Re: First Face-to-Face meeting

Having talked over the results of this survey with Jeni and Ivan, we
conclude that there does *not* seem to be to be critical mass for the
dates proposed. And comparing travel schedules even amongst
Ivan/Jeni/Dan it is looking very challenging to find new candidate
dates in the immediate - feb/march/april/... future (especially noting
that W3C asks for 8 weeks notice to be given, to help people find
reasonable travel/hotel options etc.).

Given all this, a new suggestion. That we make minimal or no use of
face-to-face meetings until a larger gathering - the W3C Technical
Plenary meeting, next one is Oct 27-31st 2014, Santa Clara
<http://www.w3.org/wiki/TPAC2014>, but that we kick off the group
'remotely' rather than through a 'kickoff face to face meeting'.

So - for now at least - Instead of flying everyone to a single
location, let's try to do our best to use the 'net (the usual
email/wiki/phone/IRC stuff but also maybe video e.g. Skype,
G+Hangouts, WebRTC or whatever) to make progress. We can also continue
the effort already begun in this thread, of sharing our existing
travel plans so that if small subsets of the Working Group are already
planning to attend various events, we can make the most of it. Andy
Seaborne also pointed out that some W3C groups have had regional
meetings, e.g. recent RDF WG had US (Boston) + UK (London) split
meeting that was easier for people to attend; we could explore similar
mechanisms, or perhaps organizing around sub-topics.

In general W3C groups benefit a lot from face to face work. It helps
people understand each other, work closely together, etc. But there
can also be other significant costs involved beyond the merely
financial -  travel, health, family, carbon footprint, day jobs,
etc... So given our scheduling difficulties, let's see what we can get
done using this new-fangled Internet thing...

cheers,

Dan

Received on Monday, 3 February 2014 17:22:39 UTC