Meeting minutes
Joint meeting BG + CG
Tzviya: what should we do to
make this successful?
… what might the BG bring to the CG to make successful
Task Forces?
Liisa: glad we're talking
about a joint meeting, which we're open to
… and how the BG and CG cna work better to hand things
off
… one thing we haven't resolved is how the BG would
find people to lead TFs
… we've been having a lot of conversations with folks
across our community on what they think is next and what are the
struggles
… people think that once we get to EPUB 3.3 things are
pretty stable; we don't need more format
… what we need is how to solve problems in a11y space
… and FXL+reflow testing
… people are interested in more brainstorming
… the other thing that maybe ties in with work already
in the CG is suggestions around talking about business cases there
could be for other kinds of uses for annotations
… idea generation
Mateus: I agree with Liisa;
there are opportunities around the idea space on things we could work
on
… and that we don't have a solution for how these will
be explored; who will take the lead
… that's been the problem; we all have things we'd
like to work on but there's been no one, or just one, person
available to work on them
… the people who engage are the same people every time
… we haven't had a meeting yet; we don't have anything
for our agenda other than updates
… Avneesh gives updates on a11y
… Documentation currently doesn't have a leader,
though Dan may take it up
… what would make the situation better is to prove
that we as a collective can do the work
… right now there are a small number of people who do
the work
… it's a good idea to have a joint meeting but how do
we get past the roadblock to show we can make progress
BillK: we should talk about
the future of publishing on the web, not "EPUB next"
… otherwise we'll bump into the backwards
compatibility problem
… a future state I'd like to see is keep EPUB 3.3, if
it needs to be tweaked do 3.n
… and focus on Publication Manifest and see where we
can get with that
Tzviya: many comments
… we have a Catch-22
… people aren't sure how to engage if the group isn't
meeting
… and the notion that they'll have to chair a TF is
daunting to someone who hasn't engaged in the past
… Mateus and Zheng are both incredibly busy
… maybe a 3rd co-chair, if only to help with
administration, is needed
… call it "issue manager" maybe to make it less
scary-sounding
… start each CG meeting with issue triage
… don't escalate unless there's someone to take it on
… that's a lower barrier
… explore how people are using Manifest in the real
world now; that's a great thing for the CG to work on
… the education market has departed from EPUB in some
respects
… for a joint meeting we need a date and a chair
… Wolfgang has expressed interest in the past; we
could reach out to him
Daihei: let's separate the
CG and BG discussion from EPUB next
… the BG co-chairs are happy to collaborate with the
chairs of any other groups
… from the start of the CG we have wanted to
collaborate
… probably due to the fact that we've been so busy,
we've not had as much communication
… practically speaking, if the co-chairs of both
groups can talk more we can find some common ground between business
matters and tech matters that require incubation
… it's my bad; I should have communicated with Mateus
and Zheng more
… we can do this on line
… by doing it more we can find common ground
… when I hear voices from Japan, especially W3C
Members, they are facing a number of issues such as adapting
publications to be compliant with a11y requirements
… and dealing with cyberattacks
… we could try more communication between the
co-chairs
… at least for a couple of months
… find opportunities and provide feedback to the SC
… in the meantime, some of the concerns I've heard
from the Japan publishing community is that it is a concern for them
if Publishing@W3C only leans toward discussion of technological
issues and not business needs
… they might leave W3C
… on EPUB next we have to give consideration on how to
resolve this issue
… in terms of BG and CG collaborations, we should let
the co-chairs discuss and come back to the SC
Tzviya: we had reduced SC
meeting to once a month and keep the 4th Friday available; if we think
that we need to collaborate more we can meet twice a month
… one thing I've heard is that there's a bit of
concern about GitHub
… W3C uses GitHub, the CG uses GitHub
… there's also an email list
… if we're assuming a discomfort with GitHub we should
discuss why
… let's step away from fear of GitHub and just say
that GitHub will be our mode of interaction with email as backup
… let's set up a joint meeting as a brainstorming
session
… if chairing a TF is too high a bar we can have a
triage session to assign someone
Avneesh: the approach is
fine
… we always need to create momentum in any group
before people will take more responsibility
… we may create momentum with some initial calls to
get ideas for driving
… when I start a new group I try to have calls every
two weeks to get people talking and becoming familiar with each
other
… after some calls we start filtering out which are
the ideas that people will lead
… I suggest more calls to build momentum
Mateus: I agree with that
approach
… the dull CG agendas have driven some people away
… part of that is that we did not have issues to
discuss
… I worry a little about pushing away folk who just
don't have time
… for myself, it's not possible to host a call every
other week
… that's also the case for Zheng
… if we can get a third person to help, that would be
wonderful
… one way the BG can help is with business analysis;
document things on behalf of someone who isn't comfortable
presenting to the CG themself
… making the presenter become the owner isn't
necessarily the best way to get things going
<tzviya> +1 to BG as BA
Daihei: I'm thinking about
the accountability of the co-chairs
… when it comes to business issues that need
experimentation from the point of view of technical issues, the
co-chairs can talk
… in the SC we can better manage how we operate each
group
… I suggest that we establish discussions among the CG
and BG co-chairs and come back here to validate that
… and the co-chairs can take responsibility for
discussing how each group can collaborate
Liisa: good to consider the
CG works in GitHub
… the BG can help translate for people who are not
comfortable there
… on business analysis, how far do we need to take it?
… we had conversations in the summer on fixed + reflow
… I have someone who built samples to test on reading
systems
… at what point can we get CG help with that?
Mateus: we need to get it to
a point where it's documented enough to have a conversation
… if people have ideas but aren't comfortable bringing
the forward the BG can be the representative voice
… by analysis I mean documenting the idea, documenting
the use cases, maybe proxying to GitHub
… then the CG can have a conversation in its tracker
… we'll advertise it on our agenda and those who
brought the idea can feel comfortable joining
… without making them feel they have to become the
owner
… it doesn't have to be a super-detailed document; it
can be as simple as an issue in GitHub
Tzviya: for the fixed + reflow example, the only thing that's missing is an issue in GitHub
Liisa: that's what I've been
trying to figure out; how to get this to the CG without having to find
a person to own it
… I have a half-dozen examples of a11y issues that
need this kind of discussion
… if there's an interesting agenda and a regular
schedule maybe we can get people participating
Tzviya: we have a plan, and we'll work on getting a third CG chair
Mateus: we'll have a more
interesting agenda if we have the ideas documented and ready for
discussion
… whether it requires Liisa to present or not is not
clear; maybe people who are passionate about the issue will talk and
Liisa wouldn't need to
Liisa: we're all busy
… we know the BG could do better at getting agendas
together and minutes published
… we've been talking about getting some administrative
support\
… we need to grow the community to get others to pitch
in
Daihei: I can suggest that if someone from Japan wants to participate we might suggest them as a 3rd co-chair
Tzviya: please contact me off-line so we can get to the rest of the agenda
Recommendations from BG about what happens after EPUB 3.3
Tzviya: chartering a W3C WG
takes some time
… EPUB WG will finish in about a year
… there will likely be an EPUB 3.3 maintenance WG
… it will meet infrequently, e.g. to address typos
… if we don't charter another WG we might lose
participation
… it will be better if we have continuity without a
gap
… it's not likely that we'll need an EPUB 3.4 soon
after 3.3
… or that we'll need an EPUB 4
… what are your thoughts about how to do some
exploration?
Liisa: we're planning for
another conference day on January 25
… we're hoping to cover 3 things:
… an education discussion to engage people to talk
about what's happening in that space
… and we're thinking it would be good to get folk
talking about the comic space in Europe
… EDRLab is building a proof of concept
… we've also heard that there needs to be more
collaboration and brainstorming; that could be a good topic for
brainstorming
… with some breakout groups
… we're thinking of how to try that in January
Tzviya: sounds great
… personally, I'd need to calendar that now
Liisa: the BG was about to do that
Tzviya: Avneesh, Ralph, and I have a conflicting meeting on Jan 25
Liisa: would one week later
be better?
… [1 Feb]
Tzviya: Chinese New Year is one week later
BillK: I'm working with an
educational publisher who has a huge amount of completely
web-conformant that they have to trim down to get into EPUB
… so I'm particularly interested in talking about web
publishing
Ivan: we have to have some
more general goal in mind
… I'm worried that we get into lots of details about
comics or educational material without knowing where it would go
… would we have a Publishing WG who works on other
uses for Manifest?
Tzviya: what I have observed
in education is that EPUB still has value because people still want
off-line
… but working in the browser, with Javascript and all,
is where people are going
… doe we want to do different flavors of Manifest or
do we want a lot of options?
… like scholarly where only the metadata is required
and everything else is optional
Ivan: we are getting back to
some of the discussion we had in the Publishing WG
… maybe after several years that's OK
… the biggest problem we had with Manifest was that we
didn't have implementation experience
… we don't know if Manifest gives us a way to have a
browser-based reading system
… and what technologies in the browser world we should
take advantage of
… this sort of incubation should happen in the CG
… Manifest by itself doesn't solve everything; we have
to go beyond that
Liisa: in the January
meeting, let's not present solutions; let's hear what happened in the
past few years and what people on the ground have been kludging
because there aren't standards
… without knowing what people have been doing we don't
know how to help
Ivan: yes, and we should have a clear idea of how that meeting will help us know where to go
Avneesh: I feel we are
running short on time. In W3C incubation is extremely important.
… it will be hard to charter another Working Group
without a successful incubation platform in the CG
<tzviya> +1 avneeshsingh
<liisamk> g+
Bill: on scholarly there are
existing implementations
… e.g .U. Mich Fulcrum
… see the New York W3C Chapter presentation they gave
a few months ago
… it's a sophisticated on-line publication
… I got an email from the EU Publications Office last
week saying they wanted to engage
… there are people doing things out on the margins;
let's gather them up
Ivan: understand what they're doing, what problems they are facing, what they expect from W3C
Tzviya: I hope you're also asking Mateus to present what Norton is doing
Bill: Norton is doing really good stuff
<Bill_Kasdorf> Pal from the EU Publications Office
Bill: Pal wants to get involved too
Liisa: the BG is hearing a focus on finding things for a WG to do but that's not our goal unless it's really what the business needs
Tzviya: glad you say that;
the CG is not limited to proposing work for a Publishing WG; it can
escalate work to any W3C Working Group
… e.g. if the CG sees a need for more work on identity
management, there is another WG to which to send that
[adjourned]