Publishing Community Group Plenary: Workflows, Tools and Processes Minutes 03 September 2026 / 12:00 PM EDT = 16:00 PM UTC
Attendees
Chair: Gautier Chomel, Scribe: Wolfgang Schindler
Brady Duga, Charles LaPierre, Gregorio Pellegrino, Susan Neuhaus, Vladimir Kharitonov, Dale Rogers, Jim Saiya, Laurent LeMeur
Agenda
As our group continues to facilitate incubation and support the advancement of digital publishing standards, this session is an opportunity to reflect on our workflows and our toolset. We aim to discuss how we can refine our processes to better support our collaborative goals and clarify how our group’s work aligns with the broader W3C ecosystem. We look forward to your feedback and active participation in shaping the PCG’s future direction.
Notes
Gautier: We want to discuss processes and tools. Up to now irc.w3.org for minutes, Zoom for meetings, minutes on Github repo. For new attendees which are not always present, tools are difficult to handle in contrast to members of a WG. Wolfgang has a hard time with IRC connectivity issues. We want to discuss the participation and the tools. We could manage the queue by raising our hands in Zoom.
Brady: Completely understand IRC + Zakim are difficult to handle I personally will miss it horribly Zoom is a terrible system it makes sense I get autoname completion in IRC I totally understand not to burden people coming by
Susan: Zoom does show people in the order they raise their hand
Charles: Raising hand feature Order of doing that is shown I’m fine with this approach of scribing in Google Docs and raising your hand in Zoom
Dale: I had to request access.
Gautier: I have given everybody access. In the chat, AI was mentioned as an option. If we use AI, we have to check the results manually and spend 15-20 mins for that.
Susan: We can work out the order of speaking. For people dropping in occasionally, AI is difficult. I prefer a human scribe.
Brady: We might want to have a moderator who is tasked with tracking hand raises. I deeply respect our AI overloads.
Jim: In favour of AI use, although some people are wary.
Gautier: We can use Google Docs. We are polite and respect other colleagues’ right to talk. As no one disagrees with Google Docs for note taking and Zoom, we may use these tools. At EDRLab, we also use Google Meet. I’m not sure that we want to change from Zoom to Meet? Github repo triggers Github page. I would like to renew the Github page. What do we really want to display on this page Publishing-CG page on Github Minutes are in a wiki for A11Y We have one page per meeting for minutes Please note that it is now under w3c-cg
Brady: It doesn’t hurt to have these Git pages we don’t need to abandon that persons looking for a few meetings presumably won’t use it
Gautier: good way to inform what is happening in this group we have a fragmentation of information between different groups, WG CG. we had a Documentation TF but it is no longer active. For now the source of truth is Entry point for the W3C EPUB Recommendation
Susan: trying to make a list of the available documents put it in a Google sheet.
Charles: Would be nice to have a one-stop shop documentation, Github repos, etc. have an overview of the specs also of best practices (images, fixed layouts)
Gautier: there are different variations knowledge base from DAISY, MDN Webdocs
Charles: automation by AI and Github cron job to keep documentation up to date
Laurent: you should see WG and CG best practices Github could be a very clean page and “one-shop” put forward current docs and have another legacy page
Susan: We might discuss that at TPAC?
Gautier: We could do a POC for TPAC?
Charles: That could be a breakout at TPAC to show how it might be handled.
Gautier: not sure we would be ready at TPAC as CG it’s part of our job, we could at least discuss the issue other people face the same problem How do we proceed?
Charles: I would be willing to assist to develop a concept
Susan: I’m also willing to assist.
Gautier: We could open an issue in Github after the meeting I will take care of that.
Susan: I will take these results to the other chairs of the WG and inform you back
Jim: I’ll look for Gautier’s GitHub issue
Charles: Jim, do you have a W3C Github ID so that you may contribute to a repo?
Jim: Could do a PR
Gautier: as a CG we have the task of facilitating to contribute as much as possible getting the voice of other organisations
Charles: sometimes speaking on behalf of publishers or just myself we want more input from publishers happy to contact publishers with issues raised in this group
Gautier: important to get the input from voices outside our CG
Dale: I’m a member of an alliance of independent authors they work with an authoring program I will see if I can make people aware of our activities and be myself at least a liaison or even bring them to the table
Gautier: quite a productive meeting are there topics you would like us to address next month Comics TF startup any further issue? There is a W3C Slack channel good place for working
Decisions taken
- The publishing CG will use Zoom hand-raise for queue management and Google Docs for note-taking.
- The publishing CG will discuss the documentation consolidation topic at TPAC (possibly as a breakout). If possible, the group will consider a TPAC-ready POC scope/timeline, even if not fully complete by TPAC.
Action items
- Gautier: simplify the github pages layout and content to make it easier to use.
- Gautier: open a GitHub issue after the meeting to track the “one-stop shop” documentation/process work.
- Susan: bring the meeting outcomes to WG chairs and report feedback back to the group.
- Jim: watch for Github issues and contribute (potential PR).
- Charles: help develop a concept/POC for consolidated documentation.
- Susan: assist with that concept/POC work.
- Dale: reach out to the independent authors alliance, raise awareness of CG activities, and act as liaison / invite participation.
Resume
The Publishing Community Group has to ease participation and collaboration among the industry and that mean simplifying the path for people who are not used to technical process like the use of IRC and Zakim for note taking and queue management. Members agreed to use more publishing community habitual tools for meetings and note-taking, while keeping human oversight for quality and inclusion. The group also identified a bigger need: creating a single, clear place where publishing standards work, best practices, and related resources can be found across W3C publishing groups. Volunteers committed to move this forward through a GitHub issue, cross-group outreach, and early concept work, with potential discussion at TPAC. The overall direction is practical and community-focused: lower participation barriers, improve transparency, and bring in more voices from publishers and allied communities.