Publishing Steering Committee Telco — Minutes

Date: 2019-01-25

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Ivan Herman, Karen Myers, Luc Audrain, Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平), Jun-ichi Yoshii, Wendy Reid, Dave Cramer, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Garth Conboy, Bill Kasdorf

Regrets: Tzviya Siegman, George Kerscher

Guests:

Chair: Luc Audrain

Scribe(s): Dave Cramer, Karen Myers

Content:

Luc Audrain: we are happy to confirm the nomination of Daihei as co-chair
… we can work on the organization and goals for the group

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Luc Audrain: we have a BG call next Tuesday

Karen Myers: +1

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): I am honored to work with all of you

1. EPUBCheck

Luc Audrain: I have the formal report from Avneesh
… this is an important milestone
… this brings 4.1.1 with several translations, and it’s now used by the IDPF validator web site
… we need to give an authorization for payment for this milestone
… any objections?

Dave Cramer: please give them money!

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to pay

Garth Conboy: +1

Ivan Herman: +1

Wendy Reid: +1 give them the money :)

Luc Audrain: I see no objections. I consider this adopted.

Bill Kasdorf: +1

Resolution #1: pay the DAISY consortium on scheduled milestone of end of January, as development process is on-time.

Bill Kasdorf: kudos to DAISY for being on-time!

1.1. Validator’s URL

Luc Audrain: there is a question in this discussion
… the online validator is still on the IDPF domain name
… it’s been updated silently by Romain to use the last stable version, 4.1.1.
… but we need to think about how we keep this online
… and can we move it to a w3c domain?
… I’ve also asked Romain if he has usage statistics for the validator?

Dave Cramer: what do we do with IDPF web site ?
… pages on IDPF says 3.1 is the current version

Dave Cramer: there’s a larger question about the IDPF web presence

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: yes, we need to figure out what to do
… even the wikipedia page about EPUB is wildly out of date
… we should update that

Luc Audrain: do we need to set up a task force about this?

Dave Cramer: I think this is a BG issue, as it is about IDPF as much as it is about EPUB

Luc Audrain: we will bring to BG
… there is an alpha of EPUBCheck for EPUB 3.2, so things are going well

2. Events

Luc Audrain: we talked a while ago about having events at big conferences
… I wanted to share with you that there’s a digital publishing summit in June in Paris
… we can talk about standards, EPUB 3.2, epubcheck, etc. I am part of the program committee.

Ivan Herman: you partially answered my question
… I was looking at this event, but I haven’t even found a website
… there is no real announcement
… or info about doing it jointly with w3c

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): I was contacted by Laurent the other day about this
… I have solicited the APL to participate
… and someone from APL will attend
… and Laurent was asking if someone could speak at the conference
… and I’m working with APL on finding someone

Ivan Herman: that’s great

Luc Audrain: with Laurent, he shared that the place is settled, inside the French National Library
… now we have to populate the program
… the first contacts have been started

Karen Myers: for marketing please contact Coralie for any support we might be able to provide

Bill Kasdorf: Yes, the Paris summit is June 25-26

Luc Audrain: we were asking about what other kinds of events we could have in various places and times

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Dave or Rachel, do you know if there’s any W3C presence at ebookcraft?

Dave Cramer: I will give an epic rant at ebookcraft

Bill Kasdorf: will the epic rant be recorded?

Wendy Reid: I will be presenting on audiobook formats at techforum

Luc Audrain: what could we think about for Fall? I spoke about Frankfurt
… is there something that could be done in Japan around TPAC?

Ivan Herman: Wendy, Dave, or anyone? Can you send information on ebookcraft?

Dave Cramer: http://techforum.booknetcanada.ca/ebookcraft/

Ivan Herman: this is partly a BG question, but there are other areas where we are weak
… and we might want to think about how to get to those
… Bill_Kasdorf is at home in scholarly
… I don’t know what events there are on Manga etc
… and there are other areas which are not traditionally epub-related
… I don’t know where or what they are

Bill Kasdorf: I’m speaking at an STM event in Japan in April

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): about TPAC in September
… there might be a chance, I don’t think there’s already an event
… if it is to be done, it should be organized by APL, but they don’t have the budget
… I can discuss this with Yoshi-san etc
… and can come back to y’all

Luc Audrain: re: manga/BD/Comics, there is an event in France today
… next year, anything that the CG creates as a prototype would be exposed there
… it’s end of January

Luc Audrain: Bill_Kasdorf, can you take this to the external task force, especially in STEM/scholarly?

Bill Kasdorf: that’s a good idea
… I’m speaking at an STM event in Japan in April
… the program for SSP is already closed
… same for the university press program in June
… I want to do these separately, because I want to do fundraising too

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to bill and 2 communications

Dave Cramer: if we want to think about these events, we need to plan much more in advance
… I have to have my travel budget submitted by now; event programs closed already

Luc Audrain: We should think about 2020?

Dave Cramer: yes
… and focus on our goals; where would we be most effective; bandwidth, where to concentrate our resources
… have some principals beyond doing something in conjunction with this conference

Dave Cramer: laudrain: so we should now think about 2020

Luc Audrain: that is subject for the BG

Dave Cramer: … that’s a topic for the BG

Karen Myers: +1 advance planning in BG

Luc Audrain: any other comments?

3. feedback from the AB meetup in NYC

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: there were six of our eight publishing co-chairs there
… a small group of other pub folks
… a good chunk of the AB
… Jeff, Ralph, Wendy S
… Tzviya created an amazing agenda
… and taking us from topic to topic
… it was an amazing evening
… we talked about packaging, and got interesting stuff from David Singer and Kenji B.
… it was a really really good dialog and questions
… Dave did the background of EPUB, and how it relates to web tech
… wendyreid talked about the audio work and moving it forward without settled web packaging

Luc Audrain: the idea to have some high-level… how could we have high-level goals brought from this meeting, so it could be fuel for the BG

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: yes
… I’ll get back tot hat

Bill Kasdorf: I’m interested in the feedback from the AB

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: there was a presentation from Robin Berjon who talked about how to work with web developers
… treat them like humans, bring examples…
… it was depressing because it’s so much work
… Leonie Watson talked about the a11y community’s relationship with browsers
… and how it took years to do a very small thing
… “this web standards stuff takes forever”
… Tzviya, Rachel, and I talked about the CG/BG/WG
… and talked about the struggles of the BG
… it’s hard to deal with the chicken/egg problem until the horse is out of the barn

Bill Kasdorf: or the chickens flew the coop?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: we need to get ahead of the curve a bit
… and there was a QA between the AB and the publishers
… there are issues of resources
… we talked about the challenge of (trigger warning) DRM
… at the end, Jeff said that this conversation was fantastic, it was way more interesting than our BG/SC meetings
… so how do we bring this energy back to the group?

Dave Cramer: Jeff mentioned that he understood better the tension between business and technology

Luc Audrain: was there any talk of LCP?

Dave Cramer: yes, and I emphasized that some sort of DRM is essential for library ebook lending

Karen Myers: I know this was an opportunistic meeting
… do you see an opportunity for other regional discussions or meetups?

Luc Audrain: yes, perhaps in Europe in Paris around the end of June we could have such an event

Karen Myers: maybe that’s the model, and we could also try at TPAC

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I think we could do more regional meetups and conversations

Karen Myers: +1 regional meet-ups

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I had an interesting conversation with Leslie Hulse afterwards
… the way that w3c works that is still is not comfortable for business people
… it’s still too technical
… she’s fascinated by the audio stuff, but doesn’t care about packaging
… she wants to know about vendors and requirements. she wants to know if it gets there, will it be an easy sell.
… we need to do better at helping them understand

Karen Myers: that’s a great point

Ivan Herman: there is also the other direction
… how the WG affects the BG
… but there needs to be two-way communication.
… Back to the original question
… the issue is not meetings with the AB, because they have other goals
… the essential point to have regular meeting with the developer community
… there is a regular french conf on webdev (Parisweb)
… and that’s where we should have a meeting
… we need to reach out to Parisweb
… that’s the relationship that’s weak

Ivan Herman: for example, it’s too late for this year, but the big tech conference is in Taipei in 2020, there’s an opportunity with publishers and webtech over there

Wendy Reid: Ivan and I are on the same page
… the meetup was productive, but we don’t always need the AB
… many of us are already attending certain things, we could put on events to reach out to the local publishing community
… we get face time with people affected about what we do, and get feedback
… like Leslie’s feedback–I only hear that F2F
… we should look at our future events and see what we can do

Bill Kasdorf: I’m hearing two different things
… planning in advance, so we can get on program at conferences is a way of messaging to large groups
… but the real value of NY meeting was that it was small
… you can do both
… the latter can be done at the last minute

Ivan Herman: +1 to Bill_Kasdorf

Bill Kasdorf: and independently

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: wendyreid: I agree we need to do more to have casual events when we are all somewhere
… but it’s hard to justify travel to meet webdevs
… I’m still struggling to get permission to go to TPAC when I’m a co-chair
… going to a web conference is a stretch
… my 2020 travel budget happens in July of 2019

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Liisa

Karen Myers: a few practical things
… the NYC event did require a lot of effort for logistics and sponsorships
… venues cost money. catering costs money.
… much has to happen to make these events possible, even on a small scale.

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to Karen, yes, even the smaller informal events involve costs and logistics

Luc Audrain: what are next steps?
… a list of 2020 conferences we want to contact?
… which task force could have this list?

Bill Kasdorf: are we talking about with devs, or with business people in publishing? Or both?
… the ab meeting was with publishers

Luc Audrain: what’s interesting for Europe is what the AB did with publishers

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: if we take a step back and think of what made it interesting, maybe we can figure out how to repeat it.
… there was interest because it was publishers and the AB, but maybe it was the questions that made it interesting
… I see the next steps on conferences… we have started a list of conferences. We can start thinking about next year.

4. TPI

Luc Audrain: two other topics… update from W3M about TPI

Karen Myers: I’m going through it fast
… this is a work in progress
… (shows slides)
… TPI was a special membership category to transition IDPF members to W3C for two years
… offered to IDPF members
… 44 signed up
… last fall we had a campaign to get members to continue
… we’ve also sent change-of-status emails to the various groups–those terminated, those transitioning to BG, and those becoming full members
… and we’ll send something to the public-publishing list
… (shows TPI termination list), 25 did not continue
… we had seven convert to business group members
… we had eight convert to full membership, and one is pending
… with good support from japan

Bill Kasdorf: congratulations on getting the U-M Libraries as a full member!

Karen Myers: and we have a list of BG participants… 36 right now
… and there are some participants who are not in good standing right now
… and then there are ~50 w3c members engaged in the PWG etc

Luc Audrain: thanks very much

Bill Kasdorf: Karen can you share that deck?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: could you share that with us?

Karen Myers: I think so; I need permission from Jeff and Ralph

Garth Conboy: quick question for karen, looking at the full members etc
… is that good? how does this fit with expectations?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I was asked not to ask about money on Wednesday
… but we need to have that conversation sometimes
… membership is based on overall business, even though EPUB and audio are a small part of our business

Luc Audrain: +1

Bill Kasdorf: the list of orgs involved in publishing—that should be more broadly communicated
… there are lots of organizations that are participating.

Karen Myers: I can update the logo slide
… that is a great sales tool

Luc Audrain: we are at the top of the hour. thanks everyone

5. Resolutions