Re: Thoughts on WAWG F2F + I Annotate next spring

Hi Tim, all,

As co-chair, this clearly *is* a W3C group with a wide variety of
participants from around the globe. We do not want to disadvantage anyone
in terms of travel or cost, but at the same time want to take advantage of
the generosity of Sloan to contribute financially to a face to face meeting
and conference, and the generosity of Hypothes.is folk in helping to
organize it for us.

As Dan has said, and as we discussed on the call yesterday, nothing is yet
set in stone.  There is the possibility to have it in a different location
... *IF* there is logistic support from local organizers.  It would
completely unreasonable to expect Dan and colleagues to arrange a meeting
for us in a different city or on different continent without assistance.
Paolo has offered to help in that regard to have the meeting hosted in
Boston instead of San Francisco, for which I am very grateful.  Additional
support has also been offered from the Library and HarvardX, via another
ongoing Harvard/Stanford collaboration. Given previous annotation events
hosted at Harvard, we can be pretty sure that this one will also be
successful.

However, if there are other offers of concrete assistance to facilitate the
local organization of meeting/conference space, meals, hotels and so forth
then by all means, the more options the better.  Offers of financial
contribution would also be very welcome, I'm certain.   We would need to
have those offers in hand pretty quickly though, as successful conferences
take a lot of up front time and work.

The key to the success of the working group is active participation and
engagement.  If the choice is between having a face to face to accelerate
that process on the backs of willing volunteers, or not having a meeting
simply because the same people are volunteering their effort again, then we
will always take up the offers.  The alternative is obvious: make it so
it's not always the same people volunteering by also contributing :)

Rob


On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Tim Clark <tim_clark@harvard.edu> wrote:

> Hi Benjamin (and Ivan),
>
> You know, we have been to iAnnotate before.  A colleague from our
> institution presented there last year. It seems like a nice forum. Bravo to
> you for sponsoring it.
>
> Yet I have to say - I think there is a potential concern about balance
> here. Is this a W3C group or an Hypothes.is group?
>
>
> Best
>
> Tim
>
> ---------------------------------------------
> Tim Clark, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
> Director, Biomedical Informatics Core, Massachusetts General Hospital
> co-Director, Data and Statistics Core, Massachusetts Alzheimer
> Disease Research Center
> website: http://mindinformatics.org
> mobile: +1 617-947-7098 fax: +1 617-213-5418
>
> On Nov 20, 2014, at 3:52 PM, Benjamin Young <bigbluehat@hypothes.is>
> wrote:
>
> Two things to sum up this conversation (from what I'm hearing):
>
> 1. missing out on Sloan's gracious grants for a F2F at iAnnotate would
> be unfortunate...perhaps wasteful
> 2. everyone agrees that in future we should work hard to have more
> diverse F2F location, so Europe should be considered next; Japan
> following that (perhaps).
>
> The key thing to avoid, then, is setting up a F2F meeting at or near
> the same time as iAnnotate in a different geographic region that would
> essentially cause a rift in our little group of annotators. :)
>
> Seems easily avoided.
>
> Perhaps the conversation should now move to where else (Stian's
> suggestion of AMS or Manchester seem reasonable) *after* this spring
> 2015 F2F should we next meet. Goal being to begin working out all the
> details of where, when, how, to what extent. :)
>
> Let's hang together whatever else we do. :)
>
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 5:56 AM, Stian Soiland-Reyes
> <soiland-reyes@cs.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> If there's flight funding - then it would be fine by me at least - also an
> excuse to stay for the conference as well I guess. ;)
>
> I would still prefer a F2F in AMS or similar European city (we in
> Manchester
> can also provide conference room, as we have done before) - but it would be
> silly to squeeze that right next to the I Annotate.
>
> On 14 Nov 2014 20:37, "Doug Schepers" <schepers@w3.org> wrote:
>
>
> Hey, folks–
>
> I see the reasoning from both sides. As someone in the middle (East Coast
> US), I don't mind flying to California or to Europe.
>
> The WG is currently split pretty much down the middle between Europeans
> and North Americans; but as Nick said, the 5 Hypothes.is folks from Europe
> will be there anyway, leaving 13 Europeans in the WG that may have a
> different preference.
>
> I'm most curious how they feel about it. If you are a member of the WG in
> Europe, please let us know if you feel disadvantaged by having an April F2F
> co-located with I Annotate in San Francisco (given the potential flight
> funding by Sloan). I'm sensitive to Ivan's concerns, but I don't want to
> assume that Europeans are against this; they may enjoy a trip to SF, or
> they
> may not be inclined to go to a F2F no matter where it's held. I'd like to
> base our conversation on facts.
>
> Regards-
> -Doug
>
> On 11/14/14 6:43 AM, Nick Stenning wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 14, 2014, at 11:39, Ivan Herman wrote:
>
>
> Dan,
>
> I really appreciate your offer. I do have one issue, though: I am
> concerned about "continent diversity".
>
>
>
> It's worth noting that a substantial contingent intersecting with the
> WAWG will be going to I Annotate regardless (it is a conference about
> annotation, after all). You're probably not saving as many people as you
> might think from a 10+ hour flight by holding the F2F back in Europe.
>
> Yours, the obviously biased on this matter,
>
> -N
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Rob Sanderson
Technology Collaboration Facilitator
Digital Library Systems and Services
Stanford, CA 94305