Re: Will your Community Group meet during TPAC 2016?

As a “lurker” on this list, but one very committed to trying to incorporate the Schema.org model into our developments, I want to thank you for such a thorough and useful framing of the challenge.  Your list of the other groups, and your familiarity with the broader W3C efforts are very helpful.  Thank you for what you are adding to the community.


> On Mar 30, 2016, at 9:23 AM, Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com> wrote:
> 
> On 29 March 2016 at 22:49, Alexandre Bertails <bertails@apple.com> wrote:
>> All,
>> 
>> I was wondering if there was any interest in meeting at TPAC 2016 (see below for more information).
>> 
>> I personally think it would be a great idea to meet in person and make some progress on the many pending issues and PR that we currently have. TPAC is also a good opportunity for reaching out to a larger community. Also, it looks like a lot of people are talking about tooling, which is a great interest of mine.
>> 
>> I work on www.apple.com, and like many websites, a struggle of ours is to deal with all the Structured Data approaches. So I was also curious to see if there was interest in a more general discussion around standardizing those Structured Data approaches, likely around Schema.org as that's where we see the most traction.
>> 
>> We have basically 2 weeks to make a decision and bring it to the W3C.
> 
> I've mixed feelings about this. As Shane and Charles have noted, it
> can be a crazy busy week already for people deeply involved in full
> W3C Working Group efforts. However, Community Groups are increasingly
> important in the W3C environment and it is great that CGs are now
> invited to participate at TPAC. For those of you on the list
> unfamiliar with TPAC, this is W3C's annual face to face event in which
> Working Group (and other) meetings are physically co-located for a
> week, giving people a chance to get to know each other better, and for
> groups to work on collaborative, cross-cutting issues to increase the
> overall coherence of the Web standards environment.
> 
>> From a broader W3C perspective, having Community Groups involved at
> TPAC is a very positive thing. At the Chairs Breakfast meeting during
> last year's TPAC I argued for greater inclusion of Community Group
> chairs and participants within W3C activities. There are now a large
> number of CGs across many topics, and everything we can do to
> encourage grassroots coordination and communication amongst these
> groups, and between these groups and the more heavyweight full Working
> Groups is super valuable.
> 
> All that said, there are two big factors that diminish the usefulness
> of a Schema.org CG meeting at TPAC 2016.
> 
> 1.) "W3C insiders" at TPAC are often incredibly busy already, and
> finding time for an "optional" topical meeting like this can be
> difficult.
> 2.) Many / most members of this (and related CGs) do not have the
> funding to travel to Lisbon, Portugal for in-person meetings.
> 
> The schema.org CG (https://www.w3.org/community/schemaorg/) has 209
> members. Other schema.org-related CGs include
> https://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/ (104 participants),
> https://www.w3.org/community/schema-course-extend/# (35),
> https://www.w3.org/community/gao/ (53),
> https://www.w3.org/community/schemed/ (30),
> https://www.w3.org/community/architypes/ (53),
> https://www.w3.org/community/tourismdata/ (23),
> https://www.w3.org/community/fibo/ (28),
> https://www.w3.org/community/sport-schema/ (15), and even
> https://www.w3.org/community/meat/ (7)...
> 
> Part of the value of W3C's community groups mechanism (and similarly
> use of Github) is that they can have broad reach into the wider world
> - sports, archives, finance, education, tourism, even meat! For a
> project like schema.org which is all about describing things, this is
> essential. However as we look beyond the core Web standards scene we
> need also to remember that many important contributions come from
> participants who don't have the luxury of an employer who'll cover
> airfares and hotels for a week of meetings.
> 
> In this context, I do think we should book a TPAC 2016 slot for the
> Schema.org CG, but that we owe it to the vast majority who won't be
> able to attend, to present it as a meeting for and about the
> Schema.org CG but one that will likely only have a small number of its
> members participating.
> 
> * I'd suggest (without having yet consulted the other CG chairs) that
> a single TPAC CG meeting around schema.org would be preferable to
> having 10+ different meetings for the various schema.org-related CGs
> listed above
> * That the spirit of the event is "for those who are attending TPAC
> anyway, or quite likely to for other reasons", rather than "A
> must-attend meeting for anyone involved at schema.org"
> * It looks like the offer to CGs is that we can have (several?) 2h
> meeting slots. I'd suggest we do something like a couple of mornings
> (2x 2 slots) if available, one focussed on specific schema topics, the
> other on broader issues that take advantage of likely attendees e.g.
> publisher/webmaster experience with these technologies, or the
> relationship between microdata/rdfa/json-ld with Web Components.
> 
> How does that sound?
> 
> Just to share some past experience, back in 2013 -
> http://blog.schema.org/2013/10/schemaorg-at-iswc-2013-conference.html
> -  we rented an informal "schema.org" room at ISWC, the Semantic Web
> conference, alongside the many existing events at the conference. It
> was not heavily used, but it did provide a way for several of us to
> get together and finalize some tricky details around improvements to
> the TV and Radio schemas - something that was proving difficult via
> email/wiki alone. At the larger original kickoff event for schema.org
> back in 2011 there were some useful presentations (archived here,
> http://schema.org/docs/kickoff.html ) but during the discussion
> sessions essentially what happened was that the Web technology
> standards people went off into a nerdy huddle and debated
> RDFa-versus-Microdata-versus-Microformats etc., while publishers and
> domain experts were left somewhat on their own. I hope whatever we do
> we can find a balance that makes the best of everyone's time...
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Dan
> 
> p.s. Eric (https://www.w3.org/People/Eric/ , cc'd) at W3C also
> mentioned that the recent activity around medical/health vocabulary
> within schema.org has raised some interest (and concerns) from the
> Healthcare and Lifesciences group
> (https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-semweb-lifesci/2016Mar/)
> so there might be useful conversations to be had there too.
> 
>> Best,
>> Alexandre
>> 
>>> On Mar 7, 2016, at 12:30 PM, Coralie Mercier <coralie@w3.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> As we announced in January [1], the Community Groups will have the possibility to meet during TPAC2016 which will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, at the Centro de Congresos de Lisboa [2]
>>> 
>>>  TPAC 2016
>>>  19 - 23 September 2016
>>>  Lisbon, Portugal
>>>  https://www.w3.org/2016/09/TPAC/
>>> 
>>> We ask you to start discussions to determine whether and when your Community Group(s) would like to meet during this week.
>>> 
>>> Please complete the following questionnaire by 15 April 2016:
>>>  https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/1/CGsTPAC2016/
>>> 
>>> W3C Community Groups can hold 2-hour meetings on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.
>>> The Available solts will be:
>>> 
>>> 8:30 - 10:30
>>> 10:30 - 12:30
>>> 13:30 - 15:30
>>> 15:30 - 17:30
>>> 
>>> We will be able to accommodate 4 meetings per day, so 16 over the entire TPAC week.
>>> 
>>> Outside of their Community Group meetings, non W3C-Member CG participants may attend as observers the Working and Interest groups meetings who accept observers, as well as the Technical Plenary Day will be held on 21 September from 08:30-18:00.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> There will be an early-bird registration fee of EUR 90 per day to defray a portion of the meeting costs.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> The draft schedule of Community Groups meetings will be sent to you on 25 April 2016. You will have the possibility to review the information and let us know your questions and comments on Thursday 5 May at the latest.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> If you have any questions, please contact <w3t-tpregister@w3.org>.
>>> 
>>> For the W3C TPAC 2016 Meeting Team;
>>> Coralie Mercier, Head of W3C Marketing & Communications
>>> 
>>> [1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-council/2016Jan/0003.html
>>> [2] http://www.lisboacc.pt/portal/ccl
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Coralie Mercier  -  W3C Marketing & Communications -  http://www.w3.org
>>> mailto:coralie@w3.org +336 4322 0001 http://www.w3.org/People/CMercier/
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 

mike ozburn
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