RE: [humanmarkup] Minutes of October 17, 2001 TC Meeting

[Manos Batsis <m.batsis@bsnet.gr>]

I fully accept and support the decisions that took place in the meeting,
as reported below.

Kindest regards,

Manos


-----Original Message-----
From: Rex Brooks [mailto:rexb@starbourne.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 2:35 AM
To: humanmarkup@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [humanmarkup] Minutes of October 17, 2001 TC Meeting


Hi all,


I will add a link to this post on the TC website this weekend. Oct
20-21, 2001.





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.

Rex Brooks mentioned that we have not yet heard from Sudhakar Gorti on
the proposal he voiced in the previous TC meeting for proposing a
Physical Markup Language as a subset of the Human Markup Language which
we have been referring to as the Physical Description Subcommittee. This
situation changed later in the day when a message in reply to a personal
message sent Oct. 16, 2001 was received with a copy of the proposal
which was sent to Ranjeeth after Ranjeeth left for Washington, D.C. and
which is copied here:

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!

Concerns: One of my major concerns is getting it out to people in
outside world, about its significance, use and benefits. How to go about
doing that?

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.

We then ran out of time and adjourned the meeting without dissent.
--

Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request