[Minutes] AC Meeting breakout session on CG/BG transitions

Dear fellow participants of the task force,

There was a breakout session on CG/BG transitions at the Advisory  
Committee Meeting in Tokyo.

Here are the minutes (text snapshot pasted below), including questions and  
answers:
   https://www.w3.org/2013/06/11-ac-day2-minutes#Headlights

This week I will dive into my notes and these minutes to flesh out a  
proposal to W3M for the upcoming f2f meeting on 17-19 July 2013. I have a  
30-minute slot on 18-Jul.

Under separate cover, I'll share a draft outline.

Coralie


Text snapshot:
--------------

Headlight breakout > CG/BG transitions

    <ted> [65]CG/BG transitions Slides
      [65] https://www.w3.org/2013/Talks/cm-0611-cg2wg/

    <scribe> scribenick: ted

    coralie: I work in the comm team and have been working with Ian
    on moderating cg/bg and before that was involved in incubator
    groups

    [slide 2, 3]

    <Ian> [Coralie also manages the marcomm team's social
    networking activities, as well as the weekly comm digest, all
    related to community outreach]

    coralie: from a taskforce on standards for W3C we identified a
    goal of creating new streams on standards development
    ... 2 years after cg/bg launched we have been collecting input

    [slide 4]

    coralie reviews stats from slide

    coralie: I heard in Jeff's talk yesterday that the total number
    of participants in Working Groups is 1,500, so we are nearly
    twice in less than 2 years.
    ... Also notable that 500 new participants joined in the past 4
    months.

    [slide 5]

    cg stats over time

    [slide 6]

    coralie: some cg achievements
    ... of 125 groups, 16 have produced reports and 2 even taken up
    by wg
    ... 2 cg are proposed to transition to new wg

    [slide 7]

    coralie: in february of this year we launched a taskforce to
    evaluate cgs
    ... this tf hasn't met much

    [slide 8]

    coralie: we polled cg chairs for input in a survey
    ... to learn about their intentions to complete work, produce
    reports or intend to transition into a wg

    [slide 9]

    coralie: double definition of transitions; 1) cg work to move
    to rec track in existing group, 2) cg charter to become a wg
    charter

    [slide 10]

    coralie: 5 cgs declare intent to transition within 6 months
    ... we are having discussions with Customer Experience and Web
    Media Text Tracks groups

    [slide 11]

    coralie: 11 cgs intend to transition but no schedule

    [slide 12]

    coralie: we asked cg chairs about the barriers to transition
    ... the principal barrier is it is too early or insufficient
    implementations
    ... non-W3C push back again wg
    ... some feel wg introduce too much red tape

    [slide 13]

    coralie: cg have various challenges, steep learning curve, lack
    of momentum, not getting interest and unsure how to migrate

    [slide 14]

    coralie: we find those with past W3C experience make better cg
    (chairs and participants)
    ... we lack tools to assess their activity accurately
    ... 29 groups have not even selected a chair
    ... we have not identified and closed dormant groups
    ... some speculate that we are leaving these groups open to
    inflate numbers and that is not true, it takes effort and tools
    to evaluate all them

    [slide 15]

    coralie: cg are achieving the initially intended goals
    ... new ideas are coming to w3c
    ... we have more eyes on trends
    ... good recruitment opportunities
    ... this has enhanced the value of w3c membership and
    importance of the staff
    ... the principal barrier to transition is a natural one; too
    early, not enough implementation
    ... while this has been a success it also comes at a cost
    ... Team time commitment non negligible
    ... Scalability challenge.

    [slide 16]

    coralie: next steps
    ... more systematic outreach
    ... invest in more tools for coordination and bridging to wg
    ... would also be good to automate process to transition
    ... comments and suggestions welcome

    daniel applequist, vodafone: really good to see this working as
    intended

    scribe: have sat with Mathew Marquis of responsive images cg,
    he had some frank comments
    ... one was that they brought their spec to the html wg and
    felt they got a cold response
    ... seems like the html wg was unaware of the work taking place
    in the cg
    ... how could this work better? comment that came out was pull
    request, some cg are essentially a fork of wg
    ... this isn't part of the process

    ian jacobs, W3C: i have had extensive discussions with matt and
    went so far as to interview him for an article on this topic

    scribe: the history is more complex than you describe
    ... what i took away was when a cg wants to do something in
    html spec they should start with requirements and not first
    approach with a solution
    ... some of the education part is taking with groups

    dan: there is some perception that when people approach a wg
    with an idea, if it isn't something they are planning on
    working on it they suggest forming a cg
    ... there is a bit of a feeling that these cg are a dumping
    ground

    ian: cg are not wg and should not tread in their stated scope

    dan: some people were having trouble joining cg

    coralie: we've heard that comment but it is outside of scope of
    this task force

    ian: biggest obstacle in joining for some is licensing
    commitment
    ... we are thinking of some groups with no patent commitment
    ... there is a considerable amount of discussion to explain
    what this means and in the end many organizations are willing
    to sign the commitment agreement

    richard ishida, W3C: there are a few cg related to i18n, one
    with no movement

    scribe: other has promise
    ... what is the criteria to determine if a group is dormant or
    not?

    coralie: one approach we took this time was questionnaire -
    whether they answer or not, or tell us it is dormant
    ... we can also assess if and how they are using any of the
    tools we are providing them

    <Zakim> FabGandon, you wanted to confirm the AC Rep need for
    tools to identify, search, view, etc the CG-BG

    Fabien Gandon, inria: problem for me as AC rep for inria is how
    to match 230 inria teams to all these cg and wg

    scribe: i need to be able to map them, search for key words,
    etc or this will not scale

    <olivier> +1

    coralie: could be useful, indeed, it was part 2 in the scope of
    our task force
    ... but we haven't had time to develop this yet

    Vagner Diniz, W3C: is there a place for cg which doesn't have a
    global perspective? interest for a more regional perspective

    scribe: is there a possibility that does not work in english
    but other language?

    coralie: yes, you are welcome to use language other than
    english and we have some groups already doing so
    ... we have groups with regional focus as well

    <martinA> Vagner, for instance, Open Data Spain CG
    [66]http://www.w3.org/community/opendataspain/] is regional
    and uses Spanish and English

      [66] http://www.w3.org/community/opendataspain/

    vagner: last year we tried to work with a cg, encouraged people
    from brazil to join. there was a delay in getting approval and
    that deterred people
    ... result was people went elsewhere

    Judy Brewer, W3C: monitoring cg is a challenge. one of our
    (WAI) groups is review every new cg that forms to see if their
    scope might be of interest

    scribe: it is even more difficult to monitor them on an ongoing
    basis

    scribe: curious on thoughts to help track this

    coralie: domains are not required to monitor cg.
    ... the idea is that cg and WG might want to bridge, but the
    tool is yet to be defined

    <FabGandon> +1 activity leaders, group chairs, etc. also need
    to monitor the CG-BGs

    ian: if we had data and analytics we might solve a bunch of
    problems, there is a separate tf on trying to solve that

    judy: heatmap, something to help give a jist of activity

    <Zakim> olivier, you wanted to ask about IGs

    olivier thereaux, bbc: curious about transition for core mobile

    dom: most of the participants was already active members. the
    other reason we considered moving to an ig was from discussion
    with chairs from the cg
    ... the chair had experience, there wasn't going to be a staff
    contact, coordination with existing wg
    ... ig is more integrated in w3c process than bg at this time
    ... there was also precedent with the web & tv ig to follow

    [adjourned]

    dan: is responsive images worked out?

    ian: they published a draft

    chaals mcathie-neville, yandex: The AB is looking at the
    process document, what do you think about factoring in cgs?

    scribe: do we have enough experience to do that yet?

    coralie: I have to punt on that question for two reasons
    ... 1) this isn't exactly the scope of the task force
    ... 2) this is the AB agenda for tomorrow and the next day

    Jeff Jaffe, W3C: that is the right question to ask

    scribe: this has been a successful experiment and we need to
    think about it and whether to put it into the process
    ... key question is do we have enough experience yet? we have
    only recently have had some start to move toward transition,
    some upcoming. question of timing

    mark nottingham, akamai: this was a lightening rod and this has
    been very positive

    <glazou> kaz: yes, jeff on stage now



-- 
  Coralie Mercier  -  W3C Communications Team  -  http://www.w3.org
mailto:coralie@w3.org +33643220001 http://www.w3.org/People/CMercier/

Received on Monday, 8 July 2013 12:21:36 UTC