Process & timeline next steps of the standardisation work

Hi,

I wanted to share a plan for next steps with the specifications, please let
me know if you have comments or questions.

For those of you not familiar with standards process, the usual steps
involve a mix of publishing:

1. editors drafts for discussion and review within a standard group
2. more public, polished drafts for wider feedback
3. versioned "final specifications" to mark key milestones

The process is iterative as even "final" specifications will be revised
based on experience of using the standard.

We are currently at the first step. I'd like to move us to the next stage.
Publishing the specification to a wider audience will help:

* mark a milestone, as I think we have the basic foundations in place
* raise the profile of what we're doing outside of this group
* let us focus our attention on creating supporting documentation and begin
testing through implementation (publishing data, tools, etc)

Getting implementation experience is an important stepping stone for any
specification, so I'm keen to start gathering that as soon as possible.

In my experience its also often only at these key milestones that people
less connected with the standardisation activity find the time to review
and provide feedback.

Through the W3C website we can publish both draft and final community group
reports. These can also be linked from the OpenActive website.

W3C community groups may publish documents at any stage and can release new
versions following feedback. Some groups have only ever published "drafts"
as they are working on an iterative process.

I'd like us to use an iterative process so we can continue to improve the
specification over time, but think that some formalisation will help guide
our activities.

My plan to move forward is as follows:

1. Incorporate feedback from the last call to create a new version of the
"Modelling Opportunity Data" specification. This will be labelled as a
Candidate Specification, rather than an Editors Draft, to mark the
milestone.

2. Publish the Candidate Specification as a draft report through the W3C
website and the OpenActive website

3. Invite wider feedback from this group and beyond on the Candidate
Specification. In particular I'd like to see some data providers beginning
to publish activity lists and opportunity data using the specification.

In parallel we can begin developing a second report, "How to publish
opportunity data", which will provide tutorial documentation for developers.

My plan is to publish the Candidate Specification on 27th March and an
early draft of the tutorial by the 31st.

We can use our community hangout next week to do a further review of the
specification, what type of tutorial documentation might be useful, and to
discuss how we can co-ordinate to begin testing the specification using
real data.

If anyone has any comments, questions or concerns about this process then
I'm happy to take on suggestions.

Similarly, if you have any comments on the current Editors Draft which
you've not yet shared, then please do so, so I can incorporate them into
the next revision.

Cheers,

L.

-- 
Leigh Dodds, Senior Consultant, theODI.org
@ldodds
The ODI, 65 Clifton Street, London EC2A 4JE