Webinar and PR update/plan

[Diane Jordan <drj@us.ibm.com>]

Resending with formatting corrected.
 

Interested parties stayed on after the Jan 10 TC call to discuss BPEL webinar
and other PR possibilities.  Attendees were Dieter, Danny Alex, Mark,
Frank, Ivana.   To refresh everyone's memories, here are my notes
from the pr discussion on the TC call:  best timing for a webinar
would be in March to help stimulate the vote for approval as an OASIS standard,
technology used is GoToMeeting, presentation and voice are supported (no
video), max of 2-3 speakers works best.  Dee needs an abstract to
start the process for scheduling and announcing.  Other opportunities
for demo's/interop exist (she's sent a note to the list with some specifically).
 She described a demo as multiple products demonstrating how they
conform to the standard for example, picking a common theme or problem
and showing how each vendor's implementation supports it.  At the
upcoming OASIS symposium, Charlton will provide a lightening round.  (We
got a couple abstracts to the board members on Jan 10, but since we missed
the Jan 5 deadline, we did not get a place on the agenda.)  We should
also consider setting up a bpel.xml.org web page which would provide static
facts about the standard as well as dynamic areas for people to post information,
blogs, wiki's and forums.  A press release will be scheduled when
the vote for approval comes up.   

On the post TC call, we decided to focus mainly on plans for a webinar.
 We felt there were two distinct audiences that might be interested
and drafted separate outlines for each.  I will check with Dee on
whether she'd agree to allowing 2 BPEL webinars.  On the call Jan
17, we will finalize our thinking on these abstracts and get them out for
review on the Jan 24 TC call.  If all goes well, we should have abstracts
to Dee after that meeting.  We'll also need to decide who will present
what parts of each webinar.   

The two outlines are:   
What is BPEL for an audience of developers,
architects, etc:  (Dieter offered his existing presentation which
was given at a European OASIS event last fall as a starting point for this
webinar).   
-  architectural concepts on which
BPEL is based 
-  language constructs 
-  advanced features (eg, partner
links) 
-  changes in v 2.0 
-  how BPEL fits with web services
standards 
-  status of the specification

How BPEL can be used for an audience
of business analysts, CTO's, etc:   (John volunteered to provide a
starting point presentation for this webinar).   
-  business problems addressed
by BPEL 
-  scenarios for usage 
-  how bpel relates to other BPM
standards 
-  role of BPEL as an orchestration
language within the full range of BPM solutions 
-  status of the specification


There was interest in exploring whether enough TC members would be willing
to support the type of demo's that Dee and Carol described.  We talked
about putting together a set of possiblities to consider that would include
the minimum we'd want to show as well as increasing possibilities.  Here
are the initial thoughts we mentioned:   
-  2 or more BPEL implementations
(more the better) 
-  WS BPEL 2.0 implementations
- at least  defined as not using 1.1 elements that have been removed
up through utilizing new 2.0 functions   
-  running the same scenario with
same results next to each other -> running portions of a scenario on
each implementation -> dynamically changing the implementation running
different steps of the scenario

I will send a separate email to the
TC to see if there is enough interest in working on this.   

Regards, Diane
IBM  Emerging Internet Software Standards
drj@us.ibm.com
(919)254-7221 or 8-444-7221, Mobile: 919-624-5123, Fax 845-491-5709