OM Project ACM Server Standards Working Group Conf Call

TelVue - see http://telvue.com

RAW NOTES WRITTEN ON-THE-FLY

Below are my raw notes from the Conference Call (Typed during the call, and barely edited). I emailed them to all participants after the call and said that barring any objection, I'd post them here. There has been no objection, so here they are.

HELEN introduces

JESSE. Announced Beta of Shared Server project. Central server that is online. Telvue brought on 5 or so beta customers. Local playback server integrated with Princeton server sharing software. Critical steps on ACM project is other vendors providing 5 beta testers. Need to know: How are stations sharing? What is bandwidth usage? Looking for feedback on metadata. Additional fields. Etc. Really good feedback is coming in from those users who are beta testing. Everything is going well. A few tweaks to the standards already. One of the hot topics: when will the ACM group publish the standard? This will be discussed at the next ACM Standards Working Group meeting in two weeks.

RICH. Have reached out to all other vendors and waiting to get back on beta testing. As was determined. The problem is that it is slow. Decision made early on. Would go into beta testing. Very concerned about embarrassing any of the vendors or having any sort of negative impacts. One of the things discussed among all the vendors. Wanted to be sure when something was rolled out that all vendors were on board. The issue of trying to remain respectful for all the vendors is something the working group had a responsibility to. The vendors have been willing to invest time and money into this project. Don’t want to end up with difficulty as we move the project forward.

HELEN: Intention was always and is that we share these standards so that everyone can use them. That’s correct? Right?

JESSE: Yes.

RICH: Initial intent as far as standards was to get all the vendors on the same page and get that commonality so that we can share with everyone. The hope is that the standards can be used by everyone. We’ve had a number of meetings. We got a lot of feedback that helped to develop those standards and helped to make changes. Now that the beta standard testing is happening, we’re finding a number of tweaks. Because there are so many people involved, it is taking time. We’re being careful that no vendor gets an unfair advantage.

HELEN: My understanding is that we’re speaking of file transfer as well as metadata standards as well.

JESSE: Yes. Those are core. It can also be about APIs. Not sure that all APIs will be useful for other projects necessarily. It is another area that ultimately could develop a set of standards.

HELEN: Let’s hear from channelAustin and DOM, and Kate from UPTV.

KEVIN: Kate is being impacted the most. Leightronix is advertising that they using ACM compliant standards, but won’t tell us what those standards are

STEFAN: (Makes point that some of the standards – i.e. metadata for genre types – are not specific to file sharing and can be developed by wider community. )

JESSE: Whole host of interesting issues. With metadata we picked, PBCore. There is a fair amount of discussion that could be had on that.

KATE: Impact at UPTV. Discussion at Leightronix is fruitful. We’ve come to the point where there is confusion over what can be released.

KEVIN: It is difficult to have these conversations. Who has the Non Disclosure agreement? Between who? Leightronix can’t give out documentation.

JESSE: He knows that the next work group meeting will deal with this. One of the intents of the next meeting. Everyone knows that this is not the best place to talk about it.

STEFAN: Does the non-disclosure agreement detail that media genre type metadata standard proposals cannot be released?

JESSE: There is no formal non-disclosure agreement.

KEVIN: We’ll have an answer on that in a few weeks.

JESSE: We’ll clear that up in two weeks.

KEVIN: Discusses moving files between ACM and OM project. Moving forward, are those conversations going to happen in the open?

JESSE: A lot of conversations still need to happen about genre types, PBCore, licensing issues, etc. That seems to be the core issue. How to get that conversation going?

HELEN: One vehicle for that would be to create a workgroup around that, separate from the ACM Server Standards Work Group.

RICH: The server standards working group that was established didn’t even look to other issues. Other areas. Mainly focused on shared server issues.

STEFAN: I’ve looked at how standards are created and I know that typically there is a public comment period following the release of draft or proposed standards. Will there be a public comment period for ACM standards?

RICH: There is a benefit to public comment period. The document released will be considered a draft.

KEVIN: As far as being open to change, and incorporating recommendations, what organization is going to be in place to approve or ratify changes?

RICH: Changes would go to the working group and go to vendors to talk about feasibility of change.

?: That’s the current structure. Representation on that group?

JESSE: I suggest a broader standards group, with specific sections underneath, dealing with special areas. (I.e. APIs, Metadata, File Sharing, Licensing)

RICH: I don’t want to say that in two weeks we can say that everything is a done deal.

RICH: The working group has already begun the discussion about getting to the point of some of this, at least not all of this, being released.

RICH: Vendors may not be that concerned with metadata, but they have to put those fields in.

RICH: It’s a little delicate in working with them

RICH: (Can speed up the process with ) the pressure that can be brought to bear from people on this call.

JESSE: Server working group . . .

HELEN: Releasing something like a draft will go along way to help us.

STEFAN: Publish on the ACM web site? And make available for public comment and feedback?

HELEN: Something like that.

RICH: Leave up to ACM officers as to how to publish it.

People had to leave. Call ended.