15:58:41 RRSAgent has joined #pbgsc 15:58:41 logging to https://www.w3.org/2021/11/12-pbgsc-irc 15:58:44 RRSAgent, make logs Public 15:58:46 Meeting: Publishing Steering Committee 15:59:00 present: Daihei, George, Ivan, Ralph, Bill 15:59:05 George has joined #pbgsc 15:59:05 present+ george, daihei, ivan, ralph 15:59:51 Bill_Kasdorf has joined #pbgsc 16:00:11 present+ 16:00:34 present+ 16:00:46 present+ 16:00:56 present+ 16:01:27 avneeshsingh has joined #pbgsc 16:01:51 present+ 16:02:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:02:46 liisamk has joined #pbgsc 16:02:55 scribe+ 16:02:57 chair: Tzviya 16:03:00 present+ 16:03:18 agenda: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-publishing-sc/2021Nov/0000.html 16:03:32 topic: Responding to feedback about the structure of the Publishing Activity 16:03:52 Tzviya: short agenda; we wanted to talk about the feedback from Rick Johnson in the EPUB.next session 16:04:04 ... Rick has been around EPUB for a long time 16:04:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:04:11 "Coming back into this from being away, we have three groups 16:04:11 with a lot of overlap, sometimes it’s three times as much work 16:04:11 to attend all three." 16:04:12 -- https://www.w3.org/2021/10/27-epub.html 16:04:36 Tzviya: we wanted to talk about your perspectives and what we can do to alleviate the "triple workload" feeling that we all feel 16:04:53 ... we're also hearing a bit of concern about the ways our groups are working, so we wanted a brainstorming session 16:05:06 ... do you feel this as well? does it hit home for you? 16:05:11 George: yes 16:05:18 Tzviya: I'm seeing other nods 16:05:30 ... some of this is because IDPF and W3C are structured differently 16:05:37 ... we do incubation in Community Groups 16:05:56 present+ 16:06:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:06:32 ... historically there had been Working Groups that incubated Recommendations that then didn't get traction 16:06:38 ... so incubation was moved to CGs 16:06:54 ... I think we have some talking to do around our CG 16:07:12 q+ 16:07:19 ... what are your ideas about how the Business Group and Working Group are working? 16:07:22 ack Ralph 16:08:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:08:59 Ralph: CSSWG has a good history of incubating in the group; this is not true in epub 16:09:02 scribe+ dauwhe 16:09:17 q+ 16:09:26 ... our lack of success with first PWG is evidence 16:09:42 ... so we need multiple groups, we can't brainstorm/incubate in WG 16:09:58 q+ 16:10:02 ... CG and WG can work as closely together as they wish 16:10:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:10:15 ... some groups are chartered to say that their ideas come from a named CG 16:10:38 q+ to talk about CG success 16:10:44 George has joined #pbgsc 16:11:52 ... whether that helps the triple workload problem--it may not make much difference 16:11:52 ... the problem of the vitality of the CG... we need to increase the pipeline between business needs and incubation 16:11:52 ... the cg has tech people who like to come up with solutions to problems 16:11:58 scribe+ wendyreid 16:12:06 ... whether that needs more direction from your businesses... I don't know 16:12:21 ... the BG concept came from a perspective that there would be different individuals who would be interested in a conversation at the business needs level 16:12:31 ... rather than the technical level 16:12:35 q+ 16:12:39 ack av 16:12:59 Avneesh: I don't think the workload is huge 16:13:26 ... if we combine incubation and WG then incubation comes onlly from W3C Members 16:13:35 ... whereas the CG gets incubation from anywhere 16:13:42 ... finalization happens in the WG 16:14:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:14:06 ... small companies, self-publish authors, etc. can all come together in the CG to brainstorm 16:14:12 ... there's a logic to keeping the WG separate 16:14:25 ... on the CG and BG, I'm assuming W3C is not so much bothered by the BG fee 16:14:40 ... if that is the case then it makes sense to combine the BG and CG 16:14:41 George has joined #pbgsc 16:14:53 ... it's all driven by the business and technologies together 16:15:04 ... keeping them in separate boxes is making us disfunctional 16:15:04 George has joined #pbgsc 16:15:13 ... it would be better to have them together 16:15:13 q- 16:15:35 ack wendyreid 16:15:47 +1 avneeshsingh 16:15:52 ... W3C might evaluate whether the fee is costing us the participation of the publishing industry 16:16:05 Wendy: speaking as a WG chair, I agree with Rick 16:16:17 ... the EPUB WG is doing a lot; we have 3 active TFs and are working to get to CR 16:16:34 ... it's a lot of work but it makes sense; we're making progress on the things we're focusing on 16:16:45 ... but I'd like us to have better integration with our other groups 16:16:49 q+ 16:17:00 ... sometimes we say "it would be great to have more than one publisher in this discussion" 16:17:10 ... and at other times "we really need to talk with tool vendors" 16:17:17 present+ Zheng_Xu 16:17:19 ... the publishing industry is unique in many ways 16:17:33 ... we have a huge number of publishers and tool vendors who are quite small 16:17:47 ... they would need an absolutely excellent reason to pay the Membership fees 16:18:04 ... if we merge the CG and BGs we'd have a larger entity who would be representative of our community 16:18:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:18:13 ... where the WG could go with questions 16:18:25 q+ 16:18:27 ... and propose ideas that are ready to take to full specification 16:18:49 ... I'm tapped-out on meetings and haven't been able to attend as many BG meetings as I want 16:19:00 ... I read the minutes 16:19:05 q+ 16:19:11 ... and I see valuable discussions that need to happen 16:19:14 ack me 16:19:14 tzviya, you wanted to talk about CG success 16:19:18 ... but aren't the way things are divided now 16:19:26 Tzviya: +1 to Avneesh and Wendy 16:19:33 ... the CG has been struggling for lack of participation 16:19:50 ... there is great discussion in the BG but that isn't being channeled into the CG 16:20:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:20:21 ... if there is something we particularly need to focus on for EPUB.next that needs to be filed in GitHub 16:20:42 ... Daihei had a good conversation in the Asian-time BG meeting; those ideas need to be filed 16:21:01 ... we need action items from the BG flow into the CG and ultimately escalate to the WG 16:21:19 ... we're at a point where we'll need to start writing a new charter for EPUB.next 16:21:22 q+ 16:21:25 ... we need to understand what we need to focus on 16:21:28 ack liisamk 16:21:32 ... we need to make this call a working call 16:21:44 Liisa: I have had subsequent conversation with Rick 16:21:57 ... I reached out to tlk with him about how he'd like to engage 16:22:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:22:33 ... one suggestion he gave me is that he feels that we, as a community withing W3C, are missing a less-formal networking way to engage in business conversations 16:22:47 ... he noted that piracy is a big issue in the market he deals with 16:23:07 ... I responded that we've talked about that a few times in the BG and there's a lot of sensitiity about that topic 16:23:20 ... he may bring that to a future community meeting 16:23:53 ... there are business people who know the business issues but don't know how to take the next steps to move it forward 16:24:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:24:09 ... one way is to put someone in the CG who will take the issue forward 16:24:24 ... e.g. in FXL, I haven't been able to find a resource myself 16:24:46 George has joined #pbgsc 16:24:46 ... nor have I found a way to ask the CG if there's someone else who can it forward 16:24:49 q? 16:24:54 ack dauwhe 16:25:08 Dave: we have tremendous resource problems 16:25:20 George has joined #pbgsc 16:25:31 ... I find it quite telling that the largest trade publisher in the world can't provide resources to work on a technical issue 16:25:44 ... but our time scales are very different from those of browsers 16:25:54 George has joined #pbgsc 16:26:00 ... the browser vendors have an aligment of their techical resources with the engineering schools 16:26:05 ... we cannot do anything like that 16:26:20 ... maybe the most recent feature that was added to EPUB was FXL in 2012 16:26:44 ... almost all of the big reading systems have a very small footprint in standards 16:26:57 ... also, I think we're conflating standards organizations and trade associations 16:27:05 q+ to talk about networking missing for all of us in pandemic 16:27:06 ... that's one feature of IDPF that was lost in the transition 16:27:20 +1 to dauwhe 16:27:35 ack Bill_Kasdorf 16:27:37 ... we have some problems that can't be solved within this organizational context 16:28:02 Bill: from the recruiting perspective I have a couple of things that seem obvious but turn out to not be true ... 16:28:17 ... I often stress to send different people to different parts of the work 16:28:31 ... you get the most from Membership if you send different people to the different groups 16:28:46 ... that seems an obvious pitch but the reality is that people still keep sending just one person 16:28:54 ... a small minority have sent a couple of people 16:29:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:29:14 ... it's extremely useful from a recruiting pov to have the 3 groups; the cost of WG participation is a barrier 16:29:47 ... so the BG sounds like a logical alternative, but in fact I've not been successful in getting any org to join for a BG 16:30:05 ... all my my recruits are either Members or working in the CG 16:30:07 ack ge 16:30:13 ... I do not feel the BG helps my ability to recruit 16:30:48 George: I like Liisa's suggestion that the BG charter a TF with a narrow objective, one leader, who have their own meetings and bring something back to the BG 16:31:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:31:19 ... we saw this 2.5 years ago when Vitalsource started to display a11y metadata and was displaying the raw Schema.org data 16:31:31 ... that led to a very successful document that was just published in September 16:31:45 ... I'm doing 4 presentations this week: 2 for NISO and 2 for Accessing Higher Ground 16:32:04 ... it would be great if the wider community knew of and could benefit from that marketing we are doing 16:32:23 ... but we don't communicate that within W3C; marketing gets much less exposure than it could get 16:32:31 ... I like the idea of the BG creating task forces 16:32:40 q? 16:32:43 ack we 16:32:47 Tzviya: that's how we've been trying to structure the CG and we've been having trouble getting TF leaders 16:32:59 Wendy: thanks, Bill, for the recruiting perspective 16:33:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:33:22 ... I think Lars made an excellent point about the marketing of EPUB 16:33:38 ... I don't understand marketing, but I did a twitter thread about my feelings on backwards compatibility 16:33:59 ... I got a few responses, one of the most interesting was from someone who expressed frustration that interop is the sole problem with EPUB 16:34:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:34:07 q+ 16:34:11 ... why add new features if people aren't supporting the existing features 16:34:26 ... I've heard this before 16:34:47 ... people chime in that EPUB 3 isn't being supported 16:34:52 ... I want to know who; get names 16:35:04 ... we're working on smoothing out interop issues 16:35:28 ... we have some segments of the industry who are not part of our community and not supporting things for reasons we don't know 16:35:35 ... to get to them we have to find them 16:35:39 ... I'm not sure how we find them 16:36:01 .. but we need to do better marketing to get the word out that we are incredibly interested in people's problems, ideas, and new ideas 16:36:02 I wonder if we need to think the future based on EPUB 3 only? 16:36:14 ... because we want to foster a better ecosystem 16:36:20 ... everyone is already overextended 16:36:57 ... we do have schools with eager students who would love to get involved in publishing 16:37:00 ack me 16:37:00 tzviya, you wanted to talk about networking missing for all of us in pandemic 16:37:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:37:14 Tzviya: on networking and next steps 16:37:30 ... we're all feeling the lack of networking opportunities during the pandemic 16:37:40 ... the AB has been recognizing this 16:37:54 ... Dave's point about W3C being a very different organization from IDPF is valid 16:38:05 ... W3C would not have Digital Books 201x 16:38:11 ... it's not something W3C usually does 16:38:31 ... maybe we have more Community Days such as we had at TPAC 16:38:44 ... we can brainstorm on how to do that in the future 16:38:55 ... I'm getting the feeling that the current structure is not working well 16:39:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:39:06 ... it's not that one group needs to go; it's something about the structure 16:39:15 zheng_xu has joined #pbgsc 16:39:22 q+ 16:39:31 ... most of the current BG participants are Members 16:39:46 ... what's our ideal structure? do we want everyone to join the CG or WG? 16:40:01 ... do we want to take all ideas from the BG and give them to the CG chairs? 16:40:01 ack Bill_Kasdorf 16:40:17 q 16:40:23 q+ zheng_xu 16:40:32 Bill: it isn't about the organizational structure, but the thing that most struck me abou the EPUB.next meeting was something Wendy said 16:40:44 ... the fact that EPUB is complicated, or is viewed as complicated; it has a lot of moving parts 16:40:53 ... the browsers have other things they want to work on 16:41:03 ... maybe what we should look at for EPUB.next is make it simpler 16:41:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:41:11 ... make it things that browsers do already 16:41:20 ack dai 16:41:56 Daihei: from the PoV of an Evangelist recruiting Members especially in Japan, though from a global perspective, 16:42:03 ... global needs of digital publishing 16:42:38 ... Members can participate in PBG; all they need to do is sign up 16:42:45 ... and everybody can join the CG 16:43:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:43:31 ... in Japan, Members who want to join in W3C, I've been telling people they have to think about all that is happening around web technologies 16:43:44 ... and the companies who have a stake in W3C to advance the world of business and web technologies 16:43:48 q+ 16:44:00 ... we need to discuss more about the business aspects as well as what is next for digital publishing 16:44:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:44:11 ... EPUB 3 becomes such a defacto standard world wide 16:44:26 ... and due to COVID, access to on-line has increased 16:44:46 ... it's great that we see growth in publishing business around the world, as well as in audiobooks 16:44:58 q+ 16:45:14 ... the ecosyste needs to be maintained and new developments can be taken advantage of all around the world 16:45:24 ... digital media is evolving 16:45:39 ... business needs need to be discussed in the BG 16:45:59 ... @@ has not been exercised enough to talk about what's happening all around the web 16:46:10 ... I don't think it's a logical idea to merge the BG and CG 16:46:18 s/@@/incubation in the CG 16:46:25 ... as a co-chair, I point out that we'll have more participation from all around the world 16:46:43 ... not only from the technical interests but also from the publishing business side to talk about needs 16:46:59 ... if it's necessary, then something beyond EPUB should be discussed and incubated 16:47:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:47:21 ... if the CG is not looking at going beyond EPUB maybe we need a new TF 16:47:39 ... e.g. to talk about the merging of visual and publishing 16:47:43 George has joined #pbgsc 16:47:52 ... in Japan, NFT is happening by utilizing digital content 16:47:53 q+ to ask what issues to open for incubation in CG 16:47:57 ... this is happenign outside of EPUB 16:48:04 s/ign/ing 16:48:10 ... we need to expand the BG 16:48:39 ... in terms of incubating the next stage of digital publishing, this could be done outside of Publishing@W3C 16:48:49 ... in Japan people are not only interested in just maintaining EPUB 16:49:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:49:17 ... e.g. Shogakukan joined as a Member and their interest is not only in EPUB but in W3C as a whole 16:49:37 ack zh 16:49:39 ... this is a characteristic of what some of the publishers are thinking, particularly in Japan 16:49:41 George has joined #pbgsc 16:50:05 https://github.com/w3c/publishingcg/issues 16:50:18 Zheng: we started from having good ideas from many places 16:50:41 ... we start task forces, we try implelmentation, we find issues, we change the spec, we keep repeating 16:50:49 ... that is ideal and what I had in mind when we started 16:51:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:51:10 ... the reality is that in CG meetings Avneesh is active and reports status of the A11y TF work 16:51:20 ... but we don't hear from the other two TFs to join the CG meeting 16:51:27 ... I'm trying to figure out the gap there 16:51:44 ... with Mateus and others to see how to move on 16:51:56 ... I joined some BG meetings and hear some wonderful ideas there 16:52:13 ... I hear ideas from other groups as well and want to figure out how to make bridges 16:52:22 ack liisamk 16:52:25 ... this is something we can keep working on 16:53:00 Liisa: another interesting comment from the EPUB.next meeting: someone said maybe we should just lean on looking at what's happening out there in the wild and standardizing it 16:53:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:53:06 ... how do people feel about that? 16:53:30 ... how do we do that with all of the possibilities of things that may evolve across all of publishing 16:54:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:54:06 ... what Rick is seeing is that the education space has evolved very quickly in the past few years and people are trying to figure out how to deploy things that work everywhere 16:54:11 ack Bill_Kasdorf 16:54:36 Bill: I'm not suggesting a replacment of EPUB; I'm thinking of both/and 16:54:41 q+ 16:54:59 ... EPUB is widely embedded in the trade book space and anything that is not backwards compatible will meet great resistance 16:55:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:55:43 .. maybe also work in parallel e,g, "Web Publications" 16:55:58 ... the biggest draw for our work is a11y 16:56:08 ... and maybe privacy and identifiers 16:56:14 q+ 16:56:17 ack me 16:56:17 tzviya, you wanted to ask what issues to open for incubation in CG 16:56:28 ... so Membership is attractive because it provides the org access to all the work 16:56:52 https://github.com/w3c/publishingcg/issues 16:56:54 Tzviya: it's clear that the CG has poorly attended meetings 16:57:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:57:12 q+ 16:57:13 ... let's encourage the BG and WG participants to work closely with the CG; we need to funnel ideas to the CG 16:57:21 ... put your wish list in the CG 16:57:59 ... things sitting in minutes of the BG or WG aren't going to go anywhere 16:58:11 ... in this SC we can talk about how to triage ideas 16:58:25 ... Daihei can predict things in the Japan industry 16:58:46 ... we all know we need to work on a better textbook model and we need to work together on that 16:58:54 ack Daihei_ 16:59:05 George has joined #pbgsc 16:59:14 Daihei: I propose that we have email discussion rather than GitHub 16:59:31 ... we ought to discuss the publishing activity and extend the discussion of what is the next stage 16:59:55 ... I'd like to start listing what is really being requested from Japan and why they want to be in W3C and what their requirements are 17:00:04 ... we can exchange thoughts by email 17:00:21 ... at the next SC meeting we can try to come to some consensus 17:00:29 Tzviya: we can include our existing SC list 17:00:36 ack iv 17:00:39 ... and if you want to loop in the other groups, add them 17:00:47 Ivan: one aspect of incubation we shouldn't forget: 17:00:53 ... we also need to incubate implementation work 17:01:05 George has joined #pbgsc 17:01:07 ... we are concentrating on specification but we also need to incubate implemetnation 17:01:25 +10000000 17:01:32 ... my feeling is that what we did in the Publishing WG, namely the Manifest, is that what is needed is experimental implementations not further specification 17:01:33 +1 17:01:43 ... the Publishing Manifest gives you the basis for a reading system 17:01:51 +1 17:02:00 ... get someone who knows how to handle web packaging, security, and all the hairy things on the Web 17:02:08 q+ 17:02:10 .. incubation only on specification is not enough 17:02:13 ack avneeshsingh 17:02:19 +1 to Ivan 17:02:36 Avneesh: if we want separate groups then we need strong overlap; maybe joint calls 17:03:05 George has joined #pbgsc 17:03:10 ... if there is a feature, or if someone wants to incubate an implementation, why don't the BG people discuss something they'd like to explore further and allocate resources to the CG 17:03:16 q- 17:03:18 ... that would be a way for the BG to empower the CG 17:03:19 ack Zakim 17:03:40 George has joined #pbgsc 17:03:51 Zheng: on the Publishing Manifest, we do have a document on EPUB converted to Manifest; we could publish that and see how people react 17:03:57 Tzviya: good food for thought here 17:04:07 ... I like Avneesh' suggest to have joint meetings 17:04:16 George has joined #pbgsc 17:04:22 ... we can make collaboration points a standing topic for this meeting 17:04:30 [adjourned] 17:04:36 zakim, end meeting 17:04:36 As of this point the attendees have been Daihei, George, Ivan, Ralph, Bill, shiestyle, tzviya, Bill_Kasdorf, dauwhe, avneeshsingh, liisamk, wendyreid, Zheng_Xu 17:04:39 RRSAgent, please draft minutes v2 17:04:39 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2021/11/12-pbgsc-minutes.html Zakim 17:04:41 I am happy to have been of service, Ralph; please remember to excuse RRSAgent. Goodbye 17:04:45 Zakim has left #pbgsc 17:12:19 shiestyle has joined #pbgsc 17:19:16 rrsagent, bye 17:19:16 I see no action items