Publishing Business Group

Publishing Strategy meeting — Agenda and adendums to the minutes

Content:

• Agenda
  • 9:00 - 9:10 Opening Reminders and Introduction
  • 9:10 - 9:20 Known Truths
  • 9:20 - 10:00 Indentifying Target Beneficiaries
  • 10:00 – 11:00 Identifying Objectives (Target Beneficiaries)
  • 11:00 – 12:00 Objective Focus
  • 12:00 – 12:45 Longer term plan
  • 12:45 - 1 Plan next steps and review of action items
• Parking Lot

Agenda

9:00 - 9:10 Opening Reminders and Introduction

The outcome of the publishing strategy meetings is to come up with a strategy for publishing at W3C for next 3 to 5 years. Strategy development exercise is different from project planning, the two most important foundation blocks of publishing strategy are:

• Identification of target beneficiaries and compelling objectives for the beneficiaries

• Shared ownership of objectives: The target beneficiaries should feel that these objectives are their own objectives.

With only 4 hours for this first call, we will focus on foundational blocks and short term priorities on this call. The concrete decisions will require greater involvement of stake holders and this first meeting should be used to figure out how to involve them in the process.

9:10 - 9:20 Known Truths

Review the things we know and agree on:

• We plan to continue to support and develop EPUB

• We plan to continue to support the Validator/Validation for EPUB

• The Working Group and Business Groups will continue to work, although their goals and objectives will continue to evolve

• The ultimate objective of our work is to address the business needs of the publishing industry

• We have a number of ‘in development’ documents – wpub and audibook included – whose future track needs to be determined

• NEW: We will continue to support our readers and end users of all abilities and have a great reading experience for all users

9:20 - 10:00 Indentifying Target Beneficiaries

Are there any additional target beneficiaries that we would like to identify that do not fall under the following categories?

1. Entities in publishing industry that have their business model greatly dependent on EPUB 3

2. Entities from EPUB 3 eco system which believe in the power of the web platform, and that more publishing can happen on the web.

3. Entities that are using native web technologies like HTML and CSS for publishing on the web and intend to have some features from publications like maintaining editions, defining bounds of HTML pages etc.

4. Revised: Entities that are publishing on the web without using W3C technologies (EPUB 3, HTML etc.) but could benefit from them

NEW: Ultimate Beneficiary: End user

10:00 – 11:00 Identifying Objectives (Target Beneficiaries)

These Objectives have been aligned to those bemeficiaries that they best serve. What Objectives are we missing? Who can we better serve?

• Revised: Maintain the EPUB specification because EPUB is critically important for large segments of the publishing industry, and will remain relevant far into the future.

• Revised: Update the EPUB specification as needed to continue to serve the needs of publishers and readers.

  • 1

• NEW: Create a roadmap for the future of EPUB.

• Revised: Maintain and update EPUB validation tools with the specification.

  • 1

• Revised: Reinforce accessibility in EPUB and facilitate the infrastructure of tools and guidance for embedding accessibility in publishing supply chain. Coordinate with WAI for accessibility outreach.

  • 1

• Revised: Identify what business and technical obstacles are thwarting books and other publications in browsers.

  • 2

• Revised: Work with and participate in the larger W3C community and influence how those communities evolve with publishing in mind.

  • 1, 2, 3, 4

• Ensure that charters reflect the work that the publishing industry requires and supports.

• Establish the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of each CG, BG, and WG within the charters.

  • 1, 2, 3, 4

• Determine what is a business need versus a technical need and how we translate business needs into technical standards.

  • 1, 2, 3, 4

• Provide industry for pathway for incubation for new publishing technologies.

  • 1, 2, 3, 4

• Identify target beneficiaries and engage with them to learn more about gaps in our knowledge and respresentation.

  • 4

• NEW: Identify why those not involved in the W3C publishing community are not involved.

• NEW: Better support rendering, CSS, and other web technologies; better platform rendering.

• NEW: Ensure implementation and adoption of publishing at W3C output in general and participate in awareness building.

• NEW: Improve Implementation across the supply chain and supply best practices in use and support.

11:00 – 12:00 Objective Focus

• What objectives should be the responsibility of each group within Publishing at W3C?

  • Steering Committee (NEW follows)

    • Oversee Flow

    • Publishing champion job description

  • Business Group (NEW follows)

    • Community outreach

    • Work with CG to determine if EPUB should go rec track

    • Work with CG on EPUB roadmap

    • Work with BDCoMA CG on engagement plan

    • Develop Business Group Short term roadmap

    • Develop Business Group Long Term roadmap

    • Do Business research with relevant stakeholders to contribute to WG recharter

    • Define BG membership value

  • Working Group (NEW follows)

    • If go-ahead from CG/BG, rec track development for EPUB

    • If go-ahead from from CG/BG, rec track development for WPUB

    • Publish WPUB as note

    • Publish Audiobook spec

    • Develop Working Group Short term roadmap

    • Develop Working Group Long Term roadmap

  • EPUB CG (NEW follows)

    • Maintain EPUB 3.2

    • Work with BG to determine if EPUB should go rec track

    • Continue EPUB development (if it does not go to rec track)

    • Work with BG on EPUB roadmap

    • Develop Community Group Short term roadmap

    • Develop Community Group Long Term roadmap

  • Publishing CG (NEW follows)

    • Develop Community Group Short term roadmap

    • Develop Community Group Long Term roadmap

    • Incubate WPUB note until ready for spec development

    • Incubation of new proposals

• What objectives should be put in short term focus (1 to 1.5 years) versus long term focus?

• What is the incubation pathway for new ideas?

  • NEW: Ideas can be raised from anywhere

  • NEW: Incubation occurs in the Publishing CG (with coordination with the EPUB CG if the idea is EPUB oriented)

  • NEW: Idea travels to the working group after a strong enough business case is developed

• How does work travel between groups?

• Who is responsible (in the W3M) for publishing activity

  • Publishing Champion job description and recruiting

• How do we build better W3C relationships, prevent siloing (engaging other groups where they are)

12:00 – 12:45 Longer term plan

The charters should reflect the work that the publishing industry requires and supports. For this, important question is about involvement of target beneficiaries:

• Which of the above beneficiary groups are well involved in publishing at W3C and which are the groups which should be involved?

• How to come up with concrete objectives for the beneficiary groups that are already involved while ensuring that they feel ownership on the objectives?

• How to reach out to groups which are not properly involved in publishing at W3C and discover the compelling reasons that would get them involved?

• What are we doing with the current works that we have in process?

12:45 - 1 Plan next steps and review of action items

Parking Lot

• Continue to integrate the web and epub

• Define publishing, can we expand the definition to include beyond publishing companies

• Add examples to target beneficiaries

• What is the appropriate competitor for pdf

• Does epub 3 go to rec track

• Proposal add BDCoMa CG