Re: Webizen progress and next meeting

On Mon, 04 Aug 2014 18:52:03 +0200, Brian Kardell <bkardell@gmail.com>  
wrote:
>
> On Aug 4, 2014 12:29 PM, "Jeff Jaffe" <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks to all who participated in last Friday's call.
>>
>> The Doodle poll for the next call is at [1].
Regrets for the call.

>
> [...]
>
> At the risk of sounding like a broken record, developers have no  
> first-class voice with regard to w3c matters, especially with regard to  
> direction in terms of TAG >and AB  - at least for WGs we have  
> possibility for invited experts, but IEs have the same issue: while  
> granted status for WGs, they have no (even collective) >representation.  
> I understand that some membership was opposed to this, but is it just  
> off the table?  I don't see anything in the survey even hinting at this.

Some membership were indeed opposed, others (like me), were of the opinion  
that webizens (imho, developers, IEs, and other non-member interested  
parties) actually should have good, representative representation.  
Already, chairs are able to participate in AC meetings, and as well as  
being in some cases invited experts I find that they are often reasonably  
good representatives of participants in their groups, but I don't think  
this is enough.

I'm not a huge overall fan of the webizen idea, since in most cases I  
think it would be far better for developers who want representation to get  
together and set up a non-profit that can join W3C.

For a group of 100 US-based developers, the cost would be in the order of  
$75 and they get an AC rep, the right to nominate official partiipants to  
groups, etc. - plus access to the material that is confidential to the  
members. For a group based in a developing country there is an existing  
mechanism to reduce the price to something locally appropriate. And W3C  
already has the mechanisms and staffing in place to manage this so the  
extra cost of maintaining it is close to zero.

That said, one of my success criteria for a webizen project is that  
invited experts participate. And one good reason for them to do so is that  
they collectively get "direct" representation - i.e. to select among  
themselves people who are interested in and capable of (primarily the  
issue here is time and money) representing the interests of a constituency  
in the way AC reps do for their sponsor organisations.

I hope I will get to the wiki this week to try and push this idea a bit  
further. If it doesn't happen today, please feel free to nag me by private  
email or twitter until I have done so.

PS: Brian (and anyone else not versed in the slightly arcane, but  
incredibly useful, IRC tools): you should send a /msg to RRSagent:
/msg RRSAgent help
to learn more about what it does. In particular, it doesn't log /me  
commands - this is a feature that allows people to make comments that are  
available to those in the meeting but that do not form part of the record…

cheers

Chaals

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