Publishing Business Group Steering Commitee — Minutes

Date: 3 May 2019

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Jeff Jaffe, Dave Cramer, Bill Kasdorf, Ivan Herman, Tzviya Siegman, Rachel Comerford

Regrets:

Guests:

Chair: Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平)

Scribe(s): Dave Cramer

Content:

Jeff Jaffe: PWG is meeting in our fair city next week
… is there anyone who has input for the meeting; topics they want covered?

Ivan Herman: we have a session on the second day which covers the BG and the CG

Dave Cramer: both CG and BG approved EPUB 3.2 publication; 50-0 in CG and 24-0 in BG

Jeff Jaffe: I recall from the last call there was a bit of a rush to get this properly announced quickly, and then to get IPR committments
… are those actions defined and underway?
… was there an email about this?

Bill Kasdorf: wasn’t the vote the call for consensus? Or are we talking about the formal publication?

Dave Cramer: there hasn’t been an email yet about the result of the calls for consensus.

Bill Kasdorf: Ah, thanks

Dave Cramer: a formal announcement depends on having the final URLs for the publication of the spec
… and note that EPUBCheck supporting EPUB 3.2 was released in final form a few weeks ago

Ivan Herman: I can set up to redirections

Dave Cramer: MattG, Ivan, and I can sort all this out next week as we will be in Cambridge
… I’m deferring to the BG as a whole on the marketing strategy, announcements/publicity, etc.
… And I would note that at least some people want us to collect testimonials in support of EPUB 3.2

Ivan Herman: what do you mean by we? who collects them?

Garth Conboy: we is the BG
… press and endorsements does seem a BG-type responsibility to me

Ivan Herman: we can assign to the BG :)

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): as far as Japan and Taiwan are concerned, I can send out a message to request testimonials from publishers, etc.
… is there a template?

Ivan Herman: On the last BG call, the same question came up
… I put up a set of example testimonials

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): I will ask people. What’s the timing?

Ivan Herman: I don’t think there’s a deadline
… having testimonials while announcing is good; others can be added later
… that’s my personal view
… it’s a BG question

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): So Luc is on vacation, and Liisa is still recovering, so I will exchange thoughts with co-chairs
… And I will request this from east asian members

Jeff Jaffe: every interaction is a possibility to improve engagement
… I’m concerned that we have not made our value clear enough to Japanese publishers
… we should also use that as an opportunity to remind them of ongoing work in PWG, for example,
… and to learn from them what their priorities are
… so we can bring those up in the appropriate group

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): OK

Bill Kasdorf: if, next week in Cambridge, you get a timeline for the announcement, a deadline is useful for testimonials, as it provides a PR opportunity

Ivan Herman: I agree

Bill Kasdorf: I was talking to an STM group in Japan last week, with Springer, T&F, Wiley, etc.
… this was a prominent part of my talk to them
… so I now have relationships with those individuals

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): if its ok with you, can you give me the list of your contacts?

Bill Kasdorf: they might be more responsive if they get something from me

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): I could do something that’s bilingual

Bill Kasdorf: I don’t know if the T&F person speaks Japanese
… I can copy you on it, and identify you as co-chair
… and they might not do the endorsing themselves

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): no problem

Dave Cramer: the type of testimonial I’m most interested in is support from reading systems for ingesting EPUB 3.2 and using EPUBCheck 4.2
… is the end of May a reasonable deadline for testimonials?

Ivan Herman: that should be enough

Dave Cramer: we can at least start to collect material, and the BG can help us with guidance on how to use it

Bill Kasdorf: SSP is the end of may, which is not that critical as they aren’t EPUB-oriented, but it also coincides with BEA

Jeff Jaffe: Book Expo –> https://www.bookexpoamerica.com/

Dave Cramer: I wonder if BEA takes up too much oxygen for anything else to get through

Rachel Comerford: Rachel has joined #pbgsc

Dave Cramer: CG wants to take up work on EPUB for Education again. IMS global will take the LMI part, but CG needs to figure out document structure, metadata, etc.

Bill Kasdorf: in that context, I had a conversation with Rick Johnson a while ago, and he was interested in getting updated on all these groups.
… He certainly could join the CG
… Rachel, you were going to reach out to him? He could be the liason to IMS global

Tzviya Siegman: I thought we decided that it would be best practices, and the spec part of it would be IMS

Bill Kasdorf: that was my recollection

Dave Cramer: we should communicate that

Rachel Comerford: LTI work was moving to IMS, which it did, and is still working on it
… but Macmillan is no longer affiliated with IMS
… and the rest of the work was going to shift to best practices or other EPUB documentation
… and when looking at the backlog of tickets in publ-cg
… and when looking at the remaining EDUPUB spec
… and see which pieces which pieces might need to be handed off to the best practices team
… and what needs more work done
… Dave pointed out there is some conversation to be had around vocabulary and semantics

Dave Cramer: we want to give all these pieces to someone else

Bill Kasdorf: * bill spoke to but not with Yukari Arao and Atsuko Inoue who were attending

Dave Cramer: are there any other topics people wish to discuss?
… if not, we should bring this meeting to an end.

Garth Conboy: It will be balmy 50-ish degrees on Sunday evening.

Dave Cramer: Ice Cream social on Sunday 7-9PM at JP Licks