Re: late incoming: Publishing@W3C Summit Theme

Our own mini-conference is in the 75–100 range and is deliberately kept almost ‘intimate’ in scale. Jazz club rather than rock concert. That intimate scale makes it difficult (or impossible) to turn a profit though.

Our most problematic years – in terms of attendance, quality of sessions and, well, everything else – were the years that our mini-conference was presented as a track within another, much larger, conference. Attendance was higher in purely numerical terms, but engagement was much, much lower.


G

Graham Bell
EDItEUR

On 12 May 2017, at 15:22, Bill McCoy <bmccoy@w3.org<mailto:bmccoy@w3.org>> wrote:

HI Graham, thanks for sharing the perspective. BTW how many attendees (paid / total “buns in seats”) is your supply chain event at Frankfurt drawing in recent years? I’m just curious to understand what you consider as a “small conference”. E.g. would you feel differently if we were at 125 people vs. 250+?

FWIW while I indicated support for doing some parallel breakouts in earlier email that was mainly to support comments others were making by noting what is possible given our venue. I want to reiterate that in addition to Graham’s point about breakouts diluting the feeling of community vis-à-vis shared experience, it’s also significantly more work to organize parallel sessions and that work is not just in the session planning it also bleeds over into program, signage, day-of logistics, etc. It is slightly mitigated by lower standards for things like A/V in breakout rooms and even in some cases lower standards for breakout session organizing and prep but OTOH I think we’ve all experienced sub-par breakout room A/V and frankly sub-par breakout sessions where it was clear that minimal effort had gone into planning/prep. Personally, I’d much rather attend a super well planned plenary program than jump around slapped-together breakouts even if the more focused breakout topics might be more interesting to me in principle.

BTW one way some other events (including IDPF) have historically tried to split the difference is of course to come back together into plenary after some breakouts.  That could be an option for us but the cost factor to hold on to our plenary room while also doing breakouts might be a significant consideration unless we can do some really fancy dancing around room swapping with other TPAC meetings on Thurs/Fri. And I’ve seen mixed success with this approach in terms of whether a critical mass of attendees ever come back together after breakouts, especially when that’s supposed to happen late in the day.

--Bill

From: Graham Bell [mailto:graham@editeur.org]
Sent: Friday, May 12, 2017 5:00 AM
To: Tzviya Siegman <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>>; Bill McCoy <bmccoy@w3.org<mailto:bmccoy@w3.org>>
Cc: George Kerscher <kerscher@montana.com<mailto:kerscher@montana.com>>; Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com<mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>>; Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com<mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com>>; Karen Myers <karen@w3.org<mailto:karen@w3.org>>; Luc Audrain <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr<mailto:LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>>; McCloy-Kelley, Liisa <lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com<mailto:lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com>>; Paul Belfanti <Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com<mailto:Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com>>; PBG Steering Committee (Public) <public-publishing-sc@w3.org<mailto:public-publishing-sc@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: late incoming: Publishing@W3C Summit Theme

Chiming in because at EDItEUR, we run a mini-conference during the Frankfurt Book Fair.  I’m also not a huge fan of multi-track, particularly at the scale we’re talking about – obviously it’s different if there are 1000 attendees. But part of a small conference is the ‘shared experience’ and community building, and that disappears if everyone hears a different selection of presentations. And it tends to dissipate any sense of  thematic coherence, even if each ‘track’ appears coherent in isolation.

G

Graham Bell
EDItEUR

On 12 May 2017, at 12:43, Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>> wrote:

Hi All,

I think we are reaching consensus around the idea of a focused theme. We have about 2 days to clean up the wiki and get the word out. We are good at work under pressure ☺

BillK, I hope you’re feeling better soon.

BillM, I had a similar idea, but I didn’t suggest it because I thought it was a little wacky. I’m so glad we agree! I spoke about a similar theme at BiB a few years ago (“The Inadvertent Accessible Content Architect”).

Accessibility, how to do it, why it matters, and how it makes everything better was a huge them at ebookcraft in March. You can watch the videos at [1].

As far as parallel tracks vs plenary – maybe we should just stick with plenary? Parallel tracks is basically planning two (or more) conferences simultaneously. We have been saying that business, tech, etc are merging.  Can we go in with the assumption that people might just be interested in hearing what topics that are slightly beyond their comfort zones have to say? Is the concern that we will be flooded with speakers and be forced into parallel tracks? I will give up my spot to a new speaker, happily. If a topic doesn’t interest someone, s/he will cut out and use the time to network. We want that to happen anyway.

[1] https://booknetcanada.wistia.com/projects/rdm09rsvvx (also catch Dave’s talk about DRM, which is facts, not politics. Should be required viewing for anyone making decisions about DRM.)



Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: Bill McCoy [mailto:bmccoy@w3.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 7:21 PM
To: 'George Kerscher'; 'Bill Kasdorf'; Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken; 'Dave Cramer'
Cc: 'Karen Myers'; 'AUDRAIN LUC'; 'McCloy-Kelley, Liisa'; 'Paul Belfanti'; 'PBG Steering Committee (Public)'
Subject: RE: late incoming: Publishing@W3C Summit Theme

HI BIllK and George,

BillK thanks and I hope you get well and well caught up by next week!

George, personally I think it’s critical that we make a11y a focus for this event. It is one of the key things that already unites EPUB 3 and the rest of the Open Web Platform and to the extent that I see the real underlying theme for the broadest audience as “Beyond PDF”, a11y in the broadest sense (including optimized reading on mobile devices) is a primary driver for the need to go beyond PDF and the paper-replica model for representing content.

This does lead me to a crazy idea about a potential theme. I have always thought of a11y as the mine canary for all kinds of  machine processing, because well-structured content with metadata is much easier to reliably analyze, summarize, etc. I even once gave a Books in Browser talk suggesting we were creating content for machines to read, not humans and arguing that this was a good thing not an Orwellian disaster (despite what Jaron Lanier thinks). Of course the Web also makes Big Data practical and available to all (Ok Google). But this was all well before the current boom in AI. We could have a theme about AI and the future of documents/publications and weave in a11y to that as well as the imperative to move beyond PDF to OWP since it will facilitate content that can be processed reliably and at Web scale and with granularity (vs. PDF, “ the roach motel for data” [1]). And  I know some folks in our world such as Liza Daly have gotten into AI lately. Just an idea…

--BillM

[1] http://www.techradar.com/news/software/pdf-is-where-documents-go-to-die-says-microsoft-exec-1089202


From: George Kerscher [mailto:kerscher@montana.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 2:26 PM
To: 'Bill Kasdorf' <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com<mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>>; 'Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken' <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>>; 'Bill McCoy' <bmccoy@w3.org<mailto:bmccoy@w3.org>>; 'Dave Cramer' <dauwhe@gmail.com<mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com>>
Cc: 'Karen Myers' <karen@w3.org<mailto:karen@w3.org>>; 'AUDRAIN LUC' <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr<mailto:LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>>; 'McCloy-Kelley, Liisa' <lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com<mailto:lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com>>; 'Paul Belfanti' <Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com<mailto:Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com>>; 'PBG Steering Committee (Public)' <public-publishing-sc@w3.org<mailto:public-publishing-sc@w3.org>>
Subject: RE: late incoming: Publishing@W3C Summit Theme

Hi,

I too have been following it all. I alerted the WAI chairs to the coming event. Bill, you will probably be in touch with Judy.

/George



From: Bill Kasdorf [mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 3:08 PM
To: Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>>; Bill McCoy <bmccoy@w3.org<mailto:bmccoy@w3.org>>; 'Dave Cramer' <dauwhe@gmail.com<mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com>>
Cc: 'Karen Myers' <karen@w3.org<mailto:karen@w3.org>>; 'AUDRAIN LUC' <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr<mailto:LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>>; 'McCloy-Kelley, Liisa' <lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com<mailto:lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com>>; 'Paul Belfanti' <Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com<mailto:Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com>>; 'PBG Steering Committee (Public)' <public-publishing-sc@w3.org<mailto:public-publishing-sc@w3.org>>
Subject: RE: late incoming: Publishing@W3C Summit Theme

Hi, folks—

I am even later to this discussion. I’ve been ill the last couple of weeks and struggling to recover (including from a sinus infection) before I get on a plane to London tomorrow. So I have only been able to do what was urgently necessary. I’m even giving a keynote presentation next Wednesday that I’ve hardly begun to prepare. So needless to say, I’ve had to defer looking at this lively thread since it started. (Not to mention hundreds of other emails.)

I have not looked at any of these, but before I leave for London I needed to make sure you didn’t interpret my silence as lack of interest. I don’t want to comment until I’m up to speed with where you’ve been going. Which I’m really sorry about, because as you know I love programming stuff like this and will be very happy to be involved. If there’s something you really need me to look at or weigh in on in the next week please let me know with a “BillK” or something in the subject line so I will respond right away. Otherwise, I will try to catch up on these and many others as I can, but I will be busy with IPTC meetings in London (including BBC) much of the time there.

I should be able to get well caught up the week of the 22nd, but I didn’t want to wait that long to at least touch base. I look forward to joining this discussion when I can. Thanks!

--Bill

Bill Kasdorf

VP and Principal Consultant | Apex CoVantage

p:

734-904-6252  m:   734-904-6252

ISNI: http://isni.org/isni/0000000116490786

ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786?lang=en>


From: Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken [mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 4:25 PM
To: Bill McCoy; 'Dave Cramer'
Cc: 'Karen Myers'; 'AUDRAIN LUC'; 'McCloy-Kelley, Liisa'; 'Paul Belfanti'; Bill Kasdorf; 'PBG Steering Committee (Public)'
Subject: RE: late incoming: Publishing@W3C Summit Theme

Hi Bill,

Apologies for coming late to the game. I love Dave’s idea of reaching out to our proposed audience to ask them what they want to hear. People who are included in the planning are a lot more likely to come and thus more likely to participate. I understand the time constraints though. I am also aware that the conferences we’ve discussed have had full-time staff and larger budgets. We are offering some of our time and experience.

I do think it’s a good idea to focus the meeting. When I’m asked to speak, and the topic is “ebooks”, I don’t know where to start. If I am given a specific topic, I can usually come up with a good proposal. Here are a few ideas:


  *   Decentralizing publishing – working within and without the giants of digital publishing (renaming Dave’s David and Goliath)
  *   The making of a standard and why it matters to publishing (EPUB, (P)WP, ISO)
  *   OpenSource me – is OS relevant to your work? What does it mean to be opensource? Is that different from Open Standards (a personal favorite of mine, given some of the work I’ve been doing at Wiley).

Should I put these ideas on the wiki?

Best,
Tzviya

Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: Bill McCoy [mailto:bmccoy@w3.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 3:58 PM
To: 'Dave Cramer'; Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken
Cc: 'Karen Myers'; 'AUDRAIN LUC'; 'McCloy-Kelley, Liisa'; 'Paul Belfanti'; 'Bill Kasdorf'; 'PBG Steering Committee (Public)'
Subject: RE: late incoming: Publishing@W3C Summit Theme

I should also add that if your issue is really that you think we need a significantly narrower/topical focus for theme than anything that’s been proposed so far, that is something the PBG SC can certainly discuss. That was not the direction we came to in March but IMO there is time to narrow focus if that is what is desired and assuming we think a tighter focus will better achieve our goals. But we would need to agree on a more specific focus ASAP (within 1-2 weeks).

--Bill

From: Bill McCoy [mailto:bmccoy@w3.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 12:51 PM
To: 'Dave Cramer' <dauwhe@gmail.com<mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com>>; 'Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken' <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>>
Cc: 'Karen Myers' <karen@w3.org<mailto:karen@w3.org>>; 'AUDRAIN LUC' <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr<mailto:LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>>; 'McCloy-Kelley, Liisa' <lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com<mailto:lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com>>; 'Paul Belfanti' <Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com<mailto:Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com>>; 'Bill Kasdorf' <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com<mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>>; 'PBG Steering Committee (Public)' <public-publishing-sc@w3.org<mailto:public-publishing-sc@w3.org>>
Subject: RE: late incoming: Publishing@W3C Summit Theme

HI Dave, well we’ve had a draft theme statement for many weeks and now we have an improved one. If we want to start over from scratch with an appeal to the public to help us devise a theme we can do it. But IMO the PBG SC should have decided to do that in March in London. At this late date, with need to announce that an event is happening and open it for registration by June 12, I think with your and Tzivya’s fresh thinking we should instead improve (/redo) the theme we already have been working on and move on to get the event announced and start working on program. I do think a public call for proposals does make sense.

--Bill

From: Dave Cramer [mailto:dauwhe@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 12:37 PM
To: Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken <tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>>
Cc: Bill McCoy <bmccoy@w3.org<mailto:bmccoy@w3.org>>; Karen Myers <karen@w3.org<mailto:karen@w3.org>>; AUDRAIN LUC <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr<mailto:LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>>; McCloy-Kelley, Liisa <lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com<mailto:lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com>>; Paul Belfanti <Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com<mailto:Paul.Belfanti@ascendlearning.com>>; Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com<mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>>; PBG Steering Committee (Public) <public-publishing-sc@w3.org<mailto:public-publishing-sc@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: late incoming: Publishing@W3C Summit Theme

Publishing@W3C is new. We have been blessed with a fresh start. In the spirit of W3C, let's get the community involved in planning the conference.

First, we need a theme, a topic, something more than "this is a digital publishing conference, y'all are interested in digital publishing, you should come." Heck, we could ask  Twitter (and BISG, and existing WG/CG/IGs) what people loved or hated about IDPF/BEA, and what they'd like to see from a P@W3 Summit. We could each send emails to our colleagues asking such questions. How do we find out what would bring Peter or Rena to California? Ask them!

Once we have a theme, let's put out a call for proposals. I'd love to see speakers and panelists I haven't heard before, but just asking the people we already know is guaranteed to result in the usual suspects. This way we get volunteers rather than draftees, and the level of response will give us some information on how much enthusiasm is out there for such a conference.

Dave