Re: How to assess Community and Business group for transition?

On 03/11/2013 11:43 PM, ri@odrl.net wrote:
> On 12 Mar 2013, at 07:41, Coralie Mercier <coralie@w3.org> wrote:
>
>> The primary output of this task force will be a recommendation for which community or business group deliverables should move to the Recommendation Track. How do we assess that?
>> What are your ideas?
> There has to be two ways: Push from the CG and Pull from W3C.
>
> The CG has to have produced final Reports (that "look and feel" like W3C specs) and have been implemented by industry users.
>
> The CG must have a charter, active chair(s) and members.
>
> (just some initial (obvious!) ideas....)
>   

Now you've got me thinking.....

I think of CGs as able to do everything WGs can do except (1) have W3C 
staff and telecon resources, and (2) have the Director and AC settle 
issues and declare industry-wide consensus.

Giving them (1) is an AC resource decision.   Do a bunch of AC members 
think this is worth spending member fund on?

The do-nothing approach is we let CGs do their thing, and leave it to 
them to find a bunch of W3C members to ask for a WG.

But we could facilitate that process -- we could provide a channel for 
CGs to say "Hey, We're Great!  We should be a WG!"     And they'd be 
saying that to the AC; they'd be trying to collect, I dunno, at least 10 
members who say YES, create the WG and we'll participate.

A good channel might be a monthly CG-highlights event.   Maybe a 
telecon, with CG lightning talks.  Maybe blog posts.  Maybe posted 
videos.    Once a month we ask all the CGs if they're ready to pitch to 
the AC.

(It's a bit like startups pitching to investors, in a lot of ways. or 
researchers making a grant proposal.)

We could also do it in person -- we could probably get at least a dozen 
AC reps to turn out to this kind of event in Boston, SanFran, or 
Tokyo.    And probably a few CGs are local to those locations. Doing it 
person and live streaming (and recording) would probably generate the 
most interest.   Maybe some good tweeting and blogging.  Maybe some 
co-locating with other events.    (I think in-person or at least video 
is important, because so much of the decision about participating really 
depends on the human relationships.   Text is less compelling.)

Of course, we also want to bring in *new* members.   So I guess these 
events should be open to everyone, with a clear message that if you want 
a vote, you've got to join.  It's hard to say that in a way that wont 
annoy a lot of people, but I think it can probably be done.

As an aside:  I don't really think anyone needs a WG.  I think it's 
possible to write a very high quality spec, with global buy in, and wide 
implementation, without those things WGs provide.   It's just harder.   
If they happen to do it, I think we should let them jump straight to 
Proposed Rec.    This option would require solid evidence that the CG 
had behaved like a WG along the way in its decision-making process and 
had attracted all the relevant players.   But if it acted like a WG all 
the way through an unofficial CR, then I think we should allow an AC 
vote to make their spec a REC.    (and yes, there's something about 
patent policy in there, too.)    But I guess that's all an aside, since 
I dunno if anyone will ever manage to pull it off without staff support.

So one interesting thing to try would be ask the CGs how many would like 
a chance to pitch to the AC (and prospective AC members), and what 
medium they'd like to use for that pitch.   We could also do a quick 
database query on the geography of CG members, CG chairs, AC reps, and 
active AC reps.

We could also give some suggestions as to what makes a good pitch, 
including what sort of evidence would be compelling to us that the are 
ready for a WG.    I don't know if we have much insight into that; for 
the transition from CG to WG, what really matters is the use cases they 
are addressing and if they have a plausible design for addressing those 
use cases.  The actual professional quality stuff can from from the 
members that join the WG.  What matters is whether they will join, and 
that depends on the social qualities of the people initiating the work, 
whether the use cases are compelling (in market terms, probably), and 
whether the design is truly plausible.

       -- Sandro

> Cheers
>
> Renato Iannella
> Chair, W3C ODRL Community Group
> http://www.w3.org/community/odrl/
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 12 March 2013 05:00:33 UTC