Re: W3C Annotation Working Group?

Hi Rob,

that's great news! I fully support this idea and would be happy to
contribute input/feedback to any TR and also continue working on reference
implementations.

I finally arrived at AIT (Austrian Institute of Technology) in the same
group where Annotorious is being developed; we will certainly continue our
work on annotations throughout the next years and aspects like industry
adoption are defenitely on our radar.

Best,
Bernhard


On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Robert Sanderson <azaroth42@gmail.com>wrote:

>
> First, we hope that you've all had a safe and happy holidays!
>
> Just before the break, a conversation was started in the W3C about
> possibly using annotation as an experimental means of commenting on
> specifications and drafts; this conversation also drew the attention on the
> more general need for Web users to annotate web pages at large. This
> practical requirement would tie in neatly with the ongoing work in the
> Digital Publishing Interest Group and in the IDPF (http://idpf.org/) to
> flesh out the use cases and application of the Open Annotation model in
> that field.
>
> In order to take our annotation work to the next level, especially in the
> publishing domain but across the board in terms of annotation being a
> critical component of the Open Web Platform including browser-facing
> aspects, a number of people feel that creating an Annotations Working Group
> (WG) is both timely and important. This group would formalize and build on
> the Open Annotation specification and data model, and would also explore
> the browser side such as robust addressability, events, JavaScript APIs,
> and so on; the precise details would be worked out over the next several
> weeks in a proposed Annotations WG charter, within W3C's Information and
> Knowledge (INK) domain. The result would be a one or more official
> technical Recommendations (e.g., http://www.w3.org/TR/OpenAnnotation/)
> which can only be created by a WG, not by a Community Group.
>
> Ivan Herman and Doug Schepers would help guide the group in their
> capacities at W3C, Ivan on the Semantic Web, Linked Data, and Digital
> Publishing side, and Doug on the Web application, browser, and developer
> outreach side.
>
> What does this mean for the Community Group?  Firstly, all W3C members are
> warmly and strongly encouraged to join the Working Group! Secondly, since
> the WG will continue to conduct all its technical work in public, anyone
> who is not affiliated with a member institution can continue to be part of
> the discussion on the mailing list, and those who are able to actively
> contribute (e.g. editing, writing tests, managing issues, or maintaining
> support documents like use cases and requirements or developer
> documentation) will be considered for Invited Expert status.
>
> If you just want to keep track of what's going on, then there's no need to
> do anything different. While the specification discussions would move to
> the Working Group, we would keep the Open Annotation Community Group alive
> as a platform to solicit broader feedback to issues arising in the WG, and
> to provide a discussion forum for existing community members. Paolo and I
> will take responsibility for acting as go-betweens for the CG and WG --
> your input and support throughout the process so far has been extremely
> valuable and greatly appreciated.  We will make sure there's clear
> communication and close ties with this existing community.
>
> Please let us know your thoughts on this idea!  While we think that a
> formal TR will carry significantly more weight than the current community
> draft, especially with larger industrial potential adopters, and that a
> broader scope of work can strengthen the market, we want to make sure you
> agree that the creation of a WG is the right thing to do at this stage. Do
> you think this is the right step? Would you be interested in participating
> in this proposed WG? Please give us your comments here!
>
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Rob and Paolo
>