that dig in and get done. Can we use a bracket convention and use the business group overall mailing list so everyone is informed?

Wolfgang Schindler: +1 to BillM’s proposal

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to Bill M

Bill McCoy: over this last year we’ve had a lot of ideas from the SC that could benefit from broader participation

Bill Kasdorf: I agree that epubcheck and roadmap need to be aligned but I am worried that deliberations will delay epubcheck updating and releasing

Luc Audrain: +1

Tzviya Siegman: +1 to BillK

Rick Johnson: one of the thoughts around the epub roadmap task force is the number of short term questions blocking work
… marketing message around epub
… epubcheck updates
… the idea is that this task force (roadmap) can be short lived

Avneesh Singh: what about governance of the epub CG

Rick Johnson: the standing members of the steering committee will be the chairs of each group

Bill McCoy: just to address an elephant in the room re: BillM

Bill McCoy: we don’t want to embark on epubcheck for 3.1 if we havent working out epub3/3.1/3.01/3.02/3.2

Luc Audrain: yes

Garth Conboy: from a developer perspective is bringing it up to the current version of epub but we do additionally need developer resources

Jeff Jaffee: thank you for organizing these task forces. BillM Karen and I spent some time talking to stakeholders last month.
… there were emails floating around on the mailing lists where there were some energetic perspectives about what comes next
… let’s make sure we are aligned on these task forces. I want to reconfirm that there aren’t any issues NOT covered by these task forces. Otherwise, we have a work plan to go forward.

Brian O’Leary: I’m struggling to understand the link btwn the task forces and the activities

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: the task forces and the activities are definitely not one to one
… when we met in the fall in order to bring together all of the information contributed this far
… we figure out what the roadmap is for epub short term, what to do with epubcheck, what the relationship is to PWP (how do you explain this to someone not in the middle of it) - we want to do this quickly so we can keep moving forward

Brian O’Leary: is there a coherent list of these TFs?

Bill Kasdorf: should the list of task forces that be on Publishing@W3C?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: we can provide that

Bill McCoy: I don’t think we need agreement on this call
… we can put a 72 hour timer on a google doc listing these
… so people can review comment and update

Bill McCoy: My suggestion is we give members a chance to review

Rick Johnson: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jpw0KA9StAnWZAaIMqnITmdSOchIZeQIvphX5AmAulg/edit (updated with task force list)

Brian O’Leary: agree that a review period is a good way to proceed

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: please read the email chain (the versioning conversation); it emphasizes the need for this roadmap

3. epub 3.X

Bill Kasdorf: who has the decision making responsibility on that?
… there does seem to be a consensus developing
… will the CG or the BG vote?

Bill McCoy: the epub3 community group with approval from the PBG

Luc Audrain: https://github.com/w3c/publ-epub-revision/issues

Luc Audrain: this email chain has been moved to github
… as dauwhe reminded us in IRC, there is hope of a concensus

Dave Cramer: this is in scope for the CG

Luc Audrain: +1

Dave Cramer: the conversation is happening in the right place for now

Bill Kasdorf: numbering is one decision, what the spec is is the next decision

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: SC will be chairs and task force leads

Bill McCoy: we should make a call for consensus from this group about the changes to the SC
… this BG is supposed to “elect” the SC
… we need to approve that change here
… maybe on the next call?

Avneesh Singh: the discussions we had in dec included the SC change mentioned above and that we had to continue with the SC elections through 2018
… we thought as a group it would be better to combine. Each candidate for the SC should write in their mandate and ask for election.
… are we moving toward just appointing the SC, not electing?

Brian O: Have to drop off to host a BISG webinar. Will follow up on the planned documentation when it is available

Bill McCoy: to clarify, we have set a group that we are recommending, but we are asking for votes on this group from this group
… if anyone else wants to stand for election, we can use a new process

Bill Kasdorf: there is a timing issue because the elections had to be annual
… this does not match the lifespan of the task forces
… we cant wait for a year to start a new TF
… or have extra SC members based on defunct TFs

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: as TFs come and go, we were planning to work out logistics for membership

Cristina Mussinelli: it’s not clear to me what we are trying to do
… we need a chair for each TF
… how is this chair defined?
… we need to overlap the SC and chair
… can we define as precisely as possible these needs for the next meeting?
… one option is to propose the leads of the task forces
… who would be the other people working on the task forces
… how long would these people be chairs?

Avneesh Singh: Big +1 to Bill K. comment, the task forces can be very short lived. For example in past we had W3C publishing summit taskforce, we have synchronized media work which is short term and is focused in finding the path ahead, we have EPUB 3 roadmap taskforce. So, will this mean a volatile steering committee which keeps on expanding and contracting? Further to it, if we are having task forces for atomic tasks then we may have many task forces as we move ahead, so the size of steering committee will become a concern. Coming to Cristina’s comment, one of the alternate formulations that George and I discussed before this call is to have finite members of steering committee who are elected for 2018 as earlier. And each steering committee member either takes up leadership of task force or should take responsibility to update the steering committee about the work done in the task forces.

Tzviya Siegman: simple proposal - chairs of WG, BG, and CG are formal SC (as slate to be voted on) and TF leads are invited to meetings as “guests”

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: we’re out of time; we need to have another meeting
… two weeks, same time?

Rick Johnson: +1

Dave Cramer: +1

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Tzviya Siegman: +1 to 30 Jan

Wolfgang Schindler: +1

Luc Audrain: +1

Rachel Comerford: comment from robby robson: Robby here from IEEE Learning Technology Standards … just commenting that we are taking next steps to start a project for guides for using EPUB 3 for learning applications. Relevant to standards coordination and task forces. On phone in car so don’t put me on queue.

Ric Wright: +1

Rick Johnson: it’s important to understand that what we’re proposing is different than the last year
… the purpose of the SC is coordination; the work is done in the task forces

Bill McCoy: task forces of BG, plus work of CG and WG

Rick Johnson: we should start with that conversation in the next meeting

Bill McCoy: (not all work will be BG task forces, that’s a key point)

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: anything else?

Bill McCoy: and CG and/or WG may create task forces of their own…

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Congrats to Avneesh and happy 2018!