Future of Interoperability Standards Meeting 2010

Tagging:
 * Twitter #cetisfis hashtag.
 * Blogging and del.icio.us tag cetis-fis.

Reports and Reflections on the event
Li Yuan (CETIS) has created a combined summary of the meeting and overview of the issues it discussed. This provides some of the background to the discussion and approaches it from the point of view of someone who is not "in the trenches". It is available in two formats:
 * "Future of Interoperability Standards" in Open Document Format (17kB)
 * "Future of Interoperability Standards" in PDF (89kB)

Blog Posts arising from the meeting:
 * Brian Kelly
 * Erik Duval
 * Adam Cooper

Draft summary of cetisfis, created immediately following the meeting.

Report in Ariadne by Sarah Currier

Position Papers
Participants are invited to submit brief position papers ahead of the meeting for consideration and discussion at the meeting; this is intended to enable us to focus less on presentations and have more time for discussion.

You can submit papers directly by email to scott.bradley.wilson@gmail.com


 * Collaboration between open, informal specification communities and the formal standards world: the role of the Open Web Foundation agreements Scott Wilson
 * Standards Experience - IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability Chuck Severance
 * Issues With Open Source and Standards Chuck Severance
 * Development of standards Erlend Øverby
 * [[media:Best of Both Worlds.doc |The Best of Both Worlds: Formal Public Standardisation and Open Community Development]] (MS Word) Adam Cooper
 * Developing Semantic-Web-friendly specifications Simon Grant
 * An Opportunities and Risks Framework For Standards Brian Kelly
 * [[Media:DahnJISC.pdf | Supporting the Take-up of Specifications with Application Profiles and Conformance Testing]] Ingo Dahn
 * If we are concerned with what we standardise we should be able to describe it for people to understand Tore Hoel
 * [[Media:Stracke.pdf | Categories and Purposes of (e-Learning) Standards:  The Need for Harmonization of Interoperability and Quality Development]] Christian Stracke
 * An agile approach to the development of Dublin Core Application Profiles Paul Walk
 * [[Media:adl.pdf | Standards and SCORM: Maturity, Adoption, Process]] Dan Rehak
 * [[Media:Saltisletsi.pdf | SALTIS & LETSI position paper]] Crispin Weston and Avron Barr
 * [[Media:MakingSenseOfElearningStds.pdf | Making Sense of the State of e-Learning Standards Developments: A Personal View ]] Andy Heath
 * [[Media:Future_of_standards.doc | Future of Standards]] Bernard Blandin
 * [[Media:Currier_Educational_Metadata_Standards_Position_Paper.doc | Educational Metadata Standards]] Sarah Currier
 * [[Media:Miguel.doc | What is the role of standards to facilitate authoring of educational material?]] Miguel Rodriguez Artacho
 * The Future of Interoperability Standards... Steve Lay
 * Standards, Profiles, Interoperability – Some Notes from the Front Adrian Stevenson
 * On the Role of Technical Standards for Learning Technologies Erik Duval

Notes from plenary
)
 * Transparency +5 Quality, Inclusiveness
 * IP and Licensing
 * Reference implementations and tool support +2 tool support
 * Written for implementation - improved usability
 * Balance abstract and long term stds versus concrete, implementation-ready specs +3 (treat appropriately, and make sure policy makers understand the difference; specs short-term and fail fast, standards need *longevity - should anything in our space really be a standard yet?)
 * No more standards yet as the sector is not mature enough
 * Better connections between standards +5 integration "middleware"
 * Better connections with other standards areas such as ebusiness (less special dev)
 * More join up of industry and academia in stds (industry drivers)
 * Adoption +3
 * More effective use of limited resources and less fragmentation +2
 * Better connection between standards and policy makers
 * Continuous development and support for stds after they are ratified
 * Funding +1 industry should participate in spec dev on own budget
 * Visioning - common envisioning +2 shared conceptual model
 * Better requirements analysis
 * Better understanding of adoption dynamics including 'worse is better' +2 e.g. accept Good Enough - ebXML vs SOAP vs REST...)
 * Failing well and failing fast +4 not being able to replace standards when done, prevent innovation; fail criteria as well as success criteria needed (fail, success, slow-burner, recognize negative benefits (what they prevent as much as what they achieve)
 * Take small steps - don't wait to build the whole thing (IETF model)
 * Trusted governance

Agenda
10.00 - 10.30 Coffee and registration

10.30 - 10.45 Round table introductions: who are you, who do you represent, why are you here, what’s your background in all this?

10.45 - 11.00 Introduction, aims and objectives - Adam Cooper, CETIS Director

11.00 - 12.00 Plenary discussion: What would you most like to improve about interoperability standards in education?

12.00 - 13.00 Group activity: How can the relationship between formal and informal standards bodies address the issues identified in the plenary discussion? What are the potential benefits of involving informal standards development initiatives in the system. Can you identify ways forward from the position papers. Each group to identify the following and produce a single statement of agreement: The final output should be a concise statement that the whole group subscribes to.
 * Opportunities for improvement
 * Barriers that have to be overcome
 * Potential solution.

13.00 - 14.00 Lunch

14.00 - 15.00 Plenary synthesis of group statements:
 * Identify agreed statements.
 * Identify those that could be developed to a point of consensus.
 * Reject and document those that can not be agreed on at present.

15.00 - 16.00 What next? What activities would it be useful for CETIS to facilitate? E.g. bi-partisan meetings, spec development work, potential future meetings.

(On the previous day, CETIS are hosting the 40th meeting of the CEN WS-LT.)

Task

 * How can the relationship between formal and informal standards bodies address the issues identified in the plenary discussion?
 * What are the potential benefits of involving informal standards development initiatives in the system?
 * Can you identify ways forward from the position papers?

Identify the following and produce a single statement of agreement:
 * Opportunities for improvement
 * Barriers that have to be overcome
 * Potential solutions

The final output should be a concise statement that the whole group subscribes to.