Publishing Business Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2019-01-29

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Mateus Teixeira, Dave Cramer, Tzviya Siegman, Wolfgang Schindler, Luc Audrain, Ric Wright, Karen Myers, Jeff Jaffe, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, George Kerscher, Ivan Herman, Avneesh Singh, Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平), Julie Blair, Bill Kasdorf, Jonathan Thurston, Leslie Hulse, Cristina Mussinelli, Jun-ichi Yoshii, Julian Calderazi, Jonathan Greenberg

Regrets: Garth Conboy, Rachel Comerford, Wendy Reid

Guests:

Chair: Luc Audrain

Scribe(s): Karen Myers, Dave Cramer

Content:

Luc Audrain: Let’s start
… Liisa sent an agenda prepared with Daihei and me
… resolution taken to make everyone aware
… even if not at calls
… we will have two parts in this call
… we are trying to structure calls this way
… first give updates on what is going on, then give broad discussions

1. Dahei Shiohama as co-chair

Luc Audrain: We are happy to welcome Daihei as new co-chair of BG, please say hello

Jeff Jaffe: Dahei++

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): Thank you. I am very honored to be a new co-chair
… working with everyone and such wonderful co-chairs Liisa and Luc
… My priority is to enhance and enrich the discussion among the whole Pub BG
… Liisa does this is North America, Luc in Europe, and I would like to make clear the interests from Asia and Japan
… very excited to work with all of you

Luc Audrain: Thank you Daihei

Jeff Jaffe: I also want to add my own personal welcome to Daihei as an official co-chair
… and as long as Daihei mentioned Asia and Japan
… this is a great opportunity to remind everyone that TPAC 2019 is in Japan
… just 8 months away in September

Luc Audrain: TPAC in Japan
… thank you

2. EPUB Check

Luc Audrain: We have good news on progress
… DAISY Consortium is on time
… slightly fixed
… some new translations have been added
… from what was published a week ago
… version of EPUB Check inside validator.idpf.org web site
… there are discussions [future] about what to do with this web site
… next release about 4.2 is already in alpha
… verifying some very early items of EPUB3.2
… especially using the new nuHTMLchecker
… people have been using it to check
… development is on time
… as figure out
… there is a milestone for payment end of January
… as everything is ok
… the Pub Steering Committee is proceeding with payment
… On the fundraising side of the aspect
… we have pledges for half of the total that is expected
… something like $80K is pledged
… but we are not yet full
… there is a very important task force to re-launch the call for fundraising
… have more direct contact to bring this issue to more companies, publishers, distributors, even suppliers of EPUB
… we hope all of us will do this in the future weeks to have a new table
… as of today, just 18 companies
… a small percentage of companies that use EPUB Checker all over the world
… So big hope to get more money
… that is situation today

Tzviya Siegman: I want to make it clear that if we don’t get the funding
… then we might have to look at abandoning the work
… I know some on this call are looking into it
… any amount of contribution is appreciated
… Rachel Comerford has been leading the fundraising effort
… you know how important this tool is; EPUB starts and stops with this check
… we don’t want to have to stop and start a contract again with DAISY

Avneesh Singh: regarding the new HTML validator
… we are using it as a reference, but we have not integrated it
… HTML schema
… is what W3C is using
… not in plan for now to build EPUB check on it
… we are using it as a reference to improve the internal schema which is used by EPUB Check

Bill Kasdorf: regarding messaging for a new appeal
… it would be useful to have a document or a web site
… that was perhaps touting our success of the first phase
… please use new EPUB check
… and we are working on EPUB3.2
… I am not offering to create it as I am slammed
… but we have been planning to fire up the external coordination TF
… and reach out to more contacts around the world
… would be nice to have such a document from W3C

Ric Wright: +1 to Bill’s idea

Bill Kasdorf: yes, a blog is good to promote

Luc Audrain: I was thinking to write a new blog on what has been achieved until now
… I will prepare that with Tzviya and post on the W3C blog

Karen Myers: Bill-Kasdorf: thank you

Jun-ichi Yoshii: preswent+

Luc Audrain: no more comment?
… thank you

3. EPUB Rec Track Resolution

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: We have officially resolved to NOT pick up Rec Track for EPUB3.2
… we resolved this and work continues in EPUBCG
… bug reporting takes more time
… need people to commit resources
… and Pub BG will pick up discussion in Q4, and at TPAC time frame [Sept]

4. End of TPI program

Luc Audrain: Karen, would you take next topics on TPI transition
… we saw you sent mails

Jeff Jaffe: scribenick; jeff

Karen Myers: this week, it’s been two years since the combination and the TPI offer
… this thursday, the special membership category comes to the end
… we’ve spoken to all 44 organizations over the last few months
… we have several who became members, and several who joined the BG
… but quite a few will not be continuing at all
… and those folks will be dropped from the BG
… they can subscribe to the emails, but not participate in the calls
… the same for PWG.
… they can follow the work on the mailing list.

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Karen, when you say people can follow the work

Karen Myers: they can read what’s happening
… they should be able to respond to the public mailing list

Luc Audrain: they can raise objection on the ML?

Karen Myers: they don’t have votes

Luc Audrain: there is nothing in the process on BG and CG
… in working group any objection should be taken seriously

Jeff Jaffe: WG have signed up for the IPR and commit to the technology
… BG people can object, but can also be freely ignored
… in WG if public objects, there is some resonance
… but not with BG; they can contribute but objections can be ignored

Ivan Herman: one more thing
… the general public can also follow on the GitHub issue list for the Working Group
… where most of the work happens
… but they cannot be solicited for comments, etc. So following work is also possible on GitHub

Luc Audrain: If someone has strong objections or opinions
… they should pay for a membership; there is a solution to that
… in any case
… if a company wants to come back to the BG
… or have a new subscription, it is possible at any time

Ivan Herman: Absolutely

Luc Audrain: no more comments on TPI updates?
… thank you

5. new ways of working, timezone-specific calls

Luc Audrain: Liisa, you wanted to introduce for us the new way we would like to work in the future
… as we discussed on our call with Daihei

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: What we are proposing
… is to keep the update section of our meeting short
… and we take 2-3 topics per month
… that we define ahead of time so people have time to prepare
… we have two calls per month
… same agenda
… but allowing us to work in two different time zones
… first Tuesday call of the month is the 12:00pm EST; 6:00pm Europe; not great Japan; and start on discussion on topic
… then two weeks later we do 7:00pm EST, morning Japan, not great Europe
… so people can choose which or both calls to participate
… update discussions, report back
… to folks from first call
… let’s say we take up a topic
… and over the two meetings we discuss worldwide
… see if we need to develop task forces to continue work on the topics outside of these calls
… we think this will help with better worldwide participate
… and that we are clear on what topics are important for different parts of the world

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to this plan

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: and simultaneously work on things that are important in different areas
… questions?

George Kerscher: I think that sounds really good
… the email list for asynchronous communication
… is something we can always rely on
… to discuss different items any time

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: absolutely

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): in addition to what Liisa explained
… we want everyone to come into the meeting and to speak out
… and to give their input
… whether from company, industry, global perspectives
… in the past
… the time friendliness was lacking
… luckily I am based in California, so it’s 9:30am, but for Japanese colleagues it’s 2:30am

Jeff Jaffe: Yoshii-san ++

Jun-ichi Yoshii: I always wear pajama.

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): this helps to solve that
… and in between the two meetings
… the topics come afterwards
… and I can communicate with Japan and other Asian countries
… to relay information and solicit them to come to the Asia-friendly conference call
… so with the two meetings, hope the global interest and more consensus can be built

Avneesh Singh: Good to have same list of topics
… that will help to do the job
… also talk about it’s Japan friendly, so it’s 5:30am for me
… not so good for Eastern Europe and Western Asia
… most calls happen at this time, and I cannot do 5:30am calls

Luc Audrain: thank you Avneesh, important to know

Tzviya Siegman: I have been trying to coordinate one call with WG members from Asia to assess the needs
… as Avneesh mentioned, there are a number of time zones in Asia
… I will include Daihei on that email, and Liisa and Luc as well for that initial call
… I definitely support this

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to the WG call and BG participation

Tzviya Siegman: We do have a number of members who are not in Japan
… I will forward the email I sent out to the chairs for coordination
… let me know if I left anyone out

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Avneesh, thank you for bringing that up
… Luc, Daihei, we owe everyone an update on if we can find a more friendly time zone to call all of Asia

Jeff Jaffe: I wanted to mention
… the time which is currently used as the US/Europe time, noon EST
… I wonder if we could move that up a couple of hours
… to be barely ok for West Coast
… better for Europe, and may still be within the working day for India

Luc Audrain: Daihei, what do you think about a couple hours earlier?

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): someone is going to have to suffer

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: someone always suffers where digital publishing is concerned…

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): it is very hard to find times in global time zones
… one for US/Europe, the other for Asia friendly

Bill Kasdorf: Jeff is suggesting that for the US/EU-friendly call, not the Asia-friendly time, correct?

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): Avneesh, we will go over that again, the India time zone difference

Jeff Jaffe: yes, Bill, but it is tough for San Diego people like Daihei

Avneesh Singh: the Accessibility guidelines are doing US/Europe and Europe/Asia
… one call is 1500UTC; the other is 900UTC
… covers everyone from London to Australia
… this kind of model
… as an example

Luc Audrain: thank you for this information
… as Daihei and Liisa said, we will discuss among the chairs and bring some proposals
… Liisa explained the timing and the stuff we want to discuss on these calls
… if no more comment, we can take next topic

6. Conferences in 2019 and 2020

Luc Audrain: we think we have to discuss earlier for how we make people aware of work in W3C
… either unique events or partnering with existing conferences
… the Digital Publishing Summit, being organized 25-26 June in Paris
… is a very important conference
… I will be involved on the program committee, and there is a lot of W3C information to share in this conference
… that is one point

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I would know
… we talked about this with the Publishing Steering Committee on Friday
… we should figure out what conferences are important to us
… and from overall W3C perspective, discuss how the work is being represented well enough
… so people realize that it is important and how it impacts their world
… we talked about ebookcraft, Toronto, DigPub Summit in Paris
… we realized that a lot of conferences are about books and trade
… and we are trying to figure out conferences for education and scholarly publishing

Dave Cramer: I think we should also figure out what we are trying to accomplish
… being at conferences is a means to an end
… we want to communicate to people outside of the people who normally listen to us; spread the word; invite people to join us
… we also want to have dialogue
… to have the kinds of conversations we had last week at the AB-Pub meet-up
… question is how we facilitate these kinds of conversations
… conferences are one venue
… challenges of resources, budgets, travel

Luc Audrain: thank you, Dave

Luc Audrain: I want to emphasize what Dave said
… the DigPub Summit is not only what we do at W3C
… but interesting to have different facets discussed
… and make it aware to people
… will be to a specific publishing audience
… but we could also have a workshop or small group discussing technical, business issues
… and interesting to have all that kind of stuff tested and prepared in that conference
… and try to get some information about adoption
… perspectives on what is going on
… and how publishers can imagine engaging to these new standards
… like web audio books, visual narratives
… EDRLab is very interested and engaged with Readium
… and the visual narrative group at W3C is important to learn about
… and communicate more broadly
… as Dave said, it’s not the only way to communicate
… we talked about the small group meet-up with AB
… and see if this can be reproduced
… there are also large conferences on education, accessibility, STEM, where we should consider to be present

Jeff Jaffe: I think like you said, Dave asked a great question
… I wanted to provide a perspective
… My impression is that IDPF was both a spec factory but also a bit of a trade group
… the merge into W3C
… we maintained the spec factory, but did less on the trade group
… for question on what we are trying to achieve
… we want to restore that capability that IDPF had
… when I spoke with TPIs that did not continue
… many said they were in IDPF for the trade piece, not the spec piece
… so what does it do?
… it popularizes, evangelizes, builds a community
… those are higher level goals
… conferences are a piece of it
… and goal is to build a community
… especially for the EPUB family specs

Leslie Hulse: I see this is a continuation of conversation about audio books conversation
… I have concerns whether there is a broad enough community in audio that is aware of work being done
… and if they have responded to the perceived business need
… slightly different topic than conferences
… but I agree with Jeff there is a gap in having that trade group forum for discussion and sharing of information
… would make sense to have a meet-up or a webinar
… to have a broader conversation
… share explainers, materials put together by WG
… concerned that you have three strong audio players participating, but four are not, and not so many publishers

Luc Audrain: +1

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1

Wolfgang Schindler: +1 to LHulse

Leslie Hulse: I think we should pause and solicit specific feedback on this topic [audio books]
… we should intentionally broaden the conversation

Tzviya Siegman: I agree with Leslie
… conferences by IDPF were not so exciting
… even meet-ups take a lot of work to do
… I like webinars idea
… and Leslie’s suggestion to solicit feedback
… the explainer doc in WG is a great way to do that
… expect to have that end of week
… maybe do a formal feedback in the BG
… and webinars is another way
… rather than a full-fledged conference

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: not about having one, but see which conferences are relevant to tack on conversations
… to Leslie’s point on audio, we need to take back into the Pub BG
… help people understand what is happening
… even more true as the TPI access separates
… energy to participate; we need to find a better mechanism

Dave Cramer: Big thumbs up to what Leslie said
… this means there is homework for many of us
… I need to engage with Hachette’s audio publishers, Leslie with HC and Liisa with PRH
… those who work on audio books
… we need to try to bring them into this conversation and at least get their feedback on what’s going on

Luc Audrain: with EDRLab we visited the main audiobook publishers and made them aware of what’s at stake
… not sure if there is a list of audio books publishers
… these people are outside the circles of our conversations; would be interesting to have a global list of audio book publishers
… do a Q&A, get questions from them

Bill Kasdorf: two comments
… one is that
… the value of a conference is not the formal conference itself, it’s the fact that a whole lot of people with common interests are in same room at same time
… main reason NY meet-up worked well last week, is concentration of trade publishers is in NYC
… but not true for scholarly
… SSP in May
… STM major commercial publishers do STM Week in London
… those orgs capitalize on the fact that folks are there
… Coko Foundation had a one-day event in London
… it was not an STM event, but they held it in London because many people were there
… also comment on the value of the AB meetup in NYC [last Wed]
… Leslie mentioned specific invite to audio books
… makes me think about the EDUPUB Spec
… we had an invitational meeting
… we were at stage in development of that spec
… we know who these people are, get them in a room and talk about this
… it was very productive and very luminating
… One of the main lightbulbs
… was that they were not as interested in EPUB as a distribution spec, but more for infrastructure development
… that kind of meeting is good to do
… bringing these up
… even if only invitation-only, doing it where they are already traveling for something else, you could do an evening event
… without conflicting with the conference they are there for

Leslie Hulse: a couple points
… for audio, the org to reach out to is the Audio Publishers Association in the US; not sure if int’l
… I am happy to host an in-person event
… they don’t have their big conference coming up now
… figure out what works
… maybe goes back to what happens to membership transition
… not clear what is visible
… what is open to general public
… not sure what they can access

Luc Audrain: good question
… Dave answered they are public

Dave Cramer: https://github.com/w3c/wpub/blob/master/explainers/audio-explainer.md

Dave Cramer: https://github.com/w3c/wpub/blob/master/explainers/wpub-explainer.md

Ivan Herman: Dave has answered the last question of Leslie
… any document produced by W3C are publicly available
… all the drafts and final specs are public
… I think next steps are to take explicit actions
… the community should plan to be present at the December STM week
… I think we should actively start that now
… as Tzviya said, organizing any kind of meeting is a lot of work
… same for Audio Association
… we should task ourselves
… combining that with an invitation only event sounds like a great idea
… but also try to organize a webinar or Q&A via some telco for those who cannot travel
… get a 1-1.5 hour telco
… with the audio community
… and a discussion sounds like a good idea
… my main message is that we have to organize this
… we cannot be passive

Luc Audrain: to summarize, we have the Digital Publishing Summit in June
… Daihei is looking to see if we can do something with APL timed with TPAC in Japan
… And coordinate with BillK on STM for December
… and the audio community, and this has to be prepared
… do we have some kind of task force for the audio community

Ivan Herman: I think Tzviya said on IRC that Wendy was already in touch with the audio community

Tzviya Siegman: Leslie, if I can put Wendy in touch with you, the group has not been responsive

Leslie Hulse: Audio Publisher’s Association will be in NY for events on March 4 https://www.audiopub.org/members/events

Karen Myers: thank you very much for that

Luc Audrain: good, some kind of action in progress here
… ok
… we are nearly at end of the hour
… we explored the discussions we had with Daihei and Liisa
… next steps are to set up this new way to work every two weeks
… and figure out a better time for Asia
… and ask Garth to change the invitations
… so we have invitations in our agendas
… More comments, final comments from you, Liisa or Daihei

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I think I could blog about the AB meet-up since we did not have time to talk about it

Jeff Jaffe: +1 to Liisa blog

Karen Myers: +1

Luc Audrain: ok

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): Liisa +1

Luc Audrain: thank you, very good idea
… Daihei, ok for you?

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): yes, ok

Luc Audrain: thank you to all of you; have a good day or night; talk to you soon

Karen Myers: adjourned