RE: PWETF -- next steps?

I completely agree. PLH recently asked for advice about improving the Guide. Chaals’s recommendation about using W3C tools is perfect for that. Most people don’t even know that tools exist. And, of course, we need to make people aware that the Guide itself exists.

I think it would benefit everyone if we, as a group, put together some recommendations or even a starter kit to help make things positive for new members and new chairs.

Some ideas:

Welcome to W3C/WG email. This needs to be short enough to avoid overwhelming but include some very basic info about the tools that everyone needs to get into their first meeting. How to use IRC, access Webex, email archives, etc. I send a very basic email out when members join DPUB. I cribbed the text from Rob Sanderson, and I’m sure it could stand improvement. There is no reason that this can’t be automated. You can see a sample at [1].

A Buddy System. Assigning new members a buddy to help learn the ropes. I suspect many people would volunteer to be buddies. The AC buddy system has mixed results, largely dependent on the availability of the mentor. I’m sure we will also have mixed results, but PWETF can put together some guidance for mentors. The main idea is that new members have someone to turn to when they encounter something unfamiliar.

What are the tools we use? Can we try to get a list of the tools that people are expected to use? I understand that different groups use different tools, and there is not complete consensus. That is fine. A new member will have no idea what ReSpec is, will be completely cowed by Bikeshed, and will wonder why someone created an acronym as difficult to pronounce as WICG. A list of the tools that MAY be used in WGs would be nice. Most of them have some amount of documentation, so this is really just a list of links, maybe part of the updated Guide.

Tzviya

[1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-digipub-ig/2016May/0044.html




Wiki Rule

Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: chaals@yandex-team.ru [mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru]
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2016 7:35 AM
To: Ann Bassetti; Florian Rivoal
Cc: Angel Li; public-pwe@w3.org; Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken
Subject: Re: PWETF -- next steps?

- antonio@, amy@, coralie@

trimming cc list…

I think the onboarding thing - how to succeed in a working group - is really important. Different groups have different cultures, and as Chunming mentioned at TPAC it is really hard for outsiders to know how to successfully interact with the group, which is a huge barrier.

I think we need much more focus on explaining to members in particular how to take part in the groups they have paid to be allowed to join, the hand-holding that Florian mentioned, and a renewed focus on chair training to make sure the chairs understand why this is important, have some idea how to do it effectively, and some support to actually do it.

"Chair Training" consists of a handful of teleconferences delivered a few years ago. That's manifestly inadequate, not least for people who have become chairs since then, and I can think of numerous examples… It needs to be organised and repeated regularly.

There has been discussion of the W3C guidebook https://w3.org/Guide, too. It is important that we can shake this down and make it clearer, because there is some important stuff in there and some outdated content that has become irrelevant but clutters it meaning that it is hard to find the right things. And there are things that are just out and out missing. It isn't obvious that Coralie - who apparently is the editor of all this material - has sufficient time available to do that given that it doesn't seem to match her job description.

Sometimes there have been sessions on the day before TPAC about how to "use" W3C - from member to member. I think this is useful stuff, and I wish there were more of it more often.

2c worth, if I am lucky

cheers


04.11.2016, 19:31, "Ann Bassetti" <ann.bassetti@yahoo.com<mailto:ann.bassetti@yahoo.com>>:
Hi All --

Thanks, in particular, to Tzviya, Florian and Antonio, for your responses since our TPAC gathering. I now added my notes to the minutes started by Amy:  https://www.w3.org/wiki/PWE/201609_TPAC . <https://www.w3.org/wiki/PWE/201609_TPAC#minutes>

I also did some minor editing on Amy's section -- correcting a few spellings and punctuation, adding people's affiliations in the initial list. (You should check to see if you are listed correctly!)

---------------------------------------

Now the question is, what next? Should we have regular meetings? What would be our main focus? and so on ...  Amy and I will propose some possibilities shortly.

  -- Ann

Ann Bassetti






On Wednesday, October 19, 2016 10:08 AM, Antonio Olmo Titos <antonio@w3.org<mailto:antonio@w3.org>> wrote:

Thank you Ann for taking notes, and Amy for putting them on the wiki :)

On 27/09/16 Florian wrote:
> I think we brought up a number of important issues and hinted at some potential solutions during the meeting, but we did not really address how we would structure our work going forward. Here I may simply be showing my ignorance about how this group has worked in the past, but I'd appreciate if you could share your thoughts about that.

I am curious too to know what others think should be the next steps (if any).

• Revisit and update PWE documentation?
• Advertise those documents (more) among staff and/or members?
• Discuss specific incidents (w/o identifiable personal info, of course)?
• Gather statistics?

I'd be OK if the answer is "well, nothing in particular" — that'd be a good sign, in a way :)

>> On Sep 26 2016 Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken wrote:

>> I think Dave Cramer, Florian Rovial, Romain Deltour, and I said they wanted to join. I am not sure whether Antonio mentioned it.


(Yes; I joined shortly after our TPAC meeting :)

--
Antonio Olmo Titos — web developer, W3C
antonio@w3.org<mailto:antonio@w3.org> · https://w3.org/People/Antonio









--
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
chaals@yandex-team.ru<mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru> - - - Find more at http://yandex.com