RE: funding for EPUB training (and bigger question about funding for EPUB 3 ecosystem)

Hello all,
 
I feel that Publishing at the W3C should be able to solicit  non-profit
funds for the industry. I would love to see a mechanism for money to be
earmarked for publishing and receive a charitable donation for gifts. The SC
should be in a position to manage these funds. One would think that under
MIT and the other associated organizations that this could be done. Perhaps
this is an activity under the Web Foundation, which I think was founded
about 8 years ago?
 
Perhaps the existing Web foundation could be a source for the most essential
work?
 
I would put epubcheck as the first priority for our fund raising efforts.
The W3C maintains an HTML validation tool, and epubcheck  amounts to the
same fundamental tool supporting publishing at the W3C.
 
Thoughts?
 
Best
George
 
From: Bill McCoy [mailto:bmccoy@w3.org] 
Sent: Friday, September 22, 2017 10:02 AM
To: public-publishing-sc@w3.org
Cc: 'Karen Myers' <karen@w3.org>; 'Bernard Gidon' <bgidon@w3.org>; 'Brian
O'Leary' <brian@bisg.org>
Subject: funding for EPUB training (and bigger question about funding for
EPUB 3 ecosystem)
 
Hi,
 
There has been a discussion among BillK and others from BISG and several W3C
folks including Bernard Gidon (cc:ed) about how to move forward with EPUB
online training building on the (originally from MIT) edX MOOC platform that
W3C is using for other training [1] . BISG has developed some EPUB training
modules already and so the idea is (as best I understand it) to adapt this
to the MIT/W3C platform. BISG has generously offered to contribute its IP
and resources to this but can't afford to do it all and there is an "ask" of
$60K to $80K for funding to do the development.
 
So the proximate reason for this email is to ask the PBG Steering Committee
to see if we can help in identifying one or more sponsor(s) (who could
receive attribution etc.) for this work.

Stepping back though it seems to beg the question about what are the
priorities for investing to support maintenance and expansion the EPUB 3
ecosystem. Because we have at least two other areas also looking for funding
of a similar order of magnitude: EPUBCheck development including upgrading
to EPUB 3.1, and EPUBTest ongoing support. Both involve BISG as well in some
respects, especially the latter of course. 
 
And if we can't find the funds to upgrade EPUBCheck to EPUB 3.1 then what
will the training cover - EPUB 3.0.1, so we are rolling out brand new
training on an obsolete version of EPUB 3?  Or EPUB 3.1 but minus any
validator so the training is crippled? It seems to me that we would be
putting the cart before the horse to resolve this training issue until we
resolve the issue about EPUB 3.1 (promote - which means we MUST have
EPUBCheck support and definitely SHOULD have EPUBTest support - or give up).

Overall it seems critical to me that W3C be seen as a bona fide conservator
and promoter of EPUB 3 even as we accelerate work on PWP/EPUB4. IF EPUB 3
becomes perceived as "abandonware" it will be a big black eye for W3C and,
IMO, threaten the migration of publishing technology to the Open Web
Platform for which EPUB 3 is a key steppingstone.
 
So it feels to me that the PBG (led by its SC) should be wrestling with
these three things together, even if it seems a bit daunting to consider if
and how to gather $200K in resources for three things if we are struggling
to find $60K-$80K for one of them.

Thoughts?
 
--Bill
 
[1] https://www.edx.org/school/w3cx