Meeting minutes
<atsushi> (still in previous meeting, sorry)
This meeting
Nigel: today, we have IMSC Tests pull requests to iterate through and form a plan of action
… the MPEG liaison response draft
… confirmation of the resolution to adopt patent policy 2020
… and an AOB on telecon frequency
… Any other business?
group: [no other business]
IMSC Tests open pull requests
Nigel: 4 open PRs, some quite old.
… Thanks Pierre for raising this last week. We need a plan of action to resolve them.
… Should we iterate through them?
Pierre: #97 is ready to go I think. I asked Cyril to review but others can too.
Cyril: Yes I will review.
Pierre: The other ones have outstanding comments to address
Nigel: Thanks for reminding us about these - some have been open for a long time.
… I will try to get round to looking at them, and also welcome everyone else to as well.
… Any points to discuss?
Pierre: No.
… just to note that Glenn mentioned they don't look like CR exit criteria tests (see #96) and I
… pointed out that they aren't intended for that. He seems to have accepted that.
Nigel: Yes, I noticed that too, I think we can continue.
… It's the Implementation Report that lists the relevant CR Exit Criteria tests.
Cyril: On the subject of testing, I was wondering if Andreas's examples for ttml2#1211 could be added to a test suite?
Andreas: Yes, I'm fine with that. I think the main case why I contributed is we were missing some examples
… where weak, neutral, ltr and rtl characters are mixed.
… Of course yes I'm fine with it.
Nigel: And Cyril, you noticed you didn't agree with one of the renderings?
Cyril: Yes, but I just responded, I made a mistake, I think they're fine.
… They're very interesting tests and it would be a pity not to have them in the test suite.
Nigel: Who can take the action?
Cyril: I can.
Nigel: Great, thank you.
MPEG Liaison #167
Nigel: [reviews document shared via member-tt reflector link]
group: [discusses content of draft outgoing liaison text]
… [discussion of clipping behaviour defined by ISOBMFF as being related to the document processing context in TTML1/2]
Mike: More clarity on the clipping behaviour would be helpful.
Cyril: Root temporal extent and presentation processing context
Nigel: Any other points to be made?
group: [discusses the time coordinate Ti and their timeline]
Nigel: Thanks, I wanted there to be some draft text captured - I will leave this up and not send it without further review.
Patent Policy 2020
Nigel: The decision review period for this ends now, effectively, and I have seen no objections to our resolution to adopt.
Gary: I have not either.
Cyril: I checked with our legal team and they're fine with it.
Nigel: In that case we can go ahead. Not sure the next step - there's a WBS I think?
Atsushi: [checks]
Nigel: I've found the WBS poll
… I've submitted the form.
Gary: One thing to remember is that some people will have to rejoin the group after re-chartering.
Atsushi: This will go through AC review and then recharter, then everyone will need to rejoin.
Nigel: Thanks for the clarification.
Atsushi: It will be 8th January or later.
Gary: Hopefully there will be a heads-up when it happens.
Atsushi: An automatic notification will go through and I will remind in meetings and by email.
Gary: Thanks.
Nigel: Thank you everyone.
AOB: frequency of TTWG teleconferences
Nigel: Thanks to Pierre for raising this. I'd like to say my thoughts are not fully formed on this yet, and I'm happy to discuss.
… The main point I would make is we have a lot of deliverables slated, and progress has been slow on most of them.
… Work drives the need for discussion!
Pierre: As per my email, I think teleconferences are really useful for controversial or complex issues or as a forcing function.
… Because of the workload today I don't see the need for it every week.
… We should try to do more work asynchronously using electronic tools.
Andreas: I mentioned on the mailing list, our workflow could evolve a bit.
… This combination of mailing list and telephone conferences has been established many years ago.
… We have moved a bit. Especially more chat tools with threading and real time or asynchronous communication offer a great
… way to collaborate efficiently. If we add this to our tools or standards work it could possibly reduce the
… frequency of telephone conferences.
Gary: There is a W3C Slack channel
Pierre: Also email and GitHub too
Andreas: I think the threads on GitHub can explode - I'm not sure if they are the right place.
… I know GitHub is looking to establish a different kind of communication.
… The writing mode discussion was a good example.
… Email is also possibly not ideal, because the whole list gets flooded with issues that are concerning only for a few people.
… I could imagine making Slack more efficient as a tool for communication on certain topics.
… The Slack channel itself won't help, we need to discuss how to use it.
Nigel: I'm concerned about getting the right balance on is the public nature of the decisions.
… Sometimes the record of how we reached a decision is helpful in retrospect, and if we move discussion off easily searched
… or publicly accessible media then we may lose that benefit.
Nigel: But anything that encourages more frequent/lower latency discussion is a good thing.
Cyril: I would agree to the request to meet less often, in general. But in the past months for example, I don't think we had so
… many cases where we could skip the meeting. We skipped some meetings and had one or two short meetings.
… Maybe simply encouraging the chairs to skip a meeting when the agenda is too light?
… Move more towards a meeting on a needs basis rather than a fixed cadence could help.
Pierre: The downside, Cyril, is that you still need to reserve that 1 hour every week at a critical time for international meetings.
… There aren't many timeslots that work globally so there's an opportunity cost,
… We can all talk easily but the question is do we really need to?
Cyril: I was also wondering about the impact on our decision policy if we move to a monthly cadence.
… It means we could take a decision asynchronously and never discuss it. Maybe that's okay.
Andreas: This is exactly what the meetings are for, to confirm decisions.
… To be clear about agreement, the teleconferences are good.
… They need to be prepared in a way that the agreement is clear before or any controversy has been worked out beforehand.
<atsushi> fyi. decision policy from charter
<atsushi> > If no objections are raised on the mailing list by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Working Group.
Gary: Also we can always schedule an off-cadence meeting to discuss if something like Slack or another chat medium ends up not being good enough.
Mike: What's the meeting notice requirement for WGs?
Nigel: I'm not sure but I think it primarily applies to face to face meetings.
Mike: They likely do say something about WG calls, anyway it should be factored in.
Atsushi: Calls need to be announced 2 days before, and f2f 4 or 8 weeks before, I think. (searching for the docs now)
Nigel: Could be in our Charter, I haven't checked.
Atsushi: The Process may enforce something.
Nigel: The Charter does not say anything about it.
Nigel: I'm definitely open to a change. My concerns are:
… 1. visibility of discussions and accessibility to those who do not regularly participate
… 2. potential further loss of momentum
<atsushi> found! https://
Nigel: 3. (ought not to be a concern, but) possibly poorer quality decision making if people don't think things through except by talking about them
Gary: The document Atsushi found is a "should": announcement of meeting 1 week ahead and agenda >= 24 hours ahead.
Meeting requirements in the Process
Gary: It's possible that momentum could be increased by having availability on asynchronous media instead of having to wait until the next call.
<atai> +1
Nigel: Yes, good point.
Gary: Maybe the quick thing here is that we should consider creating a TTWG chat and start using it.
… If we are using that and don't feel the need for meetings then we can reduce the frequency.
Nigel: Sounds like a good way forward to me.
… Dip our toe in the water and see if we enjoy it.
Cyril: So let's say experiment for 2 months with discussing in the chat and cancelling meetings if not needed,
… and if that works then reduce the cadence officially.
Gary: Seems reasonable to me, but this month might be weird - maybe extend through to the end of February.
<atsushi> > Meeting Schedule Teleconferences: Usually once per week. (in charter)
Pierre: My suggestion would be to remove the meeting cadence to 2 weeks, and in between use those electronic means.
Andreas: I agree with Pierre, try biweekly meetings and putting extra ones in if needed.
<atsushi> +1 charter just says 'usually'
Nigel: How about I raise the github issues for meetings through to the end of February and mark those that are slated for potential cancellation,
… every 2 weeks?
Andreas: Sounds good to me
Nigel: And we're talking about using W3C Slack for async chat, right?
Gary: That is my proposal, unless people think others are better.
Cyril: W3C is the place, right.
Link to join the ttwg channel (active for 7 days)
Nigel: Thanks everyone, we're out of time, I'm always happy to look at new ways of working.
… The main thing is to make progress on our deliverables, how we do that is up to us.
… By the way that Slack channel will not show older archived messages as it is on the free plan at the moment.
Meeting close
Nigel: Thanks everyone, we're out of time for today. [adjourns meeting]