Meeting minutes
Responding to feedback about the structure of the Publishing Activity
Tzviya: short agenda; we
wanted to talk about the feedback from Rick Johnson in the EPUB.next
session
… Rick has been around EPUB for a long time
"Coming back into this from being away, we have three groups
with a lot of overlap, sometimes it’s three times as much work
to attend all three."
-- https://
Tzviya: we wanted to talk
about your perspectives and what we can do to alleviate the "triple
workload" feeling that we all feel
… we're also hearing a bit of concern about the ways
our groups are working, so we wanted a brainstorming session
… do you feel this as well? does it hit home for you?
George: yes
Tzviya: I'm seeing other
nods
… some of this is because IDPF and W3C are structured
differently
… we do incubation in Community Groups
… historically there had been Working Groups that
incubated Recommendations that then didn't get traction
… so incubation was moved to CGs
… I think we have some talking to do around our CG
… what are your ideas about how the Business Group and
Working Group are working?
Ralph: CSSWG has a good
history of incubating in a Working Group; this is not true in EPUB
… our lack of success with first PWG is evidence
… so we need multiple groups, we can't
brainstorm/incubate in WGs
… CG and WG can work as closely together as they wish
… some groups are chartered to say that their ideas
come from a named CG
<wendyreid> ... whether that helps the triple workload problem--it may not make much difference
<wendyreid> ... the problem of the vitality of the CG... we need to increase the pipeline between business needs and incubation
<wendyreid> ... the cg has tech people who like to come up with solutions to problems
... whether that needs more direction from
your businesses... I don't know
… 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
… rather than the technical level
Avneesh: I don't think the
workload is huge
… if we combine incubation and WG then incubation
comes only from W3C Members
… whereas the CG gets incubation from anywhere
… finalization happens in the WG
… small companies, self-publish authors, etc. can all
come together in the CG to brainstorm
… there's a logic to keeping the WG separate
… on the CG and BG, I'm assuming W3C is not so much
bothered by the BG fee
… if that is the case then it makes sense to combine
the BG and CG
… it's all driven by the business and technologies
together
… keeping them in separate boxes is making us
dysfunctional
… it would be better to have them together
<tzviya> +1 avneeshsingh
Avneesh: W3C might evaluate whether the fee is costing us the participation of the publishing industry
Wendy: speaking as a WG
chair, I agree with Rick
… the EPUB WG is doing a lot; we have 3 active TFs and
are working to get to CR
… it's a lot of work but it makes sense; we're making
progress on the things we're focusing on
… but I'd like us to have better integration with our
other groups
… sometimes we say "it would be great to have more
than one publisher in this discussion"
… and at other times "we really need to talk with tool
vendors"
… the publishing industry is unique in many ways
… we have a huge number of publishers and tool vendors
who are quite small
… they would need an absolutely excellent reason to
pay the Membership fees
… if we merge the CG and BGs we'd have a larger entity
who would be representative of our community
… where the WG could go with questions
… and propose ideas that are ready to take to full
specification
… I'm tapped-out on meetings and haven't been able to
attend as many BG meetings as I want
… I read the minutes
… and I see valuable discussions that need to happen
… but aren't the way things are divided now
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to talk about CG success
Tzviya: +1 to Avneesh and
Wendy
… the CG has been struggling for lack of participation
… there is great discussion in the BG but that isn't
being channeled into the CG
… if there is something we particularly need to focus
on for EPUB.next that needs to be filed in GitHub
… Daihei had a good conversation in the Asian-time BG
meeting; those ideas need to be filed
… we need action items from the BG flow into the CG
and ultimately escalate to the WG
… we're at a point where we'll need to start writing a
new charter for EPUB.next
… we need to understand what we need to focus on
… we need to make this call a working call
Liisa: I have had subsequent
conversation with Rick
… I reached out to talk with him about how he'd like
to engage
… 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
… he noted that piracy is a big issue in the market he
deals with
… I responded that we've talked about that a few times
in the BG and there's a lot of sensibility about that topic
… he may bring that to a future community meeting
… there are business people who know the business
issues but don't know how to take the next steps to move it forward
… one way is to put someone in the CG who will take
the issue forward
… e.g. in FXL, I haven't been able to find a resource
myself
… nor have I found a way to ask the CG if there's
someone else who can it forward
Dave: we have tremendous
resource problems
… I find it quite telling that the largest trade
publisher in the world can't provide resources to work on a
technical issue
… but our time scales are very different from those of
browsers
… the browser vendors have an alignment of their
technical resources with the engineering schools
… we cannot do anything like that
… maybe the most recent feature that was added to EPUB
was FXL in 2012
… almost all of the big reading systems have a very
small footprint in standards
… also, I think we're conflating standards
organizations and trade associations
… that's one feature of IDPF that was lost in the
transition
… we have some problems that can't be solved within
this organizational context
<tzviya> +1 to dauwhe
Bill: from the recruiting
perspective I have a couple of things that seem obvious but turn out
to not be true ...
… I often stress to send different people to different
parts of the work
… you get the most from Membership if you send
different people to the different groups
… that seems an obvious pitch but the reality is that
people still keep sending just one person
… a small minority have sent a couple of people
… it's extremely useful from a recruiting pov to have
the 3 groups; the cost of WG participation is a barrier
… 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
… all my my recruits are either Members or working in
the CG
… I do not feel the BG helps my ability to recruit
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
… we saw this 2.5 years ago when VitalSource started
to display a11y metadata and was displaying the raw Schema.org data
… that led to a very successful document that was just
published in September
… I'm doing 4 presentations this week: 2 for NISO and
2 for Accessing Higher Ground
… it would be great if the wider community knew of and
could benefit from that marketing we are doing
… but we don't communicate that within W3C; marketing
gets much less exposure than it could get
… I like the idea of the BG creating task forces
Tzviya: that's how we've been trying to structure the CG and we've been having trouble getting TF leaders
Wendy: thanks, Bill, for the
recruiting perspective
… I think Lars made an excellent point about the
marketing of EPUB
… I don't understand marketing, but I did a twitter
thread about my feelings on backwards compatibility
… I got a few responses, one of the most interesting
was from someone who expressed frustration that interop is the sole
problem with EPUB
… why add new features if people aren't supporting the
existing features
… I've heard this before
… people chime in that EPUB 3 isn't being supported
… I want to know who; get names
… we're working on smoothing out interop issues
… we have some segments of the industry who are not
part of our community and not supporting things for reasons we don't
know
… to get to them we have to find them
… I'm not sure how we find them
… 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
… because we want to foster a better ecosystem
… everyone is already overextended
… we do have schools with eager students who would
love to get involved in publishing
<avneeshsingh> I wonder if we need to think the future based on EPUB 3 only?
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to talk about networking missing for all of us in pandemic
Tzviya: on networking and
next steps
… we're all feeling the lack of networking
opportunities during the pandemic
… the AB has been recognizing this
… Dave's point about W3C being a very different
organization from IDPF is valid
… W3C would not have Digital Books 201x
… it's not something W3C usually does
… maybe we have more Community Days such as we had at
TPAC
… we can brainstorm on how to do that in the future
… I'm getting the feeling that the current structure
is not working well
… it's not that one group needs to go; it's something
about the structure
… most of the current BG participants are Members
… what's our ideal structure? do we want everyone to
join the CG or WG?
… do we want to take all ideas from the BG and give
them to the CG chairs?
Bill: it isn't about the
organizational structure, but the thing that most struck me about the
EPUB.next meeting was something Wendy said
… the fact that EPUB is complicated, or is viewed as
complicated; it has a lot of moving parts
… the browsers have other things they want to work on
… maybe what we should look at for EPUB.next is make
it simpler
… make it things that browsers do already
Daihei: from the PoV of an
Evangelist recruiting Members especially in Japan, though from a
global perspective,
… global needs of digital publishing
… Members can participate in PBG; all they need to do
is sign up
… and everybody can join the CG
… 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
… and the companies who have a stake in W3C to advance
the world of business and web technologies
… we need to discuss more about the business aspects
as well as what is next for digital publishing
… EPUB 3 becomes such a defacto standard world wide
… and due to COVID, access to on-line has increased
… it's great that we see growth in publishing business
around the world, as well as in audiobooks
… the ecosystem needs to be maintained and new
developments can be taken advantage of all around the world
… digital media is evolving
… business needs need to be discussed in the BG
… incubation in the CG has not been exercised enough
to talk about what's happening all around the web
… I don't think it's a logical idea to merge the BG
and CG
… as a co-chair, I point out that we'll have more
participation from all around the world
… not only from the technical interests but also from
the publishing business side to talk about needs
… if it's necessary, then something beyond EPUB should
be discussed and incubated
… if the CG is not looking at going beyond EPUB maybe
we need a new TF
… e.g. to talk about the merging of visual and
publishing
… in Japan, NFT is happening by utilizing digital
content
… this is happening outside of EPUB
… we need to expand the BG
… in terms of incubating the next stage of digital
publishing, this could be done outside of Publishing@W3C
… in Japan people are not only interested in just
maintaining EPUB
… e.g. Shogakukan joined as a Member and their
interest is not only in EPUB but in W3C as a whole
… this is a characteristic of what some of the
publishers are thinking, particularly in Japan
<tzviya> https://
Zheng: we started from
having good ideas from many places
… we start task forces, we try implementation, we find
issues, we change the spec, we keep repeating
… that is ideal and what I had in mind when we started
… the reality is that in CG meetings Avneesh is active
and reports status of the A11y TF work
… but we don't hear from the other two TFs to join the
CG meeting
… I'm trying to figure out the gap there
… with Mateus and others to see how to move on
… I joined some BG meetings and hear some wonderful
ideas there
… I hear ideas from other groups as well and want to
figure out how to make bridges
… this is something we can keep working on
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
… how do people feel about that?
… how do we do that with all of the possibilities of
things that may evolve across all of publishing
… 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
Bill: I'm not suggesting a
replacement of EPUB; I'm thinking of both/and
… EPUB is widely embedded in the trade book space and
anything that is not backwards compatible will meet great resistance
… maybe also work in parallel e,g, "Web Publications"
… the biggest draw for our work is a11y
… and maybe privacy and identifiers
… so Membership is attractive because it provides the
org access to all the work
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to ask what issues to open for incubation in CG
<tzviya> https://
Tzviya: it's clear that the
CG has poorly attended meetings
… let's encourage the BG and WG participants to work
closely with the CG; we need to funnel ideas to the CG
… put your wish list in the CG
… things sitting in minutes of the BG or WG aren't
going to go anywhere
… in this SC we can talk about how to triage ideas
… Daihei can predict things in the Japan industry
… we all know we need to work on a better textbook
model and we need to work together on that
Daihei: I propose that we
have email discussion rather than GitHub
… we ought to discuss the publishing activity and
extend the discussion of what is the next stage
… 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
… we can exchange thoughts by email
… at the next SC meeting we can try to come to some
consensus
Tzviya: we can include our
existing SC list
… and if you want to loop in the other groups, add
them
Ivan: one aspect of
incubation we shouldn't forget:
… we also need to incubate implementation work
… we are concentrating on specification but we also
need to incubate implementation
… 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
… the Publishing Manifest gives you the basis for a
reading system
… get someone who knows how to handle web packaging,
security, and all the hairy things on the Web
… incubation only on specification is not enough
<wendyreid> +10000000
<tzviya> +1
<liisamk> +1
<Ralph> +1 to Ivan
Avneesh: if we want separate
groups then we need strong overlap; maybe joint calls
… 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
… that would be a way for the BG to empower the CG
Zheng: on the Publishing Manifest, we do have a document on EPUB converted to Manifest; we could publish that and see how people react
Tzviya: good food for
thought here
… I like Avneesh' suggestion to have joint meetings
… we can make collaboration points a standing topic
for this meeting
[adjourned]