Publishing Strategy meeting — Minutes

Date: 2019-07-23

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Wendy Reid, Jeff Jaffe, Ralph Swick, Rachel Comerford, Avneesh Singh, Luc Audrain, George Kerscher, Ivan Herman, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平), Matt Garrish, Garth Conboy, Mateus Teixeira, Dave Cramer

Regrets: Tzviya Siegman

Guests:

Chair: Rachel Comerford

Scribe(s): Garth Conboy, Mateus Teixeira, Dave Cramer, Wendy Reid

Content:

(Note: the original agenda has been updated after the call; it also contains the separate parking lot)

1. known truths

Rachel Comerford: 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.
… Known truths:
… - Support EPUB
… - Support Validator
… - BG will continue, with evolving goals.
… - Continue to develop audiobooks
… - Address the business needs of the publishing industry

Jeff Jaffe: integrate EPUB with Web

Ralph Swick: [I heard Jeff say “continue to integrate …”]

Luc Audrain: What’s meant by “Web Technology”?
… Mostly built on Web, with packaging.

Avneesh Singh: good to keep idea in parking zone

Jeff Jaffe: Continue to integrate Web tech into EPUB (as we already have with HTML).

Luc Audrain: Help Web Tech support EPUB.

Ralph Swick: [I think this is part of the roadmap]

Jeff Jaffe: +1 to parking lot

George Kerscher: Posted slides of IBM’s adoption of EPUB — broader meaning of publishing.
… Gov & Corp docs.
… Should have broadest view of publishing. Anybody doing “publishing” is our beneficiaries.

Avneesh Singh: George’s comment is good for beneficiary.

Avneesh Singh: known truth are more strong statements

Rachel Comerford: Expand “publishing to industry” to include Gov & Corp publishing too

Ralph Swick: [parkinglot+ what do we mean by “publishing”?]

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Expand and evolve to encompass more types of publishing in our work (as known truth).

Ralph Swick: Not rat-hole on an exact definition (e.g., NYT & WP), but still be broad.

Rachel Comerford: Noted expansion of “publishing” definition in Parking Lot.

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Continue to support innovation and experimentation with CG’s (or however).
… Should be forward looking.

Ralph Swick: +1 to Liisa

Avneesh Singh: Known truths are about the solid facts which are true in past/present. The innovation and incubation are in the objectives in this document.

Ivan Herman: +1 to Avneesh

Wendy Reid: +1

2. target beneficiaries

Rachel Comerford: Publishing industry; dependent on EPUB 3
… Folks who can leverage Web
… Using native tech on Web
… Publishing w/o using EPUB 3 tech
… Who else?

Wendy Reid: Add — entities that could benefit from this tech, but haven’t gotten there yet. (e.g., audiobooks)

Rachel Comerford: is that an expanded #4?

Wendy Reid: yes

Luc Audrain: Where are the likes of Korean folks doing Web tunes? They are on the Web tech already — but, non-standard.
… Part of category #3?

Avneesh Singh: It looks god fit for 3.

Luc Audrain: yes.
… What about PDF folks?

Rachel Comerford: Category #4

Avneesh Singh: +1 to lisa

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: maybe add some examples to each?

Ralph Swick: [I’d find a functional characterization of target beneficiaries useful; e.g. “distributing curated collections of web pages as a single unit”]

Ivan Herman: Fourth category is perhaps too much open ended.
… PDF publishing, yes on the Web, but…
… #4 could be “those publishing on the Web, but not using W3C stuff.”

Rachel Comerford: Wendy clarification may help

matt: +1 to being clearer, and adding examples. Those migrating from EPUB 2 too.

Ralph Swick: [“EPUB*”]

Luc Audrain: EPUB 2 is a business depending on EPUB.
… Should be in #1, with hope to move to EPUB 3.
… Need to careful with “business” — some stuff could be free; should be included?
… “business needs” needs to fit in.

Avneesh Singh: +1 to Luc (business dependency on EPUB)

Ralph Swick: Longer term vision will be more successful if we consider what folks do with desktop apps (current usage of PDF).
… PDF is so easy, that’s a driver.
… “Save as EPUB” could/should be just as easy.

Avneesh Singh: creation of PDF is one thing, but even more, the reading of PDF may be done anywhere…
… I want to emphasize the reading side… this is something that has to be discussed while making a roadmap for the future… not a question for today
… maybe there is no right way to use EPUB on the web today, to replace PDF

Ralph Swick: +1 to Avneesh; and I include that as part of what I consider “on the web”

Luc Audrain: wondering if in the target beneficiaries, it would be useful to have sector descriptions
… some sectors would benefit more from Web Publications … I was confused because i thought WP would be the perfect goal for scholarly publishers…
… similar to audiobooks, who don’t have a standard today

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Luc

Luc Audrain: I would add more on sectors… PDF publishers already have a means of publishing and distributing their publications
… we could enrich the beneficiaries by pointing out the plusses for each sector
… I also don’t see anything about reading systems
… when we wrote this document as is, we say that reading systems are not beneficiaries… are we ok with that?

Avneesh Singh: good point regarding reading systems

Jeff Jaffe: +1 to reading systems
… there’s another category, which is end users, and underneath them, the a11y community
… critical that we pull them out as focus areas

Luc Audrain: +1 to accessibility community

Jeff Jaffe: for the parking lot, we can also talk about how publishers have published in languages that are not popular on the web… not latin character set for example
… they require some love, probably not a major focus for today

Wendy Reid: in response to laudrain re reading systems… I think they are represented
… they fit in category 1 because their businesses depend on EPUB 3
… we did leave that in the dark, which is where we get the confusion… so we can clarify
… also agree about end users

Ralph Swick: [“consumers”]

Avneesh Singh: thinking the same about reading systems in category 1… but it should be more explicit
… regarding end users… the target beneficiaries here are about the work we do in W3C… and users are the ultimate beneficiary… but they get the benefit through these groups we are identifying
… we don’t have membership for users in W3C

Rachel Comerford: re adding target beneficiary for end users, any other thoughts on that?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to end users

Wendy Reid: +1

Garth Conboy: +1

Ralph Swick: +1

Jeff Jaffe: +1

Avneesh Singh: i would suggest to add them as the ultimate beneficiary
… whatever we do in W3C, through these target beneficiaries, the benefits should end up targeting the user

Jeff Jaffe: Avneesh mentioned we don’t have membership for users in W3C, but the a11y community is an example counter to that…
… not identifying that those communities are beneficiaries is missing a critical part of the world

Luc Audrain: was wondering if this is not a known truth? that the users are the ultimate beneficiaries
… maybe we can add it to the known truths… reading for all, access for all… adding something that we had started on with IDPF and EPUB 3…
… it is a known truth that we work for reading for all, and for inclusivity and a11y

Avneesh Singh: +1 to known truth

George Kerscher: certainly agree with that… thinking of readers, students, young students… reading and writing tends to be paper oriented… there has to be a translation of the concept that a paper is a published document…
… i see that as very important as well

Matt Garrish: I can also see users in the benefit category as well… not all about what publishers want… what benefits the end user here depends on decisions we make… it also comes to decision making and how we formulate the specifications
… the end user is certainly a beneficiary of these specs

Rachel Comerford: seems we have a proposal to add to the known truths that we will continue to support a broad audience in publishing, including a11y; and to include in the target beneficiaries that the ultimate beneficiary is the end user… is that accurate?

Luc Audrain: +1

Mateus Teixeira: +1

Wendy Reid: +1

Garth Conboy: +1

Avneesh Singh: +1

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1

Rachel Comerford: it seems we do have time to identify additional examples within the target beneficiaries… can we name some examples?

George Kerscher: one of the things we talked about was the reading systems, making sure there is a default reading system on every platform so that people can open EPUB very easily… thinking about EPUB on Edge going away… once that’s gone, we don’t have anything

Rachel Comerford: we have reading systems under entities whose business models depend on EPUB 3, but maybe they also belong in point 2

Avneesh Singh: may not be in no.2

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Liisa

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: don’t think we can put them in #2… don’t think they would see themselves as believing in power of web platform and that more publishing can happen on the web

Avneesh Singh: want to highlight that we know #1 very well, #2 maybe, and #s 3 and 4 need more discovery
… we can’t move forward unless we know the needs of the targets
… we should identify the people we need to reach out to

Luc Audrain: +1 to Avneesh

Avneesh Singh: maybe we can put things more concretely where we know them, and stick to higher levels in 3 and 4

Rachel Comerford: do you think it’s not worth pointing out examples?

Avneesh Singh: we already talked about some examples, like audiobooks, but at least we should add what we know, and we can add more after this call

Rachel Comerford: we do still have this in the parking lot… i am a little concerned that we’re going into identifying objectives and trying to identify who the beneficiaries are for those objectives…

Luc Audrain: We know Audiobooks, Digital Visual Narrative, Scholarly Publishing, Education

Avneesh Singh: this informs us which objectives can be or can’t be completed at this time… we will know what we need more definition or to reach out to the market

Luc Audrain: And Trade Publisher as 1, thanks Liisa

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I was headed in the same direction as laudrain… let’s bucket what we know

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Liisa

Rachel Comerford: are you asking that we put in more examples or that we should move on?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: we should put the ones we know… in addition to laudrain’s list, I add trade…

Rachel Comerford: do we know that this list is true? aren’t we better off sticking to more general identifiers like EPUB 3 users, EPUB 2 users, PDF users…?

Luc Audrain: answering to Avneesh’s proposal to know the beneficiaries… we do know some, e.g., point 1 includes trade publishers… we know how educational publishers work…
… Pearson is moving fully to digital-first publishing
… we think we know, but we should keep in mind that things change and we should reach out to each sector to know their needs properly

Rachel Comerford: we have a few minutes, let’s give this a try… audiobooks, where do they go under?

Avneesh Singh: audio books: 4

Wendy Reid: 4

Rachel Comerford: Digital Visual Narrative?

Luc Audrain: 3

Ivan Herman: some of them may fall under 4… that’s the problem… the categories are not exclusive to one item…
… some may be published as PDF, and that would be 4

Luc Audrain: the idea is authors create narratives directly on the web… of course there is a big audience of publications in PDF, but Digital Visual Narratives is for the web

Ivan Herman: ok, but the point is that some categories are not specific… some scholarly publishers publish PDF, but there are some that are fully HTML and don’t do PDF or do PDF on the side…
… so scholarly publishing doesn’t fall into one category

Avneesh Singh: I think it’s ok to have overlap
… approaching publishers in cat 4 would be a different approach from a publisher in cat 3, who may already be participating in W3C or some working group, so approaching them would be easier

Rachel Comerford: keeping scholarly in mind, where would that appear?

Luc Audrain: 3 and 4?

Ivan Herman: we know that we have them in 3 and 4…

Rachel Comerford: next on the list, education? certainly have them in 1, and in 4…

Ivan Herman: some of them in 3

Luc Audrain: thanks Wendy

Matt Garrish: looking at 1 and 2, what is the distinction that we are drawing between someone who is greatly dependent on EPUB 3 and someone who believes in it?
… i’m confused how we understand the first two categories

Luc Audrain: the question came from the fact Avneesh pointed out that we know well the entities in 1, we know less the ones in 3, 4, etc… so we can identify how to do outreach

Matt Garrish: so 1 is someone who exclusively uses EPUB 3?

Avneesh Singh: just to clarify, cat 1 are those who are happy with EPUB 3 and just want to evolve it as it is today, maybe with new features… cat 2 are those who believe that books can exist on the web… they are happy with EPUB 3, but are happy with transition of EPUB 3 to the web

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): number 1 would be content creators who are simply replicating the current publishing content model… whereas numbers 2 and 3 are more digital native…
… who create at least part of their content with a more dynamic mode

3. Identifying Objectives (Target Beneficiaries)

Rachel Comerford: time to move on to identifying objectives section, unless there are other urgent comments re beneficiaries?
… objectives in the document are aligned to the beneficiaries… our goal is to make sure we have the objectives covered and how we serve beneficiaries
… talking about whether we have objectives identified, what’s missing… and whether they align to our target beneficiaries
… the ones we identified so far… i sent them to you yesterday…

Ivan Herman: what do the numbers mean?

Rachel Comerford: they correspond to the target beneficiaries
… do we need to read them aloud?

Wendy Reid: i’ll do it
… EPUB is critically important… we must maintain it; validation tools are equally important and need maintenance; all EPUBs should be accessible and we coordinate with WAI; we believe in power of Web Platform and need to identify the obstacle thwarting books in browsers; believe in participating in W3C; ensure charters reflect work that publishing industry does; determine business needs versus technical needs; provide pathways for incubation; identify target beneficiaries

Luc Audrain: where do we fit the question of adding better support for rendering with CSS… better web platform rendering of CSS… we know there are issues with this, true in the Web, but in EPUB as well…
… under point 4, that we believe in power of Web Platform… I would note that it is important for beneficiary group 1
… same for point 5

Garth Conboy: following on what laudrain just said… bringing quality rendering into EPUB would probably fit under 1 or 5; it ought to be a specific goal; EPUB is the standard now… CSS is getting better… we want to continue to focus on bringing the most up to date web stuff to EPUB… i agree with laudrain
… cautionary note: on bullet 4, that is precisely where PWG got into trouble
… we acknowledge that the WG spend an awful lot of time spending time on 4… we should be cautious

Rachel Comerford: yes, at this point we should just talk about our objectives overall and we can talk about that under objective focus coming up

Ivan Herman: commenting on both garth and laudrain’s notes… under “obstacles working with books” but there are also other publications… we have to be careful what word we use
… with all respect to CSS, we have heard from Tzviya that in scholarly publishing making precise references in text is essential for that community, and it’s a web technology issue… i’m looking for what we had in the Publishing IG years ago, which is to influence other W3C technologies in general (not only CSS) to come on board issues that come from the publishing community… and that should be an objective in some way or another
… number 5, participating in W3C community, is a bit vague
… we should mention explicitly that we want to influence how other technologies evolve, including CSS

Dave Cramer: re CSS, we should clarify that there is a lot that works in browsers that doesn’t work in reading systems… that’s less an issue of spec, as EPUB references the current spec, but more an issue of reading system implementation

Avneesh Singh: my comments are from the process perspective.- “we believe” doesn’t have a space in the rational strategy document… Either we know that this is our objective, or we know that we need to do more outreach to clarify the objective. we have to be careful with our words. Some objectives are going too deep into charter e.g. in objective of reinforcing accessibility in EPUB 3, we are jumping to do outreach through WAI, while we should remain at little higher layer by saying that we should coordinate with web accessibility groups for closer integration with web and outreach. It is something that has to be handled with management of group, if WAI outreach is best solution or may be outreach through publishers associations or may be something else.
… the idea here is to focus on the objective, not the process for meeting the objective
… just trying to reframe how we talk about them and how we rephrase these sentences so that they are truly objectives

Rachel Comerford: +1 Avneesh

Matt Garrish: Avneesh somewhat covered what i was going to say… we need to find out why those not involved are not involved, and that’s outreach we need to do

Wendy Reid: secondary to mgarrish’s point, first we need to understand why technologies aren’t getting used, but also, re the PWG experience, there are people who do want to do this but aren’t in the room… there are fan fiction websites, there are people publishing directly on the web, but we don’t have their participation

Rachel Comerford: there are requests to flesh out objectives… one is the idea that we need better support for platform rendering; another is identifying who should be involved and is not involved… is that accurate?
… then Avneesh also mentioned rephrasing the objectives so they are less idea statements and more objective statements
… any objectives are are missing?

Wendy Reid: “We intend to work with and participate in the larger W3C Community.”?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: i think we’re missing an objective for implementation and adoption

Rachel Comerford: of Publishing@W3C output in general?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: yes, part of our mission is to get people to implement standards and use them, not just create them

George Kerscher: along with the outreach… there are segments that don’t know how bad what they are doing is, and need others to point out… so it’s awareness building
… these are folks who we won’t be able to bring in, but they just don’t know that there’s a better option

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Luc

Luc Audrain: also wondering if we can also add something about identifying issues in reading systems, bugs… and propose best practices, meaning that we know that some EPUB constructs don’t work in every reading systems, so we would continue to reinforce better support across the supply chain, in all reading systems…. producing not only specs, but also best practices… not only reinforcing a11y, for example, but also its implementation in existing supply

Mateus Teixeira: chain

Matt Garrish: in terms of engagement… one thing i don’t see are the browsers… we need to do better engagement with browsers if we want this on the web
… we need to get them interested if we want WP or EPUB on the Web… that will be key

Ralph Swick: [what priority would those here give to creating a larger test suite, a la Web Platform Tests?]

Dave Cramer: what i am hearing is that we’re describing about fifty full-time jobs for PR, media researchers, lawyers, dev advocates, lobbyists…
… i worry about once again having objectives that are difficult or impossible for us to achieve
… we are a small industry trying to convince companies the scale of Google and Amazon to change how they do things…
… we have some evidence that our best practices don’t have a huge amount of influence at that scale…
… concerned that we are setting us up for failure…

Avneesh Singh: +1 prioritizing objectives is the focus

Rachel Comerford: to address some of those concerns, since i set up the agenda… the goal to set up the objectives is not to overextend ourselves, but establish what our focus will be in terms of reframing the works of the different groups going forward…
… we are exceptional at getting to existential crises… we excel at disagreeing about our agreements… we need consensus and be able to establish our objectives and how important each of them are to us
… we should do it one step at a time otherwise we will lose our way again

Wendy Reid: we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves… let’s get the objectives defined then move to the focus

Avneesh Singh: the question to ask ourselves is which of these objectives are really compelling objectives. we are asking people to pay 80k membership fees and dedicate technical staff… the objectives should be compelling enough that people justify spending resources on them

Luc Audrain: +1 to Avneesh

Rachel Comerford: anything else to add to the objective statements?
… do we feel that they are meeting the target beneficiaries we noted before?

Wendy Reid: +1

Luc Audrain: +1

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1

Ivan Herman: +1

Dave Cramer: +1

Mateus Teixeira: +1

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1

Rachel Comerford: Can we move on to our objective focus?
… yes.

4. Objective Focus

Rachel Comerford: moving on to objective focus
… think about the various groups in p@w3c and their responsibilities
… and think about short vs long-term objectives
… and what the incubation focus should be
… and what about the publishing champion job
… and how can we continue to work with the rest of w3c
… let’s make sure the objectives are assigned to the proper groups within w3c
… so we can avoid existential crises in the future

Ivan Herman: one thing that should be emphasized
… the problem is with the way working groups operate
… but in contrast to bg or cg
… the working groups in general have a very precisely set of deliverables with timelines
… and with stringent rules on how to get there
… and we glossed over that over the years
… we have a wg with a charter with deliverables
… and we realized that the deliverables couldn’t be delivered
… we need to be careful when we set up objectives that they are realistic
… and that means that things that can and will be implemented by multiple parties
… that’s where the problem was with WP
… we have to understand that
… we did have an IG a few years ago, which was much more flexible

Ralph Swick: [I suspect that we would have benefited from more incubation before trying to write a spec]

Ivan Herman: if we set up a wg we need clearly defined realistic goals with a clear business goal and framework, implementation framework, etc.

Jeff Jaffe: I’m trying to understand the question
… you’re asking about the 9 objectives, how they map to the four groups?

Rachel Comerford: yes

Jeff Jaffe: we could go through them individually
… but another Q, there was something about additional objectives that were added earlier today

Rachel Comerford: I have them in a separate word doc; googledoc has a11y problems

Jeff Jaffe: I want to make sure we don’t lose them

Wendy Reid: I want to assign things to things
… as chair of WG
… what I think we should work on post-current-charter
… item 1 should be taken on the WG
… I think EPUB should go to rec track now
… validation stays with CG
… incubation goes to PCG

Mateus Teixeira: +1 wendyreid

Wendy Reid: BG is responsible for business needs
… all groups can work on coordination with WAI etc

Dave Cramer: : for detail about the groups that are listed here

Wendy Reid: there is also the BDCoMa CG
… doing incubation about digital visual narratives
… it does have meetings scheduled

Garth Conboy: I wanted to return to what wendyreid proposed
… I think I heard that rechartered WG should pick up EPUB proper?
… I don’t know if that’s consensus
… the cg did well with 3.2
… is there a 3.3? Is there a BFF?
… there are big decisions to make there
… and would it succeed going to rec track? Would we get the votes?
… there ought to be substantial discussion about the evolution of epub

Wendy Reid: Garth, that’s my suggestion
… I envision this not only for EPUB 3 (possibly living standard)
… there are two parts for me, I mentioned in the notes to googledoc
… I think the WG could achieve the ability to open EPUB anywhere
… I can open PDF in chrome
… with the wg we can achieve that for EPUB with an implementation of epub basic
… inside the browser
… I think the WG can achieve that
… as well as making EPUB 3 a formal spec that others can reference
… I don’t think the BDCoMa CG is part of the conversation yet, as they don’t have a proposal yet
… they’re not quite ready for this
… they should continue as CG but not be a part of this conversation

Rachel Comerford: the BDCoMa conversation will go the parking lot
… and EPUB as REC would take weeks, so that also goes to the parking lot

Jeff Jaffe: you just said I can’t say what I wanted to say :(

Avneesh Singh: I had a similar comment–we’re not trying to solve the problems, but to identify who will solve the problems
… a group of ten people can’t make a decision for the whole community

George Kerscher: 3.2 a terrific spec
… the PBG will need to focus on outreach and bringing the spec to the broader community
… I agree with wendy’s dream of having EPUB opening anywhere
… in terms of the CG
… there are issues with 3.2 that people could identify as problems
… I’ve heard about using HTML
… The CG could look at the desires of the community
… we don’t have to immediately plan 3.3
… the decision to go to REC still needs to be decided
… we can still identify what we’d like to have moving forward

Mateus Teixeira: I might rant for a bit :)
… this is thinking about the structural organization
… first, is the wg
… what is a wg working on?
… presumably it has a charter
… but that means nothing if the deliverables in the charter are not viable or not deliverable
… how do we ensure those things are viable?

Ralph Swick: [I would find it very valuable to hear what those around this conversation are potentially interested in addressing in EPUB3.2 (to make a 3.3)]

Ivan Herman: +1 to Mateus

Mateus Teixeira: we need to know what we built will be used and useful

Wendy Reid: +1

Mateus Teixeira: we need both outreach and incubation
… we need to incubate more
… epub3 was adopted slowly
… but then input from a11y community got it going
… we need to consider business needs
… not all things will have ideal solutions
… we do need alignment; that’s the true value of this discussion so we know how to prioritize
… we need clear goals

Luc Audrain: two points
… I don’t agree that BDMoComa should be excluded
… for the PCG we haven’t seen any deliverables; why are they different?

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Luc

Luc Audrain: my second point is about EPUB as rec track
… the charter said that EPUB 4 would be profile of PWP
… we have been working for years with DPUB on what is publication, and what we don’t have on the web
… this work would be useful to incorporate in web publications
… and in the next generation of EPUB as part of web publications
… but EPUB 3 is the best EPUB we have
… but we didn’t need this spec to come from W3C CG to use it
… we don’t need to be REC track to send files to distributors
… I don’t think we need to bring the message that REC is necessary for EPUB
… we need stability

Rachel Comerford: I know these are important points, but we are not discussing whether EPUB should be on REC track

Luc Audrain: My conclusion is that EPUB should be in CG instead of WG

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Luc on EPUB 3.2 with CG

Matt Garrish: I don’t think we can decide this right now.
… the BG might need to help decide this, or a coalition of WG/BG

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to bg figuring out what EPUB needs next

Matt Garrish: to find benefits, problems, then we can decide later on a concrete basis

Ralph Swick: [I would find it very valuable to hear what those around this conversation are potentially interested in addressing in EPUB3.2 (to make a 3.3) independently of whether it is Rec-Track]

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): getting back to BDCoMa CG, this should stay in the objective focus
… but they are not necessarily very active

Rachel Comerford: we’re deciding who should be making this decision, but not whether or not they should be part of the conversation
… is this a WG question? A BG question?

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): the conclusion is that it shouldn’t be in the parking lot

Wendy Reid: I want to move the convo forward
… how does work travel between the groups. this is what we’re getting stuck on
… I’ve been thinking about… how do I envision these groups working together?
… How it should work is that I drew a diagram
… as p@w3c group, ideas and theories come to us, for example EPUB 3.3
… or popups
… this comes to us organically, from twitter or a member organization, or from a cg
… the PCG should be the first to explore and look at ideas, and at how they are implemented

Mateus Teixeira: +1 wendyreid

Dave Cramer: .. they do the work of exploring and bouncing around ideas

Wendy Reid: during that the PCG works with the PBG for business needs and requirements
… and if all those things comes together (and adding EPUB3CG if relevant)
… if the CGs and the BG agree that there’s a good implementation and business needs, then they send it to the WG
… so the ideas should be strongly tested and explored before it ever gets to the WG

Ivan Herman: agree very much with wendyreid
… WP is the typical case that not been produced the way wendy described, and we are now paying the price
… the WP looks like an R&D report from a university, which may or may not be interesting to industry
… the work on WP for the time being as turned out to be purely speculative
… and so wendy’s proposed process is important
… but there also needs to be some coordination between groups and someone to help with flow

Dave Cramer: .. maybe that’s the PBGSC? I don’t know.

Jeff Jaffe: I’d like to return the first question about moving objectives to the groups
… the first objective is to maintain EPUB
… and it’s clear to me that that belongs to CG
… but as far as “update” I don’t know what that means
… we need an EPUB roadmap
… I don’t know whether the level of attention is something that stays in the CG
… if it’s just better testing etc and maintenance then that’s the CG
… but if we need a more substantial update or more authority than the CG can handle, we might need something different
… but we need a roadmap

Rachel Comerford: I propose that we split the objective into “maintain” and “update”

Wendy Reid: +1

Ralph Swick: +1

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I think we should have an objective to develop a road map
… wendyreid, having a good process for triaging ideas is great
… it’s a good way to bubble things through
… the BG struggles… by the time something like that happens, we don’t have three years at that point to build something
… how long does this work take? How are we realistic?
… the reason the BDCoMa stuff is important is that there is energy around it in japan/us/europe
… we see that we need to spend more time on this in the next year

Avneesh Singh: regarding epub update and maintenance, this is the right way to create to road map

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Liisa

Avneesh Singh: we can rephrase objectives. Regarding using workflow of starting from PCG, there are complexities… if something is on EPUB3 side should it go to PCG or EPUB3CG
… PCG can provide inputs for charter, but once charter is created (may be after 6 to 8 months) then what about ongoing things? We need to figure out how this would work; we can’t do that today. Maybe we can put this responsibility on PBG to figure out more details.

Garth Conboy: +1 to jeff’s comment on a group of people to think about epub roadmap
… it’s probably a collection of people, not one of the canonical groups
… that’s a decision we could make now; I’d like to be involved now
… the epub3 cg has had the most accomplishments in the last few years… I’m wary of saying that the PCG should play a prominent role since it doesn’t yet have a track record

Wendy Reid: gonna disagree with garth
… i don’t think we need a track record… the chairs are a good track record in themselves
… and the PCG is unburdened by history :)
… and it’s a PCG… we can all join

Garth Conboy: who are chairs?

Wendy Reid: mateus and Jeff Xu
… we have great chairs/

Ralph Swick: -> Publishing Community Group

Avneesh Singh: should we start moving towards assignments

Rachel Comerford: it doesn’t look like we have a queue
… going through my notes, it looks like the proposals we have put us in the position where
… the SC oversees flow, the BG does outreach
… the CG working on EPUB 3 roadmap
… the CG maintaining EPUB
… the PCG doing incubation

Jeff Jaffe: looking through some of the question we have for the hour
… the 2nd q: short term vs long term focus
… earlier I was talking about the EPUB road map
… the BG and the CGs should be developing their short-term and long-term road maps
… Rachel, did you intend to do that in this call
… it would be good for the BG to get together to work on their objectives, probably a subset of the nine but with more specifics
… similarly for the CGs
… it’s different for WGs due to the charter
… we’re less than a year away from rechartering
… not sure if we’ll get audiobooks done by then
… we should have a team looking ath the charter early

Avneesh Singh: should we focus just on short-term? Next year, 1.5 year
… focus might be road map for EPUB
… focus might be on outreach for BG
… focus on short term now instead of worry about five years out

Rachel Comerford: given the time left in our charter, I agree

Ivan Herman: I agree with Avneesh but we still need to decide what to do with the WG

Avneesh Singh: +1 to PWG decision

Ivan Herman: we have a tight charter and we know we can’t achieve all of the charter

Mateus Teixeira: +1

Ivan Herman: one way is that we could stop the WG right now, and create a new charter
… or we may work in parallel on a new charter for a year from now and in the meantime do the reduced work of audiobooks but without web publications and web-oriented things
… by fukuoka we should know exactly what we want to do with the WG

Avneesh Singh: right, Ivan. WG is a special case we need to handle immediately
… if we go for recharter immediately, our research will not be complete and we might fail again

Luc Audrain: +1 to Avneesh

Avneesh Singh: we should end group gracefully next year to give time to research new charter

Wendy Reid: I agree with Avneesh

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to Avneesh

Wendy Reid: there are a lot of objects that go with this
… if we stopped wg right now it would look bad
… shutting group down until we recharter doesn’t look good; it’s risky
… we might get stuck in rechartering or rush out another charter
… I think we should produce something (cough, audiobooks, cough)
… we should work on rechartering methodically

Rachel Comerford: that would mean working towards an audiobook REC in the WG while the BG continues outreach
… and research towards a recharter
… PCG incubates ideas to refuel charter
… ECG works on roadmap and maintenance

Wendy Reid: I had this thought about PCG and future of WP
… we talked about putting WP on ice, publishing as note
… could we push WP to CG, and allow them to continue (perhaps publishing as a CG report)

Ralph Swick: yeah, it’s plausible; it’s feasible
… the WG publishing a note is a step in the process
… when we chartered the WG we clearly had big ambitions
… and we’ve talked about why we didn’t achieve the huge ambitions
… this conversation right now was instigated by the WG chairs saying we’re not going to finish what we were asked to do
… so the WG proposed that they do something … that they finish something … it’s important that we decide quickly if what the WG can provide is valuable to the industry
… I trust the WG to evaluate the amount of work necessary and the resources required
… but it would be bad if we decided that we could finish audiobooks by next June, and then not achieve that

Luc Audrain: +1

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1

Rachel Comerford: wendyreid wants it done by june

Ivan Herman: when we created the wg, the bg was in its infancy
… so we chartered the wg without feedback from the community
… so full circle means that if we recharter in a year, we need a stable set of feedbacks from the BG
… But that’s not what I got on the queue for
… I want to ask again what I asked a while ago
… we need a clear way to coordinate all these workflows
… and how things recharter etc
… I don’t know how to achieve that
… and don’t know who had the remark of turning EPUB into living standard
… something we may have to see with w3c process
… but the way html evolves today with short cycles on new features might be inspiring for us on EPUB3
… and we have a year to figure that out
… we could have a quick turnaround
… EPUB 3 is a major standard, might need this type of flexibility

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: that’s great, ivan
… having epub have that flexibility would be a big thing
… wendyreid, I do think we need to finish audiobooks by next june
… it would be a big one; we’re working on something for people who don’t know they need it
… we should keep aligned with what implementations will look like
… we need to get from where we are now (tracks, spreadsheets) to the spec as implemented
… we would be better off with EPUB3 if we’d done that
… we should be careful with the audio work

Luc Audrain: I support finishing audiobooks in WG
… and I think it will bring clarification about web publications
… because I don’t think we can publish audiobooks without web publications

Rachel Comerford: in PCG incubation of new proposals, including possible WP note

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: when you talk about the BG it keeps coming back to push the recharter through the BG
… we don’t have the representation of people in the other two groups
… there were lots of people in the wg before the bg got going
… but I’m worried about driving that
… one of the bigger priorities for the BG is how being a BG member can allow you to contribute without bringing engineers

Luc Audrain: +1 to Liisa

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: so that is more of a priority than how the WG charters

Avneesh Singh: re: membership of BG

Daihei Shiohama (塩濱大平): +1 to Liisa

Avneesh Singh: when it comes to the chartering, WP can do outreach
… WP can mean different things… we have different groups we need to do outreach to
… are we meeting compelling business needs? This is why BG and maybe CG need to be involved

Jeff Jaffe: liisamk made some comments that got plus ones, but I was confused
… the last thing liisamk said is that she wanted, without sending engineers, how a BG member can contribute
… the BG could and should be sharing with all of us the business priorities and roadmaps
… what’s coming next, what’s needed–that’s a great thing from the BG
… in retrospect it would have been nice to hear from BG about audiobooks two years ago
… the BG, through the SC, has meetings with all the other groups
… and most work of the WG is done in public
… there’s no hard barriers to be fully aware of what’s going on in the WG
… contributing ideas, use cases, requirements
… there’s a high degree of opennness to participate for anyone

Rachel Comerford: current state objective focus:

  • Steering Committee
    • Oversee flow
  • Business Group
    • Outreach
    • Figuring out whether epub should go to rec track
    • Determine how to engage with BDCoMa CG
    • Develop short term and long term road map
    • Business research to WG recharter
    • BG membership value
  • Working Group
    • Epub rec track development (if yes by BG)
    • Wpub development (if yes by BG/publishing CG)
    • Develop short term and long term road map
    • Spec audiobook
    • Publish wpub note
  • EPUB CG
    • Maintain epub 3.2
    • Epub development (?)
    • Develop short term and long term road map
  • Publishing CG
    • Incubation
    • Incubate webpub (post note release)
    • Develop short term and long term road map

See https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/SNxPbdf7/image.png

Jeff Jaffe: I’d like to support liisamk’s request, but want to understand more what’s missing

Wendy Reid: I’m with you jeff on the confusion’
… with the BG we need to emphasize… to join the BG you definitely don’t need to bring engineers
… by being member of BG you get access to the WG
… because lots of people are in both groups. if you want an update about audiobooks or WP we can provide a high level overview and answer questions
… many of us are good at bridging tech-business gap
… we should make that point more strongly
… especially to small/midsize publishers without engineering teams
… you have access to the best minds in the industry, who can answer your questions
… you should be able to bring a problem to the group and get help

Rachel Comerford: one area that might help us resolve those concerns is the publishing champion conversation
… I wonder if the value of the BG could be increased by having a champion

Avneesh Singh: also help in outreach to industry

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I think I was misunderstood
… I’m not saying there was a need for engineers in the BG
… I hear that you have access to the WG
… but for many people that’s just a matter of time

Jeff Jaffe: In the year since Bill left, I have probably interviewed around half a dozen people
… some were not interested, others were not prepared
… without mentioning names, I did approach someone in the IDPF community in whether they would be interested
… he had some interest, but when pressed on the successes expected from the community in the next few years, I did not have a compelling list
… either because we don’t have one or I didn’t sell it very well
… he wanted to talk to various people in the community to get an idea of what was going on
… he has now completed that round of discussions
… we intend to talk in the next week or two
… it’s a bit of chicken and egg, we would be further with a real champion, but a real champion would be drawn to a more obvious goal
… please share with me other people who you think would be qualified

Rachel Comerford: Would you be able to share with us the job description you are giving to the people expressing interest?

Jeff Jaffe: I don’t have a written job description
… I can characterize it briefly
… the concept of the champion is to be someone who is both a W3C and Industry expert
… by dint of their own abilities and by meeting with thought leaders develops a vision of what the W3C can do for the industry and what the industry can do for the W3C
… identify the required projects
… works with the groups to achieve buyin and drive the vision
… gets involved in some of the day-to-day support of the groups
… all of the other champions spend 1/3-1/2 of their time on this role
… this is maybe the problem with recruiting, if we find someone to come as a part-time fellow from their company
… or they’re looking for part-time work it works well
… if they require full-time work then we have to try to find something with the W3C

Rachel Comerford: That is really helpful thanks
… I wonder if it would be helpful for the SC to put together a more formal description of our expectations for a publishing champion to more successfully move forward

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to SC helping with JD for Champion

Rachel Comerford: if it would be helpful to the Champion as well

Ralph Swick: from an internal “role of a Champion” document:

  1. Understand the Web technology needs of an industry at a deep level
  2. Conduct rapid iterative discussions with Members and Prospects to know what is important today and what will be important in the near future.
  3. Express two value propositions: the value proposition for Prospects to join W3C and how our work helps Lead the Web to its Full Potential.
  4. A scope of effort which addresses a real, near-term business problem within the core values of the Web.

Rachel Comerford: just a proposal for our potential champion

Avneesh Singh: We need to refine the job description with the objectives we decide
… one of the huge topics is research
… getting the outreach to know what are the compelling problems
… this is a huge task, it can’t be done by one of us
… it would help shape the job descriptions greatly

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Quick reality check, are we expecting a champion to sit in our meetings?

Jeff Jaffe: yes.

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: that actually really limits the ability of the person
… monday tuesday thursday friday

Ivan Herman: not every friday and not every tuesday

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to visionary

George Kerscher: Is there a visionary aspect, visionary and architectural long term design, is that part of the description?
… that would be very hard to achieve

Jeff Jaffe: I would say that we can describe our wishes, visionary, architect, business icon, that person will never take this job
… that person is a CEO/CTO
… we do the best we can with what we have

Rachel Comerford: Sounds like we should come together as an SC to come up with our expectations

Jeff Jaffe: We have a large document describing the role
… Ralph posted the key portion already
… we can create a new version for you

Rachel Comerford: Can we see the document

Jeff Jaffe: I wrote a document for everyone to understand the role internally
… I would say the polemics of the document are not great for wide distribution, but we can make a member-version of the document

Rachel Comerford: That sounds excellent

Jeff Jaffe: Ok

Rachel Comerford: Moving forward, I think we’ve agreed on things we can do?
… Even a possible incubation plan
… it starts with the PCG before it goes into a WG
… I posted the rough draft to IRC
… right now it includes the SC overseeing everything overall
… The BG doing outreach
… figuring out whether EPUB goes to Rec track
… how can we engage with BDCoMA
… developing a short and long term road map for the group overall
… writing out the BG membership value
… WG : epub rec track if the right route
… develop WP after incubation

Rachel Comerford:

  • Steering Committee
    • Oversee flow
    • Publishing champion JD?
  • Business Group
    • Outreach
    • Figuring out whether epub should go to rec track
    • Determine how to engage with BDCoMa CG
    • Develop short term and long term road map
    • Business research to WG recharter
    • BG membership value
  • Working Group
    • EPUB Rec track development (if yes by the BG)
    • WPUB development (if yes by the BG & Publishing CG)
    • Develop short term and long term road map
    • audiobook
    • Publish wpub note
  • EPUB CG
    • Maintain epub 3.2
    • Epub development (?)
    • Develop short term and long term road map
  • Publishing CG
    • Incubation
    • Incubate webpub (post note release)
    • Develop short term and long term road map

Seee diagram

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: bio + short term

Rachel Comerford: do we want to long term plan or go with Avneesh’s proposal to stick with short term planning

Avneesh Singh: I want to say just one thing, I think the rec track decision about EPUB3 should be shared between the WG and EPUB3CG
… and regarding my comment on focusing on the short term, let’s create the short term objective of coming up with the long term plan

Garth Conboy: The mention of road maps, is it just for EPUB

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: +1 to EPUB rec track with CG as well as BG, and think we need WG input if that is the direction

Rachel Comerford: The road map for each group, whatever the group intends to work on

Garth Conboy: Sorry, I think we need to figure out what we’re all doing going forward

Rachel Comerford: Whether EPUB goes to the rec track that it’s a decision to be shared between the business and community group
… it could be an agreement between the groups

Garth Conboy: it’s bigger than one group

Avneesh Singh: +1 to Liisa

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I would say that short term the CG and BG need to go back and determine what is needed in the short term and develop a road map, and where does it sit, does it need to go to rec track, etc.

Garth Conboy: +1

Rachel Comerford: Seems reasonable to me
… adapting the note here

George Kerscher: I’m planning on posting on the publishing community group some features that don’t belong anywhere
… it seems like those features could be put in EPUB roadmap if people like it

Ivan Herman: That’s the right way to do it

George Kerscher: There’s things in EPUB3.2 that could be better, and we would put those to the EPUB3CG group

Dave Cramer: Log those in the github

Luc Audrain: I still not at ease about the rec track

Dave Cramer: https://github.com/w3c/publ-epub-revision/issues

Luc Audrain: … Audiobook was at the very beginning of the PWG as a question of universality of WP: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-publ-wg/2017Jul/0216.html

Luc Audrain: unless as a profile of WP
… Audiobooks was at the beginning of WP
… we have always been thinking about WP as universal
… I still maintain this idea that there’s a WP for ebooks
… this work on the roadmap could be the way from EPUB to WP
… there is a path for EPUB as WP profile, and I would like to see this

Rachel Comerford: I think we have a few exciting conversations ahead
… I’m glad we were able to meet
… Going forward, we still have a lot of work to do
… we did achieve a lot today
… it’s 12:30 but I think we’ve done a lot
… I don’t want to over-extend us
… I am going to send out a revised version of the document
… revisions to the known truths and target beneficiaries
… I’ve expanded our list of responsibilities
… I propose that each of the groups meet individually
… and start taking on the action items

Mateus Teixeira: +1

Rachel Comerford: it’s important that each of the groups develop their short and long term roadmaps
… let’s get together again in the next 2 weeks with an idea of our roadmaps, that would be good
… this group should also should put together a list of the publishing champion ideas to put together

Jeff Jaffe: I think these are a good set of actions
… I would suggest we collect them and make them more specific of what everyone needs to do
… I would also suggest if we need to get back together in 2 weeks, make sure everyone can do this
… jsut check that

Ivan Herman: Just practicalities

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: We have a call scheduled for friday, right?
… perhaps we can use that to discuss the champion responsibilities

Luc Audrain: Some people may not be available

Ivan Herman: The practicalities, I will clean up the minutes when I return from vacations, the document, is it public?

Rachel Comerford: Yes, but wait until I send the updated version

Ivan Herman: I will convert it to HTML and post it as well

Rachel Comerford: Thanks
… 2 weeks is too soon, should we pick a date in september

Wendy Reid: I’ll find a date

Jeff Jaffe: I just wanted to share that Ralph has dug up the role of the champion, and I’ve sent it to the email thread

Ralph Swick: Not quite public but can be if we reconfirm

Avneesh Singh: Regarding the timeline, let the chairs decide the timeline

Avneesh Singh: the WG future, there is more research required for the WG
… maybe the PCG comes up with something
… suggestion for the chairs to come up with a timeline

Wendy Reid: +1

Rachel Comerford: Great idea

Ivan Herman: We need to keep Fukuoka in mind
… the WG won’t have a chair present
… but will have a chair on the second day
… we should adapt and use some time there