Toward more productive f2f meetings [Was:Re: Feedback needed for April 2015 face-to-face location by *January 27, 2015*]

On 1/20/15 5:38 PM, Philippe Le Hegaret wrote:
> We are fortunate enough to have two proposed locations for the HTML and
> Web Applications face-to-face meeting in the week of April 13-17, 2015.
> Your feedback will help us picking the location.
>
> 1. Redmond, WA, USA (Hosted by Microsoft):
> 2. Zaragoza, Spain (Hosted by Yandex)
>
> Please provide your preferences at:
>    https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/42538/webapps-spring-2015/
>
> by January 27, 2015.
>
> We will then try to make sense out of the input and pick the location.

Hi All,

As you can see from the results at [1] and [2], there is no dominant 
preference for either location. One option to determine the "winner" is 
to re-open the survey to try to get additional data (and there could be 
other options).

I'd like to take this as an opportunity to step back a bit and to 
discuss: what is the value proposition of WebApps' f2f meetings; how to 
maximize the usefulness of f2f meetings; how to make f2f meetings more 
productive. All feedback is welcome!

My current thinking is two-fold. First, I think we should continue to 
have a f2f meeting during the annual TPAC all group meeting week. This 
would help satisfy what I would characterize as the "geographical 
equalizer" meeting requirement. (If anyone finds that term offensive, I 
apologize. I do agree with efforts to "share the pain" regarding travel 
time and related costs and I think the possibility for cross-group 
meetings at TPAC can be quite valuable.)

Although f2f meetings can have a number of non-technical benefits, in 
general, I'm not convinced our previously used structure of a two-day 
meeting that touches on a broad set of the the group's 30+ specs is 
especially effective in solving high priority technical issues. 
Additionally, if the current replies for this survey are roughly 
equivalent to the set of people that would actually attend one of these 
meetings/venues, I am somewhat skeptical significant technical progress 
will be made regardless of the venue.

Instead of a centralized broadly scoped f2f meeting, perhaps it would be 
more useful to have topic-specific meetings located at or near the 
critical mass of active contributors, and only have such a meeting if 
the editors and key contributors commit to participate. For example, a 
Web Components meeting (as was done in 2013), an Editing and Selection 
meeting, etc.

Again, all feedback is welcome!

Last, regardless of the next step, I want to thank Philippe for his 
effort, and Chaals and Paul Cotton for getting support to host the meeting.

-Thanks, ArtB

[1] https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/42538/webapps-spring-2015/results
[2] http://intertwingly.net/tmp/w3c-spring-2015

Received on Monday, 2 February 2015 14:04:08 UTC