Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] (1)(f) and (1)(g) -- audience and working language

["Sam Johnston" <samj@samj.net>]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 4:20 PM, <robert_weir@us.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> "Sam Johnston" <samj@samj.net> wrote on 06/11/2008 09:57:16 AM:
>
> > Hi Rob,
> >
> > There have been a few suggestions already for 1f in the wiki - so
> > far Vendors, Integrators, Users, Customer Groups (see http://
> > sites.google.com/a/odfiic.org/tc/Home/tc-charter/anticipated-audience).
> >
>
> Great.  So combined with what David sent, we have:
>
> 1) Vendors
> 2) Integrators
> 3) Users
> 4) Customer groups
> 5) Purchasers of software or services

Do we need to differentiate between 'users' and 'purchasers' given
their wants & needs are well aligned? Then again at the individual end
of the scale you want to know about individual features (eg print to
pdf) and layout integrity but as you are buying for more and more
people (eg companies, countries) you get more and more interested in
conformance & interop; maybe they are in fact different groups... IS
people probably fall in the latter group too.

Also customer/consumer groups should probably include competition
authorities (eg EU Competition Commissioner, ACCC in Australia, etc.).
Perhaps we could/should prioritise these groups too?

> We'll need to make this a bit crisper, but let's identify the main categories and then we can wordsmith.

How about something like this? Are there others? We could offer an
explanation of each as well.

1> Vendors
2> Integrators
3> Users
4> Purchasers
5> Authorities

> I think I'd add:
>
> 6) Third-party certification labs

An interesting point - they are likely to be more interested in
quantitative outputs than the other groups.

> Any others?  In particular, would conformity assessment documents, etc., be of use to government, to ICT policy makers, etc., or do they think of conformance and interoperability as merely a detail to be left to vendors to sort out?

It seems likely there will be increasing involvement from these
groups, particularly around 'proving' a standard rather than accepting
it for face value. Making this task easier for them is arguably a
noble cause.

> > Presumably 1g refers to a 'natural language', in which case US
> > English seems the obvious choice (presumably this should be the same
> > as the ODF TC).
>
> I'm not sure if the question is referring to the language of our formal output, or the language used in our conference calls and mailing list.
>
> I think our formal outputs should be in US English, but for the mailing list and phone calls, any form of English should be fine.

Ok so what is in place for ODF and other similar groups? Locking it
down to 'US English' in light of the formal outputs and tolerating a
few s's and z's could be the best option, or simply specify 'English'?

Sam