Meeting minutes
incubation & standardisation
gautier: we aim to help innovation - regular meetings - today we want to discuss the role of the CG in innovation and the workflow - want find ways how to incubate and which topics we should tackle - want to share W3C guide on innovation
… describe what is meant by innovation - Gautier cites from W3C guide: "Incubation is a way of exploring some new aspect of the Open Web Platform when the best way forward is unclear, when feasibility, compatibility, or developer interest is not yet established, or when early development would benefit from a wide variety of informed points of view before Standards-track work commences. It enables exploration of novel work, without overly diffusing the effort of a Working Group or expending a lot of resources on work that is ultimately abandoned. One possible result of incubation is the transfer of work to a Working Group, for Standards-track development. Work might also be forwarded to another group in liaison with W3C. Another possible result is the conclusion that this is a promising area of work, but that a number of prerequisites exist which should be solved first. Finally, incubators might conclude that no Standards-track work should be done in the area. This is still a valuable result, as it can reduce the effort expended on unfruitful options."
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ivan: I have experience in another WG with a corresponding CG - Credential CG is huge - one of the most active CGs - CG developed drafts/specs on itself - published as a separate CG draft - then submit it to the WG to take it over - 18-20 documents, 75% came from the CG - what came from CG was very well-specified and implemented technology
… EPUB small number of specs. large number of Notes - WG has a charter - we can't take over any topic not covered by the charter - separate section in the charter using the term incubated specs - if they reach the right level and enough manpower, they may become specs - but this is not in our charter for the Publishing WG - even Media Overlays don't fit into the current charter
… CG prepares mature document - but should be known in advance to the WG
… annotation has been incubated in EDRLab - perfectly fine - ideally Media Overlay should be incubated in CG - but there was a synchronized media CG (Wendy) which no longer exists
gautier: most incubation work is done in membership orgs like Daisy or EDRLab
ivan: more comfortable if annotation had happened in CG instead of EDRLab
gautier: EDRLab and Daisy do a lot of work to meet colleagues - AIPref work at EDRLab, but we will bring this to the CG for feedback
Wendy: agree with Ivan - incubation in EDRLab or Daisy is incredibly valuable - broad incubation in CG/WG - we should have a rough idea of the approach before we start in WG - intended as a standard for everyone - it's not fully public in Daisy or EDRLab - they have done the work - have a very specific solution but we haven't got input from outside. We should use CG to get the approach more opened up
ivan: the implementers working in CG are perhaps not fully aware that it's not yet a standard - may be changed in WG process - especially if products have been developed on that basis - prototype implementations that are deployed before the final spec create problems - requirements from the deployment that influence positions in the WG
gautier: CG in plenary talks - e.g. AIPref - are meant to open up the discussion - people discuss in their organisations - in the CG we have difficulty to get feedback - more attendees' need of information than strong opinion
wendy: our community is big and incredibly diverse - people are afraid it would be too technical - we should translate our technical issues to more practical issues so that potential attendees will see the relationship to the production of books
… people want to know what does this mean if I add these metadata - should find better ways to communicate so that people are encouraged to take part
jim: people want to know why they should bother - a kind of impact statement would be useful
wendy: like that - our community is unique - people see themselves as non-technical -
jim: more marketing-like approach
ivan: as part of the incubation in the CG, we could do this - in WG difficult to tell what that means for the authors - in CG analyze real-world impact
… we have learned that the number of technical people is relatively small - difficult to get the right people - big publishers don't see it as a priority
gautier: each month discussion with French publishers - 9 people - could invite them to CG/WG - even if they are technical it is not the same level of abstraction
ivan: always the same 5 or 6 people - don't get feedback from publishers
gautier: if it's complex to reach the community, we will have to reach out - we should find a way to do that - a few years ago, we had W3C presentations at Digital Publishing Summits - even at Frankfurt there are a lot of tech companies as well -
wendy: presentation on behalf on Publishing CG/WG as employee of EDRLab is not a problem
ivan: we need more people in the WG for this outreach activity - for a few years Ivan took care of that - but we can't make work dependent on one or more persons