[humanmarkup] Minutes of October 17, 2001 TC Meeting

October 17, 2001
Teleconference meeting of the OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Committee
USA Toll-Free Call-In Number: 888-847-6588
USA Toll Call-In Number +1-312-4707041

Roll Call:
Voting Members:

Rob Nixon
Rex Brooks
Joseph Norris
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga

Prospective Members:
Henrik Brameus

Inclusion of Henrik Brameus, whose date for 60 days since his announced intent of joining the TC would be Oct. 23, 2001 from the Aug. 24, 2001 date of his email to Ranjeeth constitutes a quorum for the purpose of holding this meeting, subject to approval of the minutes of this meeting by subsequent vote of the TC.

Minutes taken by TC Secretary Rex Brooks

Meeting convened12:05 p.m. Eastern Time

Rob Nixon synopsized his efforts at organizing the proposal for a Virtual Reality and Artifical Intelligence Subcommittee. He has undertaken a comprehensive survey of currently used techniques for Artificial Intelligence Studies and Experiments. He will report on this survey with a recommendation of the eight to twelve techniques which he deems as most suitable for inclusion in our work creating the Human Markup Language Specification. In separate correspondence he has arranged with Rex Brooks, for Rex to undertake the assignment of reporting on the needs and requirements for accommodating Virtual Reality as currently constituted by ISO Standards such as VRML97, its proposed successor, X3D, and various proprietary formats for representation of 3D on the web and including multimedia and streaming technologies and standards such as SMIL.

Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga gave a brief report on the Universal Access, Collaboration Expedition Workshop #7 held October 16, 2001at National Science Foundation, Stafford II Building, Room 515, 4121 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA, just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., at which he spoke on behalf of our TC and the HumanMarkup concept. He was busy with another meeting to which he had been invited by Owen Ambur, the co-chair of the xml.gov working group, so his full report will have to be made later.

Joseph Norris gave a brief report on his work in organizing the effort to form a Subcommittee for creating a more extensive version of the HumanML_Write application he has written. His efforts have also identified the need for cross-pollenation from numerous sources for determining areas HumanMarkup can address. In this context, a proposal for an End-User survey to identify needs and requirements such as we are currently conducting for VR_AI, Physical Description, and other areas was brought up, and Joe was volunteered for the task, which he graciously accepted.

Here is the proposal I submitted to Ranjit and wasn't sure on time lines, as timelines depend a lot on workforce we have to move this forward and I see only you interested. In any case here is the draft of the proposal.

Purpose: Develop, design and provide specifications for Physical Markup Language. Much as the Markup Languages has standardized the way in which information is presented on the Internet, PML will be designed to standardize description of physical characteristics of humans. PML is a subset of HumanML and through markup language concept provides communication medium for end users and software community to exchange information. Primary objective is to provide a common medium specification for software to communicate physical characteristics. Goal here is enhance, unify, and provide a uniform common language for exchange of physical characteristics of humans, both visible and invisible, which help us identify them uniquely.

Scope: As uniquely identified by the goals of HumanML and PML (a sub set of HumanML) are almost same with exception of the fact that PMLís primary focus is on Physical Human Characteristics both visible and invisible, often missed or overlooked. Within the scope of this will include markup definition for taxonomy of characteristics, specifications, ontologyís and APIís (?) to implement them.

Examples: Some examples of PML are color of hair and eyes, types of eyes, nature of forehead (low, narrow, high, broad), eyebrows (thin, thick, connected, broken, etc.), Cheekbones, mouth, facial form, chin etc. Each physically visible feature has types associated with each and each type has specific characteristics.

End---

I am still to make sure that if I provide any deadlines, they are met and respected. I don't intend to just dump some deadlines and then not be able to meet them. I am looking at May2002 to complete the "Human Physical Characteristic Markup Language" if anybody has any ideas or other dates, I would love to see them.

Start official discussions & work 01 November 2001
Schema -- 31st Dec 2001
Basic Vocabulary -- 31st Dec 2001
Advanced Vocabulary -- 31st March
Do some presentations & educations to government bodies, UN, DoD etc regarding benefits & use of HPCML. -- Ongoing
Set of first draft of draft of API's -- 1st June 2002
More will come!

Rex Brooks chose to include this because the chances are very good that it would have been attended to by Ranjeeth, had our TC Meeting timing not coincided with two other meetings requiring travel time where it was very important for us as a group to have been represented. These things happen and some allowances need to be made, among them not injuring ourselves by holding up important work due to messages being missed by hours, as opposed to days or weeks.

It was important to give ourselves a quorum by including Henrik and it is important for us welcome the contribution proposed by Sudhakar. This was accomplished without dissent as were all votes.

The concludes the synopsis from our members which was Item I on Ranjeeth's agenda.

Because he was in another meeting and there was a tremendous amount of static, Ranjeeth asked Rex to continue the meeting in his absence, which we did.

Putting flexibility forward, we voted at this point to table reports on Deliverables, considering and seating the Subcommittees with their chairs for Physical Description and RDF, but we voted to consistitute and seat with their chairs, the HumanML_Write Subcommittee and the Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence Subcommittee. Rob Nixon is the chair of the VR-AI Subcommittee and Joseph Norris is the chair of the HumanML_Write Subcommittee. It is suggested that they familiarize themselves with the OASIS guidelines for this activity included in the TC Guidelines.

We voted subsequently to allow the TC to conduct official business by vote on the TC Mailing List. This will allow us to take up the Physical Markup Language Subcommittee Proposal by Sudhakar Gorti, and the RDF Core work proposed by Manos Batsis as the foundation for an RDF Subcommittee. Although it was not included in Ranjeeth's agenda there is a possibility of (Rex's idea only at this point) forming an XML Schema Subcommittee to work with Len Bullard as the Invited Expert who has accepted the idea of heading up this effort, at least in principle. We would still need an official OASIS chairperson, I think, although I'm not sure this is absolutely necessary. Note: It is not specified in the Guidelines, but an Invited Expert is specifically not allowed to vote.

Because Kurt Cagle was not available, Item III, Discussion List Posts, was tabled for later. Because Ranjeeth, who has done the initial work, was absent by then, Item IV, Membership and Database was likewise tabled; as was Item V, Project Plan Review. Likewise, Kurt's absence precluded taking up Item VI, Status of Documents.

However, Item VII, Organizational Recommendations turned up a couple of obvious conclusions:

1) Attendance at our monthly meetings needs to be encouraged. How is a good question and this is now open for discussion.

In the meantime, we have enabled TC List votes, subject to a motion to accept these Minutes either by vote on the list, which could be challenged, or by vote at the next monthly meeting, which could not be challenged. So in a separate post, someone other than the writer must propose a formal motion to accept these minutes, at least provisionally until next month's regularly scheduled meeting. This is hereby requested.

2) Likewise this needs to be improved, and some measures need to be suggested in implemented to allow for rapid collaboration. This is currently possible only through the as yet untested ftp facilities of OASIS, which currently would have to be conducted through Ranjeeth, Kurt, Rex or Joe as the only members with access. There are some avenues we can take, but we must ensure that there is no conflict with OASIS policy.

New Business:

At this point in the meeting we had ample time left on our conference call to consider some new business and general discussion.

We queried Henrik on the area he was most interested in working. He said he was interested in RDF, and since he is in Amsterdam, he is in a position to work with Manos somewhat more easily and conveniently that we stateside members can, and so this seems to be a good fit.

It was also asked, in a general way, what areas he was interested in, and Henrik mentioned that origianlly, back in the early days of the HumanMarkup Yahoo Group List, he had discussed with Randall Schwartz, on the founders and architects with Larry Ball of PERL, the need for a way to filter or channel email in a more advanced way than is currently available, and HumanMarkup was one of the things that came up as a vehicle for that. This was explored, and it was suggested that this idea be explored further. We hope to see some discussion on this in somewhat greater detail on the TC and Public Comments List.

Rob Nixon mentioned the idea of creating a facility to markup streaming protocols with captions in flight, so to speak, to add context, and to make this a facility that the receivers of streams could do for themselves as well as allowing moderators or originators to markup streams.

These ideas both deserve further comment that is probably inappropriate here.

Please the editorial license the writer, your TC Secretary and Webmaster has taken here. Future minutes will be brief and to the point, as much as possible.

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