– DRAFT –
Publishing Business Group Telco

<Ralph> previous Asia-time BG meeting record

<Ralph> previous AM/EU-time BG meeting record

<ivan> Date: 2020-06-23

EPUB 3 WG Charter

liisamk: To get started with the agenda
… the EPUB3 WG charter is now with the AC
… the call for votes is open
… please vote if you are able or tell your AC rep

<ivan> EPUB charter review form

dauwhe: We definitely need the AC reps of everyone in this group to vote

liisamk: Some people are only PBG members, BG members have no AC reps

dauwhe: If you are a member with an AC rep, please vote, it's important

tzviya: For clarification, please feel free to reach out to me or Ivan for information on this process

ivan: I have put the link to the call in IRC

liisamk: What are the next steps?

ivan: For now, we wait
… we try to convince everyone to vote
… we wait until the end of July
… if in the mean time there are any objections, then we might have to have discussions
… at the end of July we have to see the results
… if there are no significant changes required, or formal objections, there may be editorial changes, but it all goes back to W3M
… we have to decide when we start
… the end of the voting period is July 31, we might say we start Sept 1
… if there are significant objections, then it is less clear what we need to do

dauwhe: This is probably a question for Ivan and Jeff
… would it make sense to track the members of the PWG/Publishing and record who has voted and who to encourage

ivan: The list of who has voted is confidential
… but contacting the W3C members who are interested or might be is possible
… the team has the information about who has voted
… that being said, an individual member who votes has the right to keep the email in the mailing list
… up to them though

jeff_: I think that despite what Ivan said about availability, it's not that hard to identify who is interested in EPUB
… about 30 organizations
… it would not be difficult to contact them
… regarding what's next
… to make people aware, sometime this summer we'll be in the process of organizing the virtual TPAC
… for the most part each group will be figuring out when and how they'll meet
… before the good dates get taken, the proposed chairs might want to discuss when to meet.

dauwhe: Wendy and I did get the TPAC questionnaire, and filled it out in hopes we will be a group by them

<Ralph> [Ralph arrives]

jeff_: There's going to be new schedules based on the change to virtual, group culture and working mode
… especially if groups want to schedule coordination calls with other groups
… or don't have a group culture yet because they haven't started

liisamk: Anything else?
… let's talk about the follow-up to the survey

Webinar Planning

tzviya: I can update on the webinar
… we're looking at late July
… it will be open to anyone interested in attending
… targeted to the publishing community
… giving a summary of survey, the new structure, and leaving time for Q&A
… need to talk to the SC about volunteers, the initial volunteers are all based in NA, we will discuss with the SC about diversifying the presenters
… with representation from all of the groups
… provide information on the groups, accessibility, new and old laws
… we'll have an invitation soon

liisamk: Daihei, do you want to talk about the Webinar for Japan?

Daihei: I thought I was asked to do it this friday
… the day of the APL committee meeting
… likely now sometime in July
… I am going to present
… what Liisa and I presented at the DPUB Summit
… hopefully I will also have other groups present like EBPAJ
… I am also getting in touch with TDPF
… we are trying to figure out a schedule to do it

<Ralph> Publishing @ W3C Summer Webinar planning document

Daihei: and I am trying to get in touch with people in China and Korea

liisamk: Cristina is also working on something in Italian
… are there any other requests for localized presentations

<Ralph> Wendy: if we're doing a presentation end of July on Publishing at Large, why not localize it rather than duplicate effort?

<Ralph> ... instead of having multiple people develop separate presentations

liisamk: People have been asking for this, and there are requests for localized contents
… we should make it more consistent
… if people do want localized content
… have we heard other requests?

Daihei: In terms of communication, especially outside of W3C
… it is important that they should have the opportunity to be exposed to this content
… the survey results, and structure
… the English understanding in Japan isn't always as strong and localization is needed
… we tried to communicate to people who are interested in EPUB being a spec
… bringing the survey results to the business people
… who will use that information for their decisions.
… I am in the process of localizing the slides
… where should I put it
… so we all have access to the localized versions

tzviya: I think we have 2 questions here
… by localizing are we talking translations or special content for that region
… when we create these presentations how do we make them available

<Ralph> [we can certainly store any BG materials in the W3C GitHub repository]

tzviya: we can keep them in github or make a website for them
… if the answer is simply that we need translations
… it would be in our interests to localize the slides and then have the presentation in the local language

Avneesh: In my experience, this exercise is more than language
… it's building a community in alignment with the standards community
… explaining to the local community how this works and then getting their feedback

<Daihei> +1 to Avneesh

ivan: For the archival question, we can archive the talks alongside wherever we put the others
… GitHub, W3C website, etc
… it's not a problem

<Daihei> Thanks Ivan/Tzviya

liisamk: I do think that Daihei and Cristina have been asked for localized versions of the results
… built off the DPUB Summit presentation
… it should not be something where any group feels left out, we should make sure there's translations/expertise to give the material local context

Daihei: Liisa covered what I wanted to say
… in Japan there's all sorts of local issues
… 85% of the market is manga
… one of the reasons the text oriented business is not in EPUB3 is because of Japanese typography
… it's more work than FXL
… a lot of people are looking for help in minimizing the cost of producing that content
… localization means that the document can be understood and discussed
… the straight translation is the foundation
… the Q&As and such are in the local language
… I am not as clear on the process of the translation
… there's scheduling to consider

tzviya: What I said, we can share slides, we can also share public translations
… we can make the slides available in any languages

<Ralph> Wendy: what I think would make the most sense is to have one slide deck that gets localized in whatever ways the community needs

<Ralph> ... but slides can be added to it for the local community

<Ralph> ... to cover whatever the community wants to talk about

<Ralph> ... the localization should be done by someone who is familiar with the local community

<tzviya> +1 to wendyreid

<Ralph> ... so there can be Q&A that is specific to the community

<Ralph> ... my only concern is to save effort; not do the slides four times

Daihei: Wendy I want you to understand, I'm mindful of the workload, a lot of people have duties, for the sake of digital publishing, we are trying to make it better for the progress of the W3C and digital publishing
… I'm giving my time for this to make sure it's productive

Future BG topics

liisamk: Next agenda item, does anyone see any issues in the future that we should be considering?
… considering the current pandemic and how it affects business

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to note rel of epubcheck

<tzviya> https://‌github.com/‌w3c/‌epubcheck/‌releases/‌tag/‌v4.2.4

tzviya: I just wanted to make sure that there's a new maintenance release for EPUBCheck
… very minor changes, all of the updates are in the documentation, nothing to affect workflow
… we deprecated two ARIA roles that weren't working properly, and should stop throwing errors

liisamk: This is a communication opportunity

tzviya: We need to communicate major releases, this is minor, but it has been sent to the usual mailing lists and twitter

<Ralph> EPUBCheck v4.2.4 (patch maintenance release) is available [Romain, 23-June]

tzviya: blog posts don't have quite the same reach
… how else could we communicate this?

liisamk: We should encourage people to use it
… my organization's reaction was "oh no a new version how do we roll it out"
… how do we respond to that reaction

tzviya: People don't read release notes

liisamk: Not right away, maybe 2 weeks later when they put it in the sprint

tzviya: I can respond to the email with an explanation on how this doesn't affect workflows

jeff_: I wasn't sure about how broadly to interpret your question about business
… first of all, I would say that we're starting a new WG, I think all of us would like the BG where people who are not active in the WG are meeting, identifying use cases and requirements, engaged with the WG
… one item for the BG
… how does it want to interact with the WG work
… a companion question, when we merged with the IDPF, we thought that there would be a small number as full members, and more as BG members, fewer than anticipated
… I spoke to some
… the reaction was "epub3 is done"
… w3c work on web publications is not relevant
… that was 2-3 years ago, they didn't feel the BG was relevant to them
… Audiobooks is nearly done
… and EPUB3 is being revised, maybe there are people out there who want to get involved from the business side
… is there something that can be done to address the BG issue

liisamk: I think that one of the things that I'm seeing
… in the second half of 2020
… is that there's a doubling down on the backlist
… a lot of movement where seeing recovery in trade publishing, focusing on the backlist where we're cleaning it up
… it's being pushed by partners
… some of these books are poorly formatted, not accessible
… it also reminds me of things we wanted to see as features
… we're segmenting work to anticipate the changes in reading systems and EPUB coming out of the WG

Daihei: To elaborate
… I recently found that from the 4 major publishers
… in Japan, according to their results
… certain stores, backlist was outselling new releases
… when I was speaking to him, he wanted to make clear that there was cooperation between the store and publisher to advertise the backlist alongside new releases
… normally new releases are the drivers of revenue
… now because of COVID, people are more inclined to use digital copies, and the backlist titles become important part of revenue
… if all of the publishers in Japan see that, they'll try to spend more money/time on releasing the backlist
… which will contribute to their revenue
… everyone will benefit

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to ask about working on audio books

tzviya: Jeff mentioned we're nearly done with audiobooks, we're stilling looking for audiobooks implementations
… and more support from publishers/retailers
… I would love to see focus on that from the BG

liisamk: We're happy to put it on the agenda
… strong-arming people into implementing, maybe, but we can't push too hard
… we should maybe work on something for the APA or BISG
… a lot of looking at the backlist brings up the question of the commitment a publisher has to books that are no longer for sale
… the partners who are still supporting those books
… would love to see updates
… new formatting, improved content
… whose responsibility is that?
… if the publisher takes it out of print, are they still responsible for the digital
… there's an interesting challenge in the archive for digital products

liisamk: Let's keep this topic open and have a dialogue about it
… is there any updates on accessibility

<tzviya> https://‌www.w3.org/‌TR/‌coga-usable/

tzviya: I'm not sure if people here are familiar with the Cognitive Accessibility Task Force
… Steve Lee asked if he might be able to come here to present on it
… the document focuses on learning disabilities

<adoll> +1 tzviya Legible would love to hear from him

tzviya: they're seeking feedback on that now

<tzviya> https://‌www.w3.org/‌TR/‌accessibility-conformance-challenges/

tzviya: Challenges with the Accessibility Guidelines, controversial, but also worth reviewing
… It's a note but worth reviewing
… I'm not sure about mentions of EPUB, but I am sure they're open to feedback

liisamk: I think it's an important thing to consider
… we were talking about accessibility colours
… if the book is about colour
… and it talks about shades of yellow, how do we make the content accessible and good for the audience
… speaking of presentations, our colleagues from Legible have offered to do a presentation for us in July
… for both meetings
… rather than doing a recording
… a lot of why they're participating, they would like feedback, and it's important for us as a community for us to provide that
… and we're gathering a list of members of the community and W3C we would love to hear from
… we'd like to line up 1/month for a 15 minute presentation and some q&a
… not on marketing, but on the future and ways we can work with other groups
… any thoughts
… We'll be asking Ralph about the privacy implications of recordings and everything

Ralph: That's something that would likely be generally useful for W3C; I can ask our legal counsel for her input
… just to remind you I have started a document for us to brainstorm topics

Daihei: I wanted to put in my ideas, I'll do that
… I was appointed to be a committee member of the ministry of communications for WOT
… they would like to understand what is going on in publishing and media
… publishing and gaming, video, etc
… I talked to them yesterday, there's a lot of interest in the Japanese government of publishing contributing to other formats
… it might be interesting to have a presentation from them on what they are looking at
… there's a number of groups in the W3C with technologies interesting to them, like DID
… we can add the ideas to the paper, but that's an interesting thing happening outside of publishing

liisamk: Any other feedback?
… next meeting will be the Asia/NA timezone
… be well and be safe!

<Ralph> hmm, not all the attendees were identified with present+