Ian's notes from Advisory Board discussion of new standards task force progress

Hello,

Last week I attended a face-to-face meeting of the W3C Advisory Board  
(AB), and I presented our progress. It was useful for me to collect  
thoughts and to talk to the AB in particular since they are custodians  
of the process document. There is still work to be done to figure out  
how to coordinate suggested process changes with the AB.

I summarize some of the discussion points below.

  _ Ian

=========================
Framing our work

I found myself framing upcoming proposals in three categories:

  a) Learn about external work and connect with new communities
  b) Help those communities begin work at w3c.
  c) How those communities standardize work at w3c

=========================
Value Proposition

We discussed a bit whether having more participants in the community  
might lead to more Memberships.

There was a suggestion that we need to do more to articulate the value  
proposition of both the new incubator (e.g., small environment of  
people you know) and the classic Rec track process (e.g,. quality  
controls through reviews).

=====================
Scope of incubators

How broadly should we cast the incubator net? Should we encourage  
people to bring Web-related things that are not specifications (our  
traditional area of strength)? Should we encourage people to bring  
specifications that may not be related to other work?

       Observation: In a separate discussion with Ted Guild we talked  
about having an "anything goes" space where anybody can start  
discussions on whatever they want. These discussions would be peer  
moderated. The ones that received sufficient support could be  
candidates for an incubator group. Different people would have  
different "weight" in their evaluation of what should rise to  
incubator level. Any other thoughts on this topic?

======================
Potential for confusion

In a highly visible incubator activity, the potential for confusion  
between standards track work and non-standards track work.

       Observation: This is an issue that has come up in the past, and  
we address through style differences, different indexes, clear  
messaging, etc. I note that even if we take pains to distinguish Recs  
from other documents, to some the distinction doesn't matter (I doubt  
we can improve that). To others the distinction is unclear (and we can  
probably do more on that front).

=========================
Working with the PSIG

Regarding interacting with the PSIG on future legal language, the AB  
advised that the most efficient way would be to (1) ask them to  
suggest an approach to meet a particular functional requirement and  
that (2) not ask them to help us with a "business decision."


--
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)    http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel:                                      +1 718 260 9447

Received on Tuesday, 20 July 2010 21:05:21 UTC