Publishing Business Group - Next Steps

Dear PBG Steering Committee members,

 

Executive summary / call to action: Liisa and Luc are willing to step up to
serve as PBG co-chairs and (since holiday schedules make a cal of SC or full
BG this week challenging) if you approve this please respond with +1. The
plan to recast the Steering Committee as a chairs + task force leads
coordination group is advancing and we'd like to schedule a first PBG
meeting early next year to discuss and potentially approve - comments on
this also solicited.

OK - now the overly long (yeah yeah) email with details.

 

On behalf of Rick, Paul, Cristina, Liisa, and Luc I'd like to summarize
proposed next steps for the Publishing Business Group.

 

First of all, the plan discussed in meetings in the last weeks to recast the
PBG Steering Committee as a coordination group comprised of the chairs of
the three Publishing@W3C groups plus the leads of TBD PBG task forces
(leaving  broader discussions to the overall PBG, which will help that group
have more purpose) seems to have broad consensus and has been +1'd by W3C
Team including Jeff. For conformance with the PBG charter and terms of the
combination with IDPF, and inclusiveness, it is proposed that this plan be
approved by the PBG in an upcoming call, after a call for
leadership/participation in task forces. I'm sure that a plurality if not a
majority of the current PBG Steering Committee members will end up in this
group and trust that as broader discussion of priorities and issues moves to
the overall PBG group everyone will be actively participating there.  In
this new mode the Steering Committee, while nominally still of the PBG, will
really be the coordination point for all of Publishing@W3C. For consistency
with the PBG charter and the IDPF-W3C combination agreement it will be best
to consider the extended chairs group a "standing slate", always subject to
ratification by the PBG membership (which in principle could elect other
people). This could be changed starting 2019 if it proves inconvenient,
after TPI program expires.

 

Secondly Liisa and Luc have volunteered to take a turn as co-chairs of the
PBG, together with Rick who is on board to remain as the third co-chair.
This will free up Paul and Cristina to prospectively lead PBG task forces
(so they - and you all - are by no means off the hook). This adjustment in
chairs does not require approval of the overall PBG or W3C Team as per
charter the Steering Committee can select chairs.

 

Lastly, there has been some discussion about PBG priorities for 2018. Your
prospective co-chairs propose to make a major (but not exclusive) BG
priority to work to increase the breadth and depth of adoption of EPUB 3, as
a way to help the PBG have more business impact. While EPUB 3 is continuing
to become more widely adopted and better supported, there are still many
limitations and interoperability barriers, and vendors are now developing
proprietary features that are not supported or easy to do in EPUB 3. We
think there is significant business benefit to be gained if we can move the
needle on EPUB 3 adoption and that for 2018, with PWP/EPUB 4 still in the
future, it is the right time to focus on this (maybe not quite "now or
never", but perhaps close). BISG, AAP, and others have also reached out to
ask for W3C's help in this, and doing so will help showcase that EPUB 3 is a
living standard not something that is being pushed aside.

So we would propose to develop and evaluate priorities for 2018 using the
lens of how the work will deliver on the goal of increasing EPUB 3 adoption.
High payoff could come from successfully lobbying reading system vendors and
authoring tool developers as well as helping the EPUB 3 CG to prioritize
future work on EPUB 3 to ensure that it doesn't lag capabilities vs.
proprietary alternatives. Whereas, just as an example, some people feel that
EPUB training/certification, while worthy, won't really move the needle on
adoption and thus by the proposed lens might fall below the line in terms of
2018 priorities.  I'm going to help the co-chairs work on fleshing out a
straw-man for this vision and for other 2018 priorities, to be discussed by
the overall PBG.

 

Given folks' holiday schedules, let's use email to approve Liisa and Luc
stepping up as co-chairs. Assuming that can be accomplished in the next few
days I will work with them on a draft of a email late this week to the full
BG list announcing the new co-chairs and the plan to revitalize the PBG and
announcing a first PBG call for January to approve the plan for the SC and
discuss 2018 priorities and the task forces that will fall out from same. We
would expect to have task force leads set and thus also the reconstituted SC
(aka chairs + task force leads)  by the second PBG call in the New Year.
Meanwhile, until that is done, the current SC is still technically serving
(thanks) but we won't plan for any SC or Chairs Group calls until after that
process is complete.

 

We don't think we will need 100% consensus on priorities in the sense that
if there are some BG members  who feel that something, that is in scope for
the BG (aka not in scope for EPUB 3 CG or the Pub WG) should be done, they
can self-identify as a task force for same. But we do hope we can get to a
rough consensus on what makes sense and is feasible to tackle -  and all of
your help is solicited in that process.

 

Another issue that's already been discussed a bit is granularity of said
task forces. If every task is a task force, and everyone in the PBG signs up
to work on some task, then ipso facto the steering committee will be the
whole PBG (plus EPUB 3 and PWG chairs). That wouldn't make a lot of sense.
So we probably will need to consider lumping task forces appropriately to
ensure a level of coordination and just to avoid a lot of one- or two-person
task forces that really amount to action items. And/or we might want to
reassess whether all task force leads should be part of the coordination
group, once the dust settles on what task forces will be pursued, or whether
"hot" TF's will coordinate with a smaller extended chairs group as needed.

 

If anyone has issues with this plan please chime in ASAP. If you approve
Liisa and Luc becoming co-chairs of the PBG (whether or not you have issues
with or want to make suggestions re: other aspects of the above) please send
email +1'ing same. Or if you disapprove please -1, or 0 if you would like to
abstain.

 

Thanks to everyone involved in working out this plan with special
appreciation to Rick, Paul, and Cristina for their service and Liisa and Luc
for being willing to take a turn as co-chairs and help step up to make the
Publishing Business Group, and the mission of Publishing@W3C, successful.