Re: Workshop and meeting requirements

On Tue, 13 May 2014 11:51:29 +0200, GALINDO Virginie  
<Virginie.GALINDO@gemalto.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> From the tread discussion, it looks to me that again, people are talking  
> about different types of events with different objectives :
> - WG : business as usual, clear perimeter of participants
> - workshop-like : I have a new topic, a new problem and I want everyone  
> to give its opinion on it, including non members and people you don’t  
> know already
> - light-focus group : to solve a narrow problem, or a local problem.  
> What you need here is a time spent with already identified people  
> (experts/friends) or people easy to gather as being local.
>
> This last category is the grey zone we don't know how to deal with today.

Hmm. I think there are big chunks of it we do deal with today.

I'm starting to think we want a decision tree to figure out what kind of a  
meeting something is... (although I am not yet at the stage of wanting to  
put this in the process, maybe a refined version of it would be good  
enough and useful enough to do so)

Some starting thoughts:

To work on editorial aspects of a document there is no real requirement  
for a formal meeting. If there are multiple editors they can get together.  
If someone wants to raise a bunch of editorial issues they can.

To work on substantive issues of a spec, the Working Group should be  
involved. Which means there should be a formal meeting (this happened with  
the Web Components case a couple of years ago, the WebRTC 'split meeting',  
should have happened with the recent Push API meeting).

To explore areas outside the chartered scope of a Working Group, there  
needs to be a W3C workshop rather than a WG meeting (there are a number of  
workshops on the schedule this year, and the Games event could have been  
one), but a Working Group should be able to "sponsor" such a workshop.  
(This would cover the TAG meeting case).

It also needs to be clear that there are different ways such a workshop  
can be run. Test The Web Forward events are, as near as I can tell,  
workshops. People get together and do work. They are also a category of  
event I can see clear justification for allowing on short notice.

There is no obligation for a Workshop to lead to new work. But where there  
is an expectation that this may be an outcome of a workshop, for example  
because it is exploring missing features in the Web Platform, rather than  
writing tests, I really want them to provide long notice times.

Business Groups and Community Groups have meetings - in the former case  
with W3C staff commitment (at least sometimes). They currently don't  
operate under many real rules at all. Is that a model we want to promote?  
There are W3C groups moving real development work into CGs (Web/TV, Audio,  
are examples where this has happened) as well as work rejected by the  
official W3C group (Voting systems, Responsive Images) and "purely  
speculative" CGs (HTML email).

> Do we want to create a new category ? I'd tend to say yes, it will be up  
> ot the people to identify which tool they want to use, if their problem  
> is narrow or too big to be solved by you’re the usual bunch of expert or  
> the local people.

I'd rather not. In part because it is very easy for a lot of stuff to fall  
into this category that REALLY should be a WG meeting - albeit a focused  
one that will not discuss everything a WG does. And in part because  
multiplying the ways we can do things makes it hard to understand how W3C  
works and leads to misunderstandings.

If anything, I would prefer to reduce and explain the current range of  
possiblities: Workshop/Symposia, WG meeting, TTWF/conference, CG/BG  
meeting. The latter categories effectively allow anything and don't  
operate under any guidance at all. I think that is *more* flexibility than  
we want and less guidance than we need about how W3C achieves its goals  
and what are and are not reasonable ways to work within W3C.

If we *do* want a new category, we need a proposal…

> Regards,
> Virginie
> gemalto
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karl Dubost [mailto:karl@la-grange.net]
> Sent: mardi 13 mai 2014 09:08
> To: Stephen Zilles
> Cc: Chris Wilson; Jeff Jaffe; Michael Champion (MS OPEN TECH); Charles  
> McCathie Nevile; public-w3process@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Workshop and meeting requirements
>
>
> Le 13 mai 2014 à 14:04, Stephen Zilles <szilles@adobe.com> a écrit :
>> I must disagree with some of the things that you said. See inline below.
>
> hmmm… weird.
>
>> If the (spontaneous) meetings are held in the context of a Working  
>> Group or Community Group and others in the Group are notified, then it  
>> is reasonable that a meeting be held with less prior notice.
>
> We said the same. See my paragraphs on booking and visa.
>
>>> The issues need to be articulated around the notion of time, number
>>> of participants, key people (subjective).
>> [SZ] It is a bit of hubris to assume that the meeting organizers know  
>> the "key people". This comes across as saying, "if my friends can  
>> attend then that must be enough".
>
> Yup it's why I put subjective. Agreed again. ;)
>
>
>> [SZ] Do you have any idea of how long it takes to get a visa to the US  
>> from China? It can take as much as two months.
>
> yes. :)
> been there done that, multiple times. written also invitation letters  
> for WG F2F.
>
> The only thing where we **might** have a disagreement is the "No, we  
> want the membership to be able to participate in the work of the  
> organization."
>
> Membership and W3C staff are important, but I would put always the Web  
> before that. And I thought the discussion was about meetingS and not  
> only Workshops.
>
> :)
>
>
> --
> Karl Dubost
> http://www.la-grange.net/karl/
>
>
>
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-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Tuesday, 13 May 2014 10:40:12 UTC