Second face to face meeting of Ecma TC-45

Two weeks ago we had the second face to face meeting for Ecma TC-45. For those of you unfamiliar with it, TC-45 was created with the charter of standardizing the Office Open XML formats. Well the other week Apple hosted the group's second meeting down in Cupertino, California and it was a really productive week. Adam Farquhar from the British Library is the vice-chairman for the committee, and he's posted the latest status report for the group on the Ecma website: https://www.ecma-international.org/news/TC45_current_work/TC45-2006-50.htm

The amount of knowledge on the committee is going to be extremely valuable as we move forward. The group includes representatives from Apple, Barclays Capital, The British Library, BP, Canon, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Pioneer, Statoil, and Toshiba. In addition to the two face to face meetings, we've also held weekly phone calls that usually last about 2 hours. They had originally been taking place at 6 am pacific time, which was a little rough for those of us on the west coast. :-)

In the face to face meeting we covered a bunch of content, but also established more concrete guidelines and priorities that will help drive the work over the next  year. Here's Adam's report:

TC45 Status Report

The Ecma International Technical Committee (TC45) is working to establish a standard for Office Open XML File Formats as described in the TC45 program of work at https://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC45.htm.
The technical committee held its first face-to-face meeting in Brussels, Belgium and began the technical work on Thursday 15 December 2005.
The technical committee includes representatives from Apple, Barclays Capital, The British Library, BP, Canon, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Pioneer, Statoil, and Toshiba.
Since January, the technical committee has held weekly 2-hour conference calls in order to advance the work.
The technical committee held its second face-to-face meeting on 31-January – 2-February 2006 in Cupertino, California. The meeting was hosted by Apple and attended by twenty-two participants.
During the meeting, the committee established guidelines and priorities for the committee’s activity over the coming year, discussed ways to develop the standard to support a broad range of conformant uses, refined the conceptual technical model and continued the review and development of the draft standard.
The committee’s next face-to-face meeting will be hosted in April by the British Library in London.

Adam Farquhar (British Library)
TC45 Vice-Chairman

-Brian