OSLC Communications Workgroup Meeting - 15 September 2011 11am ET

Agenda

1. §Introductions
2. §Discuss and agree workgroup name
3. §Discuss workgroup proposal and agree overall aims and terms of reference for this group
4. §Discuss ideas for types of communications vehicles / topics and decide on actions for the next few months.
5. §Discuss and agree structure/topics for first monthly newsletter
6. §Discuss ideas for webcast / podcast topic
7. §Agree meeting schedule and set date and time for next meeting

Minutes

Attendees:

• Andy Gurd, IBM Rational
• Hope Ruiz, IBM Tivoli
• Kartik Kanakasabesan, IBM Rational
• Rainer Ersch, Siemens Research
• Bob Myers, IBM Rational
• Sean Kennedy, IBM Rational
• Steve Speicher, IBM Rational
• Susan Duncan, Oracle
• Wesley Coelho, Tasktop

Discussions:

• Attendees introduced themselves
• Workgroup Name discussion:
  • Should we have an alternative to 'communications' since this could potentially clash with a future industry domain workgroup?
  • 'Evangelists' and 'Public Relations' were suggested
  • 'Marketing' was ruled out due to not wanting to be seen as 'selling OSLC'
  • We agreed that this was not the highest priority topic and so we'll come back to it if anyone has any additional ideas / strong feelings on the subject. We can continue discussing through the workgroup mail list.
• Purpose/objectives of workgroup (based on Andy's original proposal) discussion:
  • Rainer felt that the focus was 'too technical still'. We shouldn't be focused on communicating within the community about the work of the various technical workgroups but more focused on the wider industry audience.
  • Rainer suggested we create something like the 'Agile Manifesto' for OSLC and promote it widely
  • Kartik suggested we should be focused on what we can do to drive communications of the benefits of OSLC
  • Susan said we need to answer the question 'what are we trying to push'
  • Kartik suggested that we should help customers of lifecycle tools to understand why OSLC is important and why this community has and continues to put so much effort in.
  • Wesley said that Tasktop want to encourage folks to adopt OSLC
  • This discussion concluded with a question from Steve - 'who are we trying to reach'. We agreed that it's important for us to decide who our target audience groups are. We will follow up on this through the mail list and the next meeting.
• Discussion of types of communication we should do:
  • Rainer brought us back to the idea of a manifesto or declaration of openess because of the issue many of us see with people questioning is OSLC really open or is it IBM
  • Kartik suggested a page on open-services.net with that declaration and with digital signatures
  • Rainer said that a page is not enough - we have to publicize it
  • Susan expressed concern about signing because that would require multiple levels of approval in her organization. Saying that they support is ok though and Susan agreed the declaration idea is a good one.
  • Susan said that one way to demonstrate the openness and benefits of OSLC, and to show it's real, would be to have more connectivity and integration between tools produced by those using OSLC - it would be a good start to showing we are open and collaborating on implementation, not just specs
  • Coming back to potential legal issues, Kartik asked what can we do to avoid such issues with companies speaking on webcasts for example on their OSLC involvement or implementation stories.
  • Wesley suggested that if by talking about OSLC, organizations can also include references to their products, this would motivate them to participate.
  • Susan said that when speaking about OSLC herself, she would appreciate some 101 collateral
  • Rainer said that we have the 5 min intro video on open-services.net and that what we do should not get too technical. Details should be left to the technical workgroups. We should concentrate on getting out the higher level message through the video, merchandise, 'manifesto of openness'
  • We ran out of time for further discussion but agreed we need to continue discussing on target audience and types of content and communication mechanisms. We did not have time to set a date and time for a next call, so Andy will propose.