Re: Music Notation Community Group meeting: Tuesday 17 March, 4pm UTC

Hi Karim,

I thank you for your efforts...and thanks for your very nice summary of the current work. I guess it boils down to how much time people have to stay on top of things. I know some people essentially "live" on GitHub...especially developers who do so as part of their day job or due to app development they do as a hobby or in their life after retirement. I already get 30+ GitHub notifications each day on average, and that's without adding the music notation work. I don't have the time to track all these down already, so adding more notices to my inbox probably won't help me get more focused.

In the case of another W3C group I try to participate in (the Math Working Group), I really like how they have regular meetings, and even if I am not doing much at the moment on spec writing, they have a habit of regularly sending out meeting notes with summaries of what work is happening and links to the GitHub issues they discussed along with a summary of any issues discussions. As an example, take a look at Minutes_ MathML Core Meeting_ 27 April 2026 from Louis Maher on 2026-05-04 (www-math@w3.org from May 2026)<https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-math/2026May/0000.html> These emails help me stay connected to the work even if I cannot attend the meetings.

I guess the notes from the Co-Chair meetings which get sent out to the music community group list is serving the same function, but since I don't have the historical knowledge of all the past work it just doesn't resonate with me.

But...guess I will add the music repositories to me GitHub feed and see it that helps.

Thanks much,


--Steve Noble
steve.noble@louisville.edu
502-969-3088 (home office land-line phone)

________________________________
From: Karim Ratib <karim.ratib@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2026 7:16 PM
To: Noble, Stephen <steve.noble@louisville.edu>
Cc: Daniel Spreadbury <D.Spreadbury@steinberg.de>; Music Notation Community Group <public-music-notation@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Music Notation Community Group meeting: Tuesday 17 March, 4pm UTC


CAUTION: This email originated from outside of our organization. Do not click links, open attachments, or respond unless you recognize the sender's email address and know the contents are safe.

Hello Stephen,

My name is Karim Ratib, I'm the current (and recently appointed) spec editor for MusicXML, a co-chair for the Music Notation Group and a long-time community member. I can give you my perspective on the important topic that you bring up, namely community involvement.

In the March 17 public meeting, I presented to the circa 20 member audience my vision and strategy for MusicXML maintenance during my tenure. You can find it here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JpAgtFRD_JpWuMpSOwbXkYjSHXVF0FoJPiTaegyz44A/edit?usp=sharing


My position is that community involvement is essential to ensure that MusicXML evolves with the needs of the community. The MusicXML GitHub repository at  https://github.com/w3c-cg/musicxml  is the primary place where the community comes together to discuss issues, whether for feature requests, documentation questions or general discussions. If you look at the recent activity there, you'll find that community members are actually participating in issues that they didn't start themselves, which to me is a sign of healthy involvement.

In addition, we have identified longer-term projects that we can undertake, like revamping the documentation site, creating validation tests, revising some cross-cutting concerns in the schema. Over the past months, a couple of community members have stepped up to help out with such projects, which is another great sign of community involvement.

In an effort to create more connection among community members, I've suggested initiating "office hours" which would involve an online interactive channel (like Slack) where members can drop in during weekly time slots. I've received no feedback so far, but this is something that is still on the table. Cf. https://github.com/w3c-cg/musicxml/discussions/639


To answer your question about "how to get involved", I would recommend to familiarize yourself with the current activity on the GitHub repository and get involved in the issues that pique your interest. You can of course start your own issues and discussion topics if you have any.

Recognizing that there's always more to be done to further encourage community involvement, I welcome your thoughts on the topic - preferably as a discussion topic in the GitHub repository!

All the best,
Karim




On Wed, May 13, 2026 at 11:43 AM Noble, Stephen <steve.noble@louisville.edu<mailto:steve.noble@louisville.edu>> wrote:
Thanks for your reply, Daniel. I appreciate the fact that a few folks are putting in a lot of effort to move the spec along. But it seems like the true "working" group is quite small and there is limited visibility or understanding to the long-term goals of the larger community group. I guess I need to add myself as a watcher on the repository so I will get issue updates and other progress notes, but even then I don't know if I would understand the larger context, other than somebody suggested that support for "x" would happen, and then would the code got updated we would see something about item.

I tried to figure out when the last full group meeting occurred before the 2026 meeting that I missed, and it looks like it was in 2022 Music Notation Community Group - Online meeting only | W3C<https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/aa0a4ec7-dfef-4f63-be81-251f3870b30a/>. I think that was a meeting I got to attend...but one meeting every four years seems awfully infrequent. I would love to see more opportunities for engagement as a community...but maybe I am the only one that feels that way.

Nonetheless...thanks for all the work you and the other members of the group leadership are putting into this effort. I don't want to sound like I do not appreciate that work, because I think it is very important and am glad to see it occurring.

Best regards,

--Steve Noble
steve.noble@louisville.edu<mailto:steve.noble@louisville.edu>
502-969-3088 (home office land-line phone)

________________________________
From: Daniel Spreadbury <D.Spreadbury@steinberg.de<mailto:D.Spreadbury@steinberg.de>>
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2026 11:42 AM
To: Music Notation Community Group <public-music-notation@w3.org<mailto:public-music-notation@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: Music Notation Community Group meeting: Tuesday 17 March, 4pm UTC


CAUTION: This email originated from outside of our organization. Do not click links, open attachments, or respond unless you recognize the sender's email address and know the contents are safe.

Hi Stephen,

You’re quite right that notes from our meeting on 17 March haven’t been published. Apologies, that’s an oversight on my part, as the sort of unofficial secretary for the co-chairs’ activities. I will try to remedy that.

In general you’re quite right that individual community group members are not invited to our regular meetings. We now have two meeting series, both bi-weekly: a meeting for the three co-chairs (Adrian, Karim, and myself) in which we discuss overall CG business and report in brief on updates to the three core specifications; and a meeting for the MNX spec working group (Adrian, Myke, and myself) in which we work in detail on MNX spec issues.

In all cases, the majority of the work of the CG is happening in public on our GitHub issues and discussions in the respective repositories, and that’s the best place to keep an eye on to understand what is being worked on, together with the minutes of the bi-weekly meetings, which are sent to this list.

We are talking about opening up the MNX spec working group to CG members, perhaps not on every meeting, but every fourth meeting or so, but we haven’t decided upon this formally as yet. I’ll bring this back to the top of the agenda for our next meeting in a couple of weeks.

Daniel

From: Noble, Stephen <steve.noble@louisville.edu<mailto:steve.noble@louisville.edu>>
Date: Wednesday, 13 May 2026 at 16:36
To: Daniel Spreadbury <D.Spreadbury@steinberg.de<mailto:D.Spreadbury@steinberg.de>>; Music Notation Community Group <public-music-notation@w3.org<mailto:public-music-notation@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: Music Notation Community Group meeting: Tuesday 17 March, 4pm UTC

You don't often get email from steve.noble@louisville.edu<mailto:steve.noble@louisville.edu>. Learn why this is important<https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification>
Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this meeting as I was traveling. I don't remember ever seeing any notes from this meeting and did not see them on the community group website, but perhaps I missed them.

Since I almost never see notices about meetings that group members can attend, it feels like I am disconnected from the goals of the group. Are there plans for more such meetings? Other than perhaps maybe adding issues in GitHub or maybe posting email topics to this list, I am wondering about ways to contribute to the progress of the group. Only having group meetings every few years seems really odd to me. But maybe hardly anyone attended the March 17 meeting?...though I don't know. Sorry I was unable to attend.

--Steve Noble
steve.noble@louisville.edu<mailto:steve.noble@louisville.edu>
502-969-3088 (home office land-line phone)

________________________________
From: Daniel Spreadbury <D.Spreadbury@steinberg.de<mailto:D.Spreadbury@steinberg.de>>
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2026 3:55 PM
To: Music Notation Community Group <public-music-notation@w3.org<mailto:public-music-notation@w3.org>>
Subject: Music Notation Community Group meeting: Tuesday 17 March, 4pm UTC


CAUTION: This email originated from outside of our organization. Do not click links, open attachments, or respond unless you recognize the sender's email address and know the contents are safe.

Dear CG members,

The co-chairs invite you to attend a virtual meeting on Zoom next Tuesday, 17 March at 4pm UTC, in which we will provide updates on each of the group’s active specifications – SMuFL, MusicXML, and MNX. This will also be a great opportunity for CG members to meet our new co-chair and MusicXML specification editor, Karim Ratib.

Please find the details below:

Topic: Music Notation Community Group meeting
Time: Mar 17, 2026 16:00 London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88129014409?pwd=p7nYqA80RuDqVP3PDcbkYNTiJJO3Mg.1


Meeting ID: 881 2901 4409
Passcode: 325945

Join instructions
https://us06web.zoom.us/meetings/88129014409/invitations?signature=CoSI3xIdyb_Qi3XpED0ZM0ZFJa3WN3Dfb62BVDdG-Ds


We look forward to seeing you there next week.

On behalf of the co-chairs,

Daniel

Phone: +49 40 21035 0

Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH
Beim Strohhause 31, 20097 Hamburg, Germany

Managing Directors: Clyde Sendke, Takatsuna Maeda, Nils-Peter Keller
Registration Court: Hamburg HR B 86 534 | VAT ID: DE118677139

Visit the Steinberg website<http://www.steinberg.net/> or connect with us on Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/Steinberg>, Instagram<http://www.instagram.com/steinbergmedia>, TikTok<https://www.tiktok.com/@steinbergmedia>, SoundCloud<http://www.soundcloud.com/steinbergmedia> and LinkedIn<https://www.linkedin.com/company/steinberg-media-technologies-gmbh/>.
Watch our Cubase<https://www.youtube.com/cubase>, Dorico<https://www.youtube.com/dorico>, Mobile Apps<https://www.youtube.com/mobile_apps_steinberg>, Nuendo<https://www.youtube.com/nuendo>, Steinberg<https://www.youtube.com/user/SteinbergSoftware>, Audio Interfaces<https://www.youtube.com/audiointerfaces>, VST Instruments & Plug-Ins<https://www.youtube.com/VSTinstrumentsplugins> and WaveLab<https://www.youtube.com/WaveLab> videos on YouTube.

Steinberg’s General Terms and Conditions<https://o.steinberg.net/en/extras/general_terms_and_conditions.html> apply.