[aaloa promoters] Preparing a Joint announcement with the OpenURC community

[Joe Gorman]

Dear all,

I have read the proposed statements about URC/AALOA.

I support the idea that the tow organisations should seek to co-operate while at the same time each having their "own" field of activity.

However, I am a bit concerned that the existing wording is not clear enough.  I found I had to read it several times, and in the end was not quite sure where the boundaries would be.

Some specific issues:

1.  It says "URC will focus on....".  URC has existed for a long time, and a lot of people know it.
       When you use the word "will", as future tense, it raises a question about whether URC is now going to change direction.
      Is that the case?  I am not sure.

2.  Use of the word "focus".  I have learned that this word can sometimes be imprecise.  Does it mean "will spend most if its efforts
       working on - but still be allowed to do other things" (in the same way that when you "focus" on something in a photograph, the other
       elements are still visible, even if a bit fuzzy)  OR does it mean "will work on this and nothing else"?
       I feel unsure which is meant in the context of this message.

3.  Both say "it will rely on.... standards".   This may just be an issue of the use of English:  "rely" gives the strong impression that URC and AALOA will
      have to hope that other people develop then needed standards.  Is that what is meant?

So, even though the parties involved may have a clear idea what they mean, I fear that an "outsider" reading this will still be unsure of where the boundary is.

JOE





On 27/09/2010 01:07 , "Francesco Furfari" <francesco.furfari at isti.cnr.it> wrote:

  Dear All,

 I have a question of interest for the temporary governing board of AALOA and all the promoters.
 I will call a vote on that, so I kindly ask all the promoters to read carefully the content of this message,
 and to post here any doubt about this operation. Below you find also my personal comments

 At the AAL Forum,  Antonio Kung, Stefano Chessa, me and Jan Alexandersson ( Head AAL Competence Center
 DFKI GmbH)   had an interesting discussion about a joint announcement to publish during the MonAMI workshop
 at the 5th European Conference on Smart Sensing and Context (14-16 Nov, Passau, Germany)

 You can read the story in the attached message, but for your convenience below there is the agreed statement
 ---------------------



(1) As an initiative for the building of an open source accessibility framework, OpenURC will focus on features for personalised and accessible user interfaces. This involves discovery of devices and targets, and flexible deployment and management of adaptors. It will rely on the specification of standards for device descriptions and user interface descriptions.

(2)  As an initiative for the building of an open source service framework, AALOA will focus on features for ambient awareness, and for the flexible deployment and management of assisted living services. It will rely on the specification of standards allowing services to interact with ambient environments.

 (3) Integrating each other contribution

The two initiatives see a potential for sharing developed features and specification so that OpenURC-based platforms can integrate AALOA components, and AALOA-based platforms can integrate OpenURC-based components.

 (4) Towards convergence

They further agree to undertake a discussion in order to work towards a common architecture.


-----------------
 We decided that the consequent actions of the parties  would have been:


 *   OpenURC to check (1)
 *   AALOA to check (2)
 *   All to check (3), (4)
 *   OpenURC to prepare a specific press release announcing its creation to the press
 *   AALOA to prepare a specific press release announcing its creation to the press
 *
 *   Make a press release for the joint announcement
 *
 *   Make sure that AALOA and OpenURC websites will include the 3 press releases and link to each other

 Thus this mail is to open the discussion about such common action  to do and any further collaboration with OpenURC community.

 Here a reference  about URC
 http://myurc.org/TR/urc-tech-primer
 URC stands for Universal Remote Console  Standards (ANSI/INCITS 389-2005 through 393-2005).

 ----- my personal comments

 At the moment it may sound  strange  the wording : "AALOA components" in (3).
 In AALOA we don't have any reference to a common architecture yet.
 AALOA will grow initially as the aggregation of different projects, and a convergence process will be "somehow" created  in the long run. Nevertheless it is right to say that the purpose of AALOA is to compare the diverse solutions available, in this respect URC has to be taken into account and we can encourage its evaluation. However we may only advertise all the members of such initiative, any adoption or integration of URC standards in this moment is let to the autonomous decisions of single projects or individuals of AALOA. As member of universAAL project,  I can only anticipate you that further meetings will follow in the next months between universAAL members and OpenURC community.
 Of course it would advisable that an URC-based project was incubated in AALOA, it would increase the visibility of URC to all the member joining  AALOA. This is something I already suggested to Jan and that he will further discuss with URC members .
 Said that, aware of the limit of the announcement, I think it is useful to increase visibility of our actions and to confirm that  AALOA is working as catalyst of interesting initiatives.

 Best regards,
 Francesco