Publishing Business Group Telco

Introduction of New Members

Liisa: welcome to James Tauber, new BG Member

EPUBcheck development and funding

Luck: we're not far from our fundraising goal
… from the last pledges I've seen we're about 12k $ from the goal
… when all the payments are received we'll still be short $ 12k
… I proposed that the BG or SC communicate thanks to all the donors
… and use the page on the web site to show the logos of all the companies who contributed
… we still lack 12k euros

Daihei: Euros or USD?

Luc: USD

Ivan: until today you maintained that page on the web site
… who will take that on?

Luc: Dave Cramer is now Hachette's AC Rep
… I agreed to continue to do this job if there are no technical issues

Ivan: no technical issues

Luc: I will not be a Hachette employee
… I will have my own consultancy

Ivan: as long as you don't change your GitHub ID, it will work

Luc: on EPUBcheck development, the schedule is a bit delayed
… for several reasons including the pandemic
… we're working with Avneesh and Romain to revise the schedule
… probably until end of this year
… the progress is slow but is going on
… the idea is to have the whole client finished by end of the year
… with Avneesh, Romain, and Tzviya we're preparing a new schedule to propose to the Steering Committee
… it is the SC's decision to pay Daisy Consortium when each phase is complete
… Daisy will prepare reports and Avneesh will present them to the SC
… it is not necessary for me to be involved in that

Digital Publishing Survey

Liisa: the SC decided to close the survey; it has been open for 2 months
… 271 responses
… we're working on collating the material
… I am working on updating a clean version of the raw results to share with the BG later this week

Wendy: Mateus and I are almost done with our final assembly; we're working on a slide deck of all the results
… and a blog post with an overview of what the results mean and how we're going to use them
… I'll circulate that for comment before posting
… Mateus is working on the open-ended questions; that is more work

Karen: what's the geographic distribution?

Liisa: we did not ask location questions
… we did ask if people wanted to stay in touch and got some email addresses
… the number who said they wanted to stay in touch is not indicative of their location
… we know some of the responses were from Japan, based on the free text

Dave: we might be able to use the IP address to infer location

Ivan: not if people used VPNs

Luc: the geographic question is interesting. The survey was distributed all over Europe but got to some places later than others
… I don't know if some parts of the world maybe didn't get it

Liisa: I'm omitting repetitive and overly-snarky responses but kept anything that indicated location
… such as "doesn't work in Russia"

Daihei: in Japan, I distributed through several industry organizations
… 2000 publishers in Japan do digital publications
… and I'd say 100% of them use EPUB
… the survey was about "interest"
… so it was disappointing to only get 10 responses from Japan
… this suggests the language barrier was quite large
… we should make more effort in the future to make it easier for people to come in to help us

Jeff: this survey is maybe a once-in-a-decade opportunity
… given Daihei's remarks, should we consider translating and re-opening it?
… .to get more representative inputs from Japan

Wendy: after spending many, many hours with the results I've observed that the survey is too long and too broad
… if we want to target groups it's worth segmenting it out
… publisher-centric and EPUB-centric questions for the Japanese publishers
… the survey was designed to reach everybody across the spectrum

<jeff_> +1

Wendy: we can modify it to target specific groups
… and not ask everyone to answer 86 questions

Daihei: good idea
… in addition to sending the entire survey to more aggressively-involved members

<Karen> +1 subset of relevant questions by target segment

Daihei: I sent specific sections to publishers and to EPUB developers
… together with Yoshii-san we made such an effort
… I didn't have time to interview each one
… next time we should find a way to get more involvement

Liisa: I propose we think about what we've learned
… as we get more material to share, re-engage on who's willing to discuss
… we haven't yet talked about how we'll follow-up with those who said they're interested in followup

Jeff: I agree with Wendy that we should lead with a more tapered survey
… perhaps in the BG Asia/Pacific call the same question can be raised and get ideas
… perhaps involve Naomi and get ideas about translating
… this opportunity doesn't come along very often
… we shouldn't just drop it

<Daihei> +1 to Jeff

Liisa: we stopped the survey but we all agreed we would follow up once we have results in sharable form and talk with the community
… perhaps do some webinars

Daihei: I totally agree with Liisa
… the first phase of the survey has just closed
… if we can gather any further responses from Japan, Taiwan, or others, I hope that can be added to the survey results
… it's a great list of questions and pertains the the core of EPUB development
… we should use these results to go back and do it
… I agree with the idea of doing webinars based on the questionnaire

Blog post from the SC F2F

Liisa: the post has been out for a bit; have people heard much response? any questions about how we're moving forward?

listen to the people

Liisa: should we be promoting it more?

George: I've been updating people in a variety of settings
… everybody has been really good with it
… nobody questioned the initiative
… I did get some questions about where to join the CG
… and should they join the Publishing CG or the EPUB 3 CG
… I've been recommending that they join the EPUB 3 CG

Dave: I remind us not to expect too much reaction
… literally everyone in the world is worried about other things right now
… the timing is utterly horrible and that's not at all our fault
… we need to be very patient about all of this
… do the best we can, but the world is not particularly interested in what we're saying at the moment

BillK: +1
… I expected some response from my list
… got one comment before covid-19
… "what's going to happen to bookstores" has now swamped the discussion

Daihei: last week I got dozens of responses from Japanese members, both PBG members and APL members
… mixed responses; some positive and some concern about EPUB moving to Rec Track
… questions about the organization of Publishing@W3C
… I am going to encourage them to come to me or direct to GitHub to comment
… I also gave a summary of the blog
… this week I will put all the responses into GitHub on the EPUB 3 WG charter

George: I monitor education lists and the number of publishers and vendors that have been making books available to students at home is tremendous
… tomorrow we're doing a webinar on this
… it's free and we're reaching the Zoom maximum of 500 attendees
… we're looking at increasing the number of attendees in our license

Liisa: nice segue to the EPUB 3 WG charter

EPUB 3 WG charter

<ivan> EPUB 3 WG charter proposal

Liisa: please read and comment on the charter
… and get others to do so

<Daihei> @George - where can I find the webinar info online?

Ivan: it's obviously the same situation that Dave described
… when we leave a month for comments, at this moment I feel uncomfortable going to the AC in a few weeks
… without more feedback from the community
… if you are an AC Rep or have connections to AC Reps, it is useful to express your view even if you have no changes to propose

<david_stroup_> Need to drop. I will provide positive feedback on charter and blog this week.

Ivan: comments should not only be those who want to criticize

PBG Role Going Forward for Publishing@W3C

Liisa: this discussion started in the Asia call a few weeks ago
… how we best serve the publishing community
… how we get ideas from the new incubation Publishing CG
… consider inviting guest speakers at some calls
… we've asked Laurent join us next month

Cristina: we've asked Laurent to present on what they're doing on the reading system
… we should discuss how much time we allocate for guests to present
… do we expect slides?
… how do we organize our hour time?
… I suggest that we give them 15 minutes to present, plus 15 minutes for Q&A, leaving us 30 minutes for other discussion

Liisa: +1 to that time allocation
… it will be good to see how the first one goes and adjust from there

Cristina: suggestions for other speakers welcome so we can schedule a program in advance
… can be people or topics
… prepare a list of topics we'd like to discuss
… we can also invite publishers who are not W3C Members

<Ralph> +1

<Karen> +1

<wolfgang> +1

Daihei: how frequently might we schedule speakers? the intention is to open a slot for guests from outside PBG
… we can occasionally invite CG and WG representatives to share what they are doing
… and for the CG and WG to hear directly from BG members
… this direct connection could be good

Jeff: another idea:
… a lot has been said in the current covid crisis about libraries being closed and the ease of downloading ebooks

<Daihei> +1 to Jeff

Jeff: is there anything that PBG might say in this time?

Liisa: interesting to mention but not sure what we could say as a community that isn't representative of our organizations

<Daihei> +1 to Cristina

<Zakim> jeff_, you wanted to answer Liisa's question

Cristina: we can ask permission to record the guest speakers so the two meeting times can benefit

Jeff: good question from Liisa on what the BG might be able to say
… IDPF was also partly a trade group in addition to being a standards organization
… when we combined we said that spec work would move to Rec Track, incubation would move to CG
… and the trade organization discussion would happen in the BG
… is there any discussion that could or should be made?
… e.g. "in this time, here's what you should know about ebooks"
… people are also working on jigsaw puzzles; there was an article in the New York Times about people doing puzzles
… what can or should we do?

<jeff_> [/me was not trying to communicate that anyone should profit.]

Liisa: [notes Tzviya's comments on the importance of not appearing to profit from the crisis]

Daihei: agree not to be exploitive but telling people that here's a way to use the time
… we are seeing a great increase of digital library lending and ebook purchases in Japan
… I hope there is an appropriate way for PBG to encourage people who don't know about how to enjoy digital book reading to let them know
… but I agree that we should not give any image or feeling of taking advantage of the crisis

Karen: to George, do you have a sense of who is subscribing to your webinar/
… 500 participants on what sounds like a consumer webinar is very interesting

George: all of these conferences were canceled
… I sent to the CG and BG an email indicating the conference communities we're targeting
… the first webinar is focused on higher ed and is getting high response from there
… education is a big arena that we're touching on

Karen: thanks; there could be more stories from this group; they're human-interest stories
… perhaps we could have a slack channel too
… personal story: I suggested to a family member who couldn't get to the library anymore to consider reading on an e-reader
… that was received positively

George: the move to home-schooling now means lots of materials are being created by the teachers
… if we can nurture that and focus it to epub, that would be great

Karen: +1; find the right outlets without being commercial

George: Departments of Ed around the globe are trying to help their schools
… we have a lot of things in place that can help
… getting this out to the communities with so much going on is hard
… and we have to do it quickly

Liisa: it's not necessarily about commercialism for individual companies but sensitivity over the business models coming from this
… sensitivity towards the small bookstores who are losing staff and access; keeping them a-float
… promoting e-books is in a way dismissive of that reality
… I want to leave us time to thank Luc
… so just quickly note the w3C Community on Slack

Thanks to Luc!

Liisa: so many thanks to Luc
… have fun with your family!

Luc: thank you all; it was a great opportunity to work with all of you
… and to follow Pierre
… I was the guy behind Pierre and was honored to follow him
… it's a place where we've had some difficult passage and we did it together
… like climbing with Dave
… I am very happy to have met and known you and hope to see you again at future conferences
… I wish you all the best

[applause around the video]

<wolfgang> @Luc: you did a brilliant job for the benefit of us all

<jeff_> Luc++

Daihei: my personal thanks
… it's been a pleasure working with you
… your grandchild is much more attractive than we are!

Avneesh: Luc has done great work for accessibility

<liisamk> +1 to Luc and accessibility!!

Avneesh: accessibility of ebooks would not be in such good shape without Luc
… he was a great advocate
… I could not have imagined as much success without Luc

Luc: I am ready to continue to work on accessibility over the next year
… I have just joined Daisy as an independent

George: woohoo!

Liisa: you're allowed to take a few days off!

Luc: the second action I took is to register to learn Italian!

Cristina: I'm happy to help :)

Daihei: don't forget Japanese !

Liisa: good luck out there, stay safe and healthy taking care of family and friends
… be kind to each other
… see you in the on-line world

[adjourned]