– DRAFT –
Publishing Steering Committee

<wendyreid> date: 2024-05-01

previous meeting 19-April

Wendy: this is a follow-on from our previous meeting
… we wanted to continue that discussion
… one of the biggest questions that was mid-discussion was how to bring the Pub Steering Committee and the IDPF Board together
… and pick co-chairs to lead this committee
… there was agreement to merge the bodies
… what does that look like?

Ralph: What does it mean to merge the bodies? The IDPF board has a few formal responsibilities, but what does it mean to merge?
… reasonable to include the IDPF board members as part of the activity

Avneesh: the SC is not a legal entity; last time we mentioned making the SC also the IDPF Board
… that brings in a different mindset
… if we expect the SC to also drive IDPF
… this is an important question
… if we provide the option for any SC member to also join the IDPF Board, that might be less scary

Rick: helpful to frame why we're at this question
… the original intent was for IDPF to dissolve
… that hasn't happened yet and may not happen for a while
… the IDPF Board has to continue to exist in order for W3C to have a license for EPUB
… for that to work, the IDPF Board has to have funding and has to meet once a year
… but there's no incentive for anyone to be on the IDPF Board
… it would be ideal if there were a mechanism to continue to rejuvenate the IDPF Board

<rickj> https://idpf.org/about-us/leadership

Rick: see the ^^ published list of the IDPF Board members

Ralph: We welcome the members of the board to join us
… we have a valuable thing, and we have to figure out what to do next

Leslie: looking at what Rick just provided, which is a little out of date, I'm having trouble understanding what's being asked
… look at the gap; who's on the Board and not participating in W3C
… we need a new IDPF Board chair
… that should be someone who is also on the SC
… do you want all the officers to be on the SC or does everyone on the list need to be on the SC?
… what's the gap you're trying to close

Rick: I may be identifying a problem that's a couple of years out
… but if we ignore it for 2 years it may bite us then; we'll have to deal with it eventually

Leslie: at a minimum we need a new Board chair
… it makes sense for that person to be in both bodies

Rick: agree

Leslie: does it help if all the IDPF officers participate in the SC? That seems an easy change to make
… we need to show there is activity on the standard, activity on maintenance and new development
… we could also be proactive about community outreach; finding a home for that

Wendy: the IDPF Board needs a new chair
… the Pub Steering Committee also needs a new chair
… they don't need to be the same person; it's good to have co-chairs
… it seems simple to declare that the IDPF Board chair should be a chair of the SC
… it may be awkward to require someone to be an officer of IDPF to be invited to the SC
… but we do need chairs

Bill: there are legal and procedural issues that puzzle me
… there are no members of IDPF anymore

Rick: the members of IDPF now are just the Board members

Bill: technically the SC is the Publishing Business Group steering committee
… which technically means that an organization has to join the Business Group

<wolfgang> +1 to Bill

Bill: the mission of the SC is to address the needs of the publishing community in W3C

Ralph: +1

Liisa: if the SC is to address the needs of the publishing community in W3C we need to make it possible for any CG member to participate
… has anyone talked with the members of the IDPF Board who haven't participated here?

Wendy: Yoshii-san is an active participant in the WG
… but our SC meetings are not at a convenient time for him

Bill: I'd like my affiliation [on the IDPF Board list] corrected

Ralph: if I'm provided a list of updates to the IDPF Board page, I'll get those made

Avneesh: the IDPF Board members here can take an action to take back to the Board to propose that its chair join the SC
… it is easy to change the terms of the SC
… once we have a common chair it's a second task to choose a co-chair
… then figure out how to use the group and how to proceed from there

<Ralph> +1 to Avneesh

Wendy: the next topic we wanted to talk about is invigorating activity in W3C
… we have not brought in the next generation of leaders
… there are people scattered around in the CG, BG, and WG
… we know that there is interest and desire to further work on specification, technology, guidance and best practice
… George talks at great length about things like scholarly publishing
… how do we get more people in to build the next generation of leaders?
… so we're not faced with a crisis in 2 years when the current leaders have moved on to the next phase of their careers?
… what is the feasibility of talking about this in Paris?
… there's TPAC in September; the Publishing Maintenance WG has not yet decided how it might want to use that opportunity
… an idea we have discussed is having an industry workshop at TPAC
… to focus on topics such as "what's next for EPUB?", "what's next for digital publishing?", "what's the future of TTS?"
… maybe a session on scholarly publishing
… potentially creating new profiles for Pub Manifest
… other topics that have been floating around but without much energy

Avneesh: this is all coming from the developer point of view
… it's good to have all this but at the same time we should think about outreach
… IDPF used to do this a lot
… we should think about addressing this when we meet

<Ralph> +1

Bill: what Wendy said resonates with me; I keep bringing up Pub Manifest, locators, etc.
… there are a lot of those kinds of things that are of importance to publishing but we haven't been able to attract the right people
… some people may be interested in participating but can't get their organization to join W3C
… they may wish their organization would join but their organization doesn't see it as a priority
… I don't have a suggestion on how to do that
… I've been working on some big publishers for years as a W3C Evangelist and getting nowhere

Ivan: I think TPAC allows us to invite people
… I fully agree that having discussions such as scientific publishing just among ourselves is meaningless; we need to invite people who are in a position to represent the big players in the industry
… influential people from the big publishers
… as well as IEEE
… we need names, contacts, who are ready to come
… then we could have something potentially exciting

Wendy: Avneesh raised a good point; IDPF did promotion and outreach
… we've not done that as well at W3C
… what did that look like at IDPF? What did you do? How could we recreate some of that?
… it's not that we don't want to do it, just that those of us working on standards don't know how

Leslie: we should consider going where the people already are
… for trade and scientific that would probably be different places
… also different places for US and UK
… there could be an active working group for EPUB-related issues in BISG
… that could be a forum for conversation and an on-ramp for new ideas to consider
… and for people to step up to a higher level of membership if they are interested in standards
… do people need to step up to membership if they are not working on standards but want to talk about ebooks?
… we're having trouble finding people who want to go deep on standards
… there may be two different groups of people
… in the US that may be BISG
… it would be good foundational work if we were to nurture those communities

Bill: I agree with Leslie's approach but also want to remind folks that for some of these sectors it's not about EPUB and also not really about books
… it's about platforms
… the platforms live and breathe W3C technologies
… BISG is a Book Industry Study Group; they don't talk about journals
… the journal people aren't interested in EPUB but they _are_ interested in web technologies
… IDPF was a trade book organization for many years
… that's not what the Publishing Steering Committee should be
… the PubSC should be about publishing technologies

Liisa: there are places where all these people are meeting
… there are other organizations to whom we could have outreach
… what are their interests? what are their needs?
… if I do a webinar for BISG 150 people show up
… those aren't people who are always in their regular working groups but they show up for an interesting topic

Ivan: I remember when, 15 years ago, we began to bring IDPF and W3C together
… at that time I tried to go to a lot of different events and talk about W3C and what W3C could do
… including the French and British publishing organizations
… it may be that we should do this again
… that and holding an event at TPAC are not mutually exclusive
… a yearly event such as what IDPF did is a significant amount of work
… I don't think W3C has the resources to do that right now
… maybe reaching out with another organization who does this

Bill: when IDPF was doing this, they hired a person to put together and run the conference; it was a paid role

Wendy: one of the challenges is that we are losing more publishing conferences than we're seeing new ones start

<rickj> as someone who helped Bill with IDPF conferences, it only came about because of two things: 1) he hired someone to manage it, and 2)it was done alongside another publishing conference... and those are a dying breed

Wendy: it used to be that there were many conferences each year
… we're losing venues
… it's worth reaching out to BISG and BIC
… and other entities around the world to ask how we can work with them to liaise
… they have working groups that do good work, not all related to W3C work
… we should be talking with them more
… webinars tend to be passive events
… in our work we need collaborative effort
… identify issues and discuss how to proceed; that doesn't happen in a webinar
… we need to find venues and methods to make things interactive

Liisa: +1 that we need to find ways to get that many people in a conversation
… it will be outreach to a variety of organizations
… two things IDPF did that were successful: we hired out the standards writing and hired out the conference building
… so IDPF wasn't asking all of its members to do technical work and we were giving them a place to learn
… but it was hard at the end; it was hard to get people to do those things and hard to fund them
… we've gotten good over the last four years at working virtually
… we could come up with a way to bring people together virtually
… one of the reasons a lot of conferences are going away is that people don't want to travel

Avneesh: all good ideas
… let's use venues where a lot of us will already be together and discuss
… it's good to use the W3C brand but when we communicate it would also be good to have a little distance from the W3C brand
… when we collaborate with other organizations it can be co-branded
… as an example: a couple of months ago we had a joint meeting with BISG and afterward I received comments from people who were not aware of the work being done in the Community Group

Liisa: +1 to Liisa; the right place to do that is in the working groups of these other organizations
… it can be workshops, 10 minutes showing W3C's roadmap for EPUB, 10 minutes talking about the topic of the moment; e.g. a11y updates
… and 20 minutes of listening to them and hearing what their issues are
… a listening tour to go out to each of those other organizations
… listening to what their concerns are
… that could be an on-ramp to getting new ideas and potentially new people into our working groups

Wendy: we're running out of time in this meeting but we're hearing some good ideas

Rick: I've started the process in the IDPF Board to discuss our chair

Wendy: maybe Bill can talk with Brian/BISG

Wolfgang: perhaps we should focus on people working directly on technology issues rather than higher management
… we are the people who work with the problems we want to discuss
… maybe an on-line discussion group

<liisamk> I need to run- but we should keep this conversation going

Wolfgang: even if they don't have affiliation with W3C
… list a topic and invite people to the discussion
… get to know them and hope to attract them to participate more
… an open discussion without a restricted agenda

Shinya: similar comment to Wolfgang
… publishers have not so many technology people
… get people together for discussions about technology topics

<rickj> unfortunately I have to leave to get on a customer call. Apologies. Looking forward to continuing this conversation and working together!!

Shinya: I also want to invite management to join the discussion
… business people should participate in the conference; there are too few technical people

Wendy: thank you all; we're at the top of the hour
… we'll meet again next week at our usual time

[adjourned]