![[Home]](/graphics/kendra-small.gif)
KendraMeeting20070402MinutesAudio: [Part 1]
The following are the initial draft minutes of the meeting and conference held at Muze HQ:
After a late start due in part to the London transport network and in part to technical problems relating to Skype and the planned web-casting system, we eventually got started.
Logistics for June Summit meeting:
The first task of the meeting was to clarify logistics for the 2nd Cross Media summmit in June. The following key decisions were taken in the course of the discussion:
Scope and objectives review:
The next item on the agenda related to defining the scope and objectives for the next Summit meeting and the vision of the Cross Media Metadata effort as a whole. There was general agreement that we would be aiming to capture functional and commercial requirements in addition to building our own infrastructure to support these requirements.
To set the scene, each participant was asked to coin a sentence which summarised what they sought as an outcome of the Summit's work:
MarkStuart? stated, "I want to enable a richer market place for metadata, by enabling metadata producers to work to enrich their metadata repositories with the knowledge that their efforts will be rewarded, that the user-base for their produce will be maximised through the mechanisms created by Kendra, and that the customer is able to "find" relavent metadata from hetrogenous sources with ease. Whatever technical solution is created will represent new infrastructure, based on Open Standards, that integrates disparate metadata sources rather than reinventing the wheel..."
Brenan stated, "The objective should be to add value to content owners and enhance the user experience! By being able to give people access to content they did already know existed..."
<Action> can participants please update the Wiki with their comments
Input via email from ColinMoorcraft? provided a timely reminder that previous work in the area of Kendra Signpost was a strong foundation, or metaphor, from which to build.
ColinMoorcraft?'s [thoughts on the mission]:
For me there are two interesting starting points. The first is the metaphor of the signpost (http://www.kendra.org.uk/wiki/wiki.pl?KendraSignposts), and the second is the metaphor of the Universal Catalogue that featured in the invitation to the recent Summit in London.
I very much like the original signpost idea. For me an interoperable digital media signpost needs to meet the following pointing requirements:
1. Point to an unambiguously identified content item or group of content items. It should do this in a way that recognises that different user communities have different content identification requirements and formats and that no one scheme is going to predominate (think ISANs, UMIDs, ASINs etc.). They have to coexist. A useful signpost will at least provide a universal way of indicating the relevant identification scheme and the issuing authority responsible for a particular identifier (it may also point to documentation on the scheme and to any mapping resources to other schemes).
2. Point to one or more locations where the content item or group of content items can be acquired (or to a location where current content location information can be obtained. In the latter case the content location scheme needs, at the very least, to be identified (e.g. "it's a CRID").
3. Point to one or more locations where a description of the content ("metadata") can be obtained. This is the fun one - no shortage of interoperability challenges! As with content identification, there is a need to, at the very least, identify the content description scheme, the authority responsible for the description and to point to locations of documentation and mapping resources (expect interesting developments here from the EBU...).
The additional requirement that the signpost model be independent of any particular method of expression (e.g. a particular XML or RDF schema) also seems very important. In addition to an implementation-neutral model, it would nonetheless be useful to have some expressions for particular usage domains. These should be 100% in the public domain. I don't think any one of us should spend one minute on coming up with technical and other solutions without first establishing a cast iron IPR regime (try googling "MHP" and "patent" if you're puzzled by this concern).
A catalogue is, at heart, a collection of signposts so I won't say much on the subject for now (except that a Universal Catalogue could only be a distributed, multifarious beast in a networked world (i.e. not one directory on the hard disc of one computer in a bunker somewhere near Omaha). What's needed is a universal framework for digital content signposting and cataloguing.
It could also be that for universal signposting and cataloguing to work there may be a need to establish some enabling infrastructure. A registry and repository (on http://purl.org?) for documentation and mapping resources to enable interoperation between content identification, location and description schemes springs to mind.
It was acknowledged that a pre-canned solution to meeting the requirements was unlikely to exist. A more likely scenario was that multiple implementations of various metadata standards would emerge over the coming years - in addition to those proprietary systems that already exists - that would ultimately complement a "reference implementation" of the new infrastructure created by the Kendra community. Indeed competative implementations of the new infrastructure envisaged are expected to emerge that leverage the underlying strengths of different environments e.g. traditional server environments like Google, distributed platforms such as DNS, and next generation P2P overlay systems and networks.
Consensus was reached: whatever reference implementation may emerge from Kendra's work, it would be decentralised and distributed in nature.
Discussed moved to consider whether Kendra was structure to support creation of a new open standard. Issues of compliance testing were discussed and the need for an authority to exist to award logos for compliant products and services was proposed. DanielHarris suggested that market forces would determine the need a logo and compliance scheme at a later date and as such the issue could be shelved for the time being.
Review of some key related industry activities:
The last part of the meeting considered other activities happening in industry and their relationship to Kendra. Noone wanted to embark on a project which duplicated the work that already existed.
BrendonKenny introduced the work of the JuP? (Joined up PVR) group, describing their objectives as enabling the implementation and usage of Micro Navigation . JuP? enable various stakeholders to cooperate and ease the creation of segmentation and other "Micro" metadata. BrendonKenny emphasised the synergy with Kendra 's metadata vision. The JuP? community was understood to be just another community of metadata players whose output could be discovered in an open standard way via the new infrastructure to be created by the Kendra group. In other words, a signpost could exist that directs a client/application to the Micro Navigation as just one form of enhanced metadata for the content concerned.
On the subject of the Digital Media Project, GordonRae agreed with MarkStuart?'s concerns that there was significant overlap in vision and concerns between the work of DMP and Kendra. It was agreed that Kendra must consider this in greater depth, that DMP should be added to the KendraOutreach section of the Wiki and their key representatives be invited to the table at the next Summit meeting in order duplication of work or purpose within the respective organisations.
Next, MarkStuart? described the formation of the P2P-Next project as a next generation P2P streaming platform with sophisticated metadata and recommendation capabilities. MarkStuart? claimed that P2P-Next could be an excellent vehicle/platform for the reference implementation of whatever system of metadata linkage is becomes the outcome the Summit's work.
Actions:
Attendees included: