RE: Summit registration is open--call for proposals

Hi Daniel,

I agree with you that having the Publishing Summit during TPAC is a mixed bag for TPAC attendees. We did make it Thurs/Fri to minimize the overlaps since there is less heavy stuff in TPAC later in the week but it isn't optimal from that perspective, no argument.

But, the Publishing Summit is NOT expected to be attended mainly by TPAC attendees and is a co-located event, not part of TPAC itself. Even including folks who would only come to TPAC for the Publishing Business Group (which is Friday afternoon so thus no conflict with the Pub Summit schedule) we anticipate only about 20% to 25% of Pub Summit attendees will be attending  other part of TPAC. Which means that the folks like you who will be doing many other things doing TPAC week will be a small minority. 

The main goal of the Pub Summit is to engage (similarly in some respects to events IDPF did in the past) among a broader group of folks across segments of publishing industry. Most will not be interested in being part of the process of creating specifications for Web Standards - even if their organizations are W3C members and even if they are very interested in the implications of these standards.  It's hoped that Publishing@W3C  will be much more than a factory for publishing-related specs, and this event is our biggest example of that this year.

And we heard loud and clear that a plus for many of the non-TPAC folks will be the chance to network with those who do, for example by visiting the demo showcase area, so for that broader audience it's arguably a feature not a bug that the Pub Summit is co-located with TPAC. 

Anyway the main reason we did it this way wasn't that synergy but simply economics - W3C had extra space available at the TPAC venue. Given that for a number of reasons  the combination with IDPF could not be finalized until February this year, putting on the Publishing Summit during TPAC week was the only realistic way to organize an event like this during 2017, which W3C team and the Publishing Business Group Steering Committee felt was important for reasons explained above. So we did it. Whether it would happen again this way we will have to consider, but the situation of having the extra and already-paid-for space in Burlingame was rather unique.

And, I do apologize for the inconveniences to all of us TPAC-attending folks. Besides scheduling, it is obviously not optimal to have to use a second, separate registration system. But I think folks can understand that if 80% of the attendees at Pub Summit will not be TPAC folks, asking them all to go through the WBS process would not be optimal for them (whether WBS is optimal for *anyone* in 2017 is another question but I will not open that can of worms...)

--Bill

P.S. speaking of economics, as a bonus for anyone who has read this far into the thread 😉 I will note that while W3C asks attendees of the Pub Summit to still pay for Friday TPAC day as well if they plan to go to other Friday events (including the PBG meeting in the afternoon), that's only because the Pub Summit registration does not include lunch Friday which is W3C's largest hard cost. So if you are not doing other things at TPAC on Friday besides Pub Summit in AM and PBG F2F in PM, and are OK to have lunch on your own, you can skip registering for TPAC Friday and still be welcome to attend the PBG F2F Friday afternoon (assuming you are a PBG member, of course).


-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Glazman [mailto:daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com] 
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2017 6:39 AM
To: public-publishingbg@w3.org
Subject: Re: Summit registration is open--call for proposals

Le 16/06/2017 à 15:01, Bill Kasdorf a écrit :

> That happened with STM a few years ago, when they decided to make 
> speakers pay. Speakers were so angry that STM backed down. But SSP and 
> AAUP have no problem getting members to speak despite having to pay.
> That's because it's such a longstanding policy and everybody knows 
> what the deal is. _Changing_ the deal is what upsets people the most. 
> Since this is year one, we need to be careful to get it right. My
> recommendation: comp speakers for the Summit; pay to attend TPAC even 
> on the day they speak. They're two separate events.

They're so separate we have to make a choice: the Publishing Summit _OR_ the extra Working Group meetings that do matter to Publishing. Given the financial cost, I'm not even sure - for the first time in W3C's 20+ years history - to attend the Plenary Meeting this time. But if I do, my highest priority as a contributor to Standards will clearly be WGs over the Publishing Summit.

Next point, I'm pretty sure many people will switch all the time between WG meetings and the Summit during the two days. Because TPAC attendes are there for STANDARDS, after all. Having to pay on both sides is extremely annoying (to remain polite) in particular when this Summit is a, I quote, **W3C** Publishing Summit.

Such a weird decision to make TPAC and that Publishing gathering conflict. As if we, contributors to Web Standards, were making our recurrent Developer Meetups conflict with WG meetings...
Never happened, will never happen.

</Daniel>

Received on Friday, 16 June 2017 14:08:42 UTC