Roadmap for rechartering ...

We should be aiming to be rechartered by the time of our next face to face in Beijing in early July. Here is my proposed roadmap for achieving that goal, noting that W3C Management Committee (W3M) meet once a week on Wednesdays:

Wednesday 18 May: we agree to all pending updates to the charter, including the dates for first public IG Notes for both of our current work items (Architecture, Current Practices).

Dave & Philipp ask the W3M for 

  a) extension of our existing charter until the Beijing meeting and 

  b) for approval to post the advanced notice to the W3C Advisory Committee. 

This  advanced notice is required by the W3C Process:

> 6.2.2 Working Group and Interest Group Charter Development
> 
> The Team MUST notify the Advisory Committee when a charter for a new Working Group or Interest Group is in development. The suggestions for building support around an Activity Proposal apply to charters as well.
> 
> W3C MAY begin work on a Working Group or Interest Group charter at any time. A Working Group or Interest Group MUST be part of an approved Activity.


see   http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#WGCharterDevelopment <http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#WGCharterDevelopment>

Wednesday 25 May:  Philipp asks W3M for approval to initiate the W3C Advisory Committee review of the IG charter. I will be travelling that day to give a presentation to the Web of Things session organised by the W3C Spanish office.
Wednesday 1 June: start of the W3C Advisory Committee review
Wednesday 29 June: last day for the W3C Advisory Committee review
Wednesday 6 July: W3M approval of the new charter following the review
Now for the implications:

The advanced notice contains links to the draft IG and WG charters, so we must have these in a good enough state for all W3C Members to look at very soon after May 18. This means merging all pending pull requests, except where there are really strong reasons not to do so, as it is unreasonable to expect busy Advisory Committee Members to trawl through all the pull requests to see the content.

For the IG charter, we have so far had very few people providing pull requests or commenting on existing ones. Before the IG signs off on the charter, we need to be able to see it as a whole including the proposed content. This will make it much easier for people to see where last minute changes are required.

The W3C Advisory Committee review of the WG charter would start at the beginning of September. I don’t see how we can start it earlier due to the mid year vacation season which would make it much harder to get the support we need. This means that the WG wouldn’t be launched until October 2016.  We would invite people planning on participating in the WG to take part in the IG meeting during TPAC.

For the Web of Things activity to be successful in the long run, we need the active participation of a broader range of stakeholders. We have to seek out these stakeholders and convince them to join W3C, or if they are already W3C Members, to respond positively to the Advisory Committee reviews of the IG and WG charters. This is something for all of the IG to take action on, not just the W3C staff contacts.

Alan Bird, W3C Business Development lead, wants us to answer the following question:

      What is the unique selling proposition* for the IG and the WG?

Daniel and I have chatted further about the benefits for managers and developers following the IG session on this in Montreal, see: 

      https://www.w3.org/Member/wiki/WoT/Flyers

We all need to be able to explain the things that differentiate W3C from other IoT alliances and SDOs.  The above link is draft content for single page flyers. I believe we also need to supplement this with a white paper that provides further detail, focusing on the the unique selling proposition, and how we’re working with other groups to realise our goals.

* https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/unique-selling-proposition-usp

Many thanks for your help in seeing this through.

—
   Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org <mailto:dsr@w3.org>>