Minutes 2005-10-12: GEO telecon

Minutes 2005-10-12: GEO telecon, at at 17:00 UTC/GMT, 10:00 Seattle, 13:00 Boston, 18:00 London, 19:00 Paris, 03:00 Melbourne


ATTENDEES

Deborah Cawkwell (BBC, scribe)
David R Clarke (University of Sheffield)
Andrew Cunningham (State Library of Victoria)
Richard Ishida (W3C, Chair)
John O'Connor (Sun Microsystems)
Russ Rolfe (Microsoft)


APOLOGIES

Molly Holzschag (No affiliation)


PLAN/PIPELINE DOCUMENT

http://www.w3.org/International/2003/plan.html

Following DRC suggestion, agreed it would be useful to have a wiki 'holding' page to easily add & retrieve 'stuff for later' with themed headings. Easier & more effective than working through old emails. Focus is retained on current work. One place to go to check for useful information when producing new documents. Also, useful to have a separate wiki page for future questions to address. RI to add 2 new wiki pages & advise GEO members when done of existence & purpose. NB GEO members should continue to circulate information by email to the www.international list.


ADDITIONAL ITEMS

Introductions to new member: John O'Connor - technical evangelist & i18n expert at Sun Microsystems


ACTIONS

RI add wiki 'holding' page.
RI to update Pipeline/Plan document, especially, remove 'intent' for "FAQ: What is encoding & why should I care?"
RI/MH to speak voice-to-voice re value-added stuff for Outreach 
RI/AC to speak about QT editorial content (at mutually suitable time for London/Melbourne)


INFO SHARE

- DC to take one-year sabbatical from BBC. RI hoped that DC might still participate. DC interested in doing this in the New Year. 

- Following input from RI on IE7 blog: looks like Microsoft will fix problem with standards mode to elimate problem with XML declaration, which means XHTML can be output with this. (Especially a problem for XSL where there can be no control over outputting this with non-XML-standard encodings, ie, legacy / non-Unicode encodings.) RI has circulated this information to www.international mailing list.

- RR pushing for support for ':lang', but unsure whether it will be part of this release of IE7.

DISCUSSIONS

Outreach

Had hoped MH would lead discussion with recent thoughts & experiences. 
Teaching a class today, so couldn't make it. Also, for next 2 months MH has heavy schedule travelling & presenting through Europe & US.

Avenues of outreach identified by MH:

1) Presentations/training delivered by MH
Requirement for i18n material for distribution at presentations: crib sheet &/or quick tips card cf WAI (http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/QuickTips/Overview.php)
"People LOVE this kind of value-added material at conferences, and it gets the word out that we have great resources online."

2) WaSP US - http://webstandards.org/
"Short synopses of techniques with links to W3C materials for details would be wonderful for regular blog posts there,
and my own blog is also widely read. That means a lot of opportunity to get information out to a much broader public."

MH can provide these channels for outreach, but points out that she relies on the expertise of the group for the i18n information itself.


Quick tips list (AC, RI)
http://esw.w3.org/topic/geoQuickTips
RI & AC to work collaboratively - sometime when both awake (at same time)

- Discussion re format, editorial content & how soon especially given MH is outreaching RIGHT NOW across US & Europe. GEO may not have such an outreach opportunity so soon (despite RI's presentation schedule).

- MH presentations: not giving i18n specific presentations - many participants web designers. Trying to raise i18n with people who have not thought about it. Would like to give people something to get them started.

- QT online link should be added to business cards, ie RI's, but this is more of a long-term solution as RI has a large supply to use.

- Need to communicate the key points. Mustn't get bogged down in the other stuff. Agreed important to get the basic stuff right; this is the stuff that is not understood; if people get the basic stuff right, then it's then easier to rectify.


ACTION RI/MH to discuss QT voice-to-voice.


Format of QT list: card, A4 document, online as card or pointer to GEO material

AC provided initial useful list in wiki
.
Agreed RI improved on presentation by specifiying the area/theme of each with a keyword emphasised.
Agreed i18n QT card should be similar to WAI QT card: which can be distributed at events; additionally agreed to follow WAI model in sending out batches of cards for further distribution.

Discussion of a short-term solution such as printing out information we already have, eg FAQs/techniques, for distribution with link to GEO website "try our topic index".
Problems identified:
- conference 'bumpf' often not re-read - gets added to the desk paper stack 
- does not stand out (but coloured paper could help?)
- doesn't have an easy place on someone's desk - how does useful information find a place on the physical desktop? Cf, function key card from old-style word-processor days, card that attaches to monitor, etc.

The problem of making information stick out, holds with cards as well as (A4?) documents.
RR commented that MS successfully producing a card that was slightly bigger than a standard business card, thus identifying it as a different sort of information to contact details. DRC: friend who ran ad agency successfully applied this approach.

Online vs paper/card
- AC should be downloadable
- online 'persistent' checklist card


Editorial content of QT list including short-term, quick-win (interim) solutions

- RI key concern: need to develop (editorial) content

- Both versions on wiki currently too verbose.

- AC quick tips: 2 approaches
1) thematic
2) based on techniques docs
- Advantage of 2) is that this material is already written. In addition, WAI Group seemed to follow the approach of providing pointers to what they already had, rather than trying to cover every point.
- DRC rather than writing all quick tips & put on card then take titles of 10 articles with URL & put those on card.

- If content addresses pertinent, current issues, then sometimes it is remembered, eg "Are you having trouble converting to utf-8..." 
- BUT, how much material do people scan before adding to the bumpf in their conference bag??

- URLs need to be short, not just so that they fit onto a small card, but also so that they are memorable.

- Title suggestions: 
- discussion re making specific the HTML/CSS/front-end, client-side approach
- "Quick tips to i18n your web  presence?" or "i18n Quick Tips for the Web"
- Agreed need to spell out i18n (to internationalization)

Thanks to Deborah Cawkwell for these minutes.


============
Richard Ishida
W3C

http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/

Received on Monday, 17 October 2005 16:38:37 UTC