DCAT and CONNEG work - recent events and future prospects

Dear Colleagues

The past few weeks have been a flurry of hard work, excitement, tension and
pain for all of us in varied measure as we've seen our different projects
develop and take up their future paths.  As you know now, the DCAT draft
was sent forward as Candidate Recommendation, whilst the CONNEG draft is
still the subject of discussion and its future is uncertain.

We have much to celebrate as a team in the advancement of DCAT, but at the
same time we need to remember the huge effort in the CONNEG document and
look to make the most of this.

We have been in discussion with Philippe about this and there are some
potential routes forward for the CONNEG work, and consequently decisions to
be made.

The options that we have for Conneg at this moment are:


   1.  cease work, and it defaults to a working group note "as is"
   2.  send to W3C management as a CR (with the abstentions and no votes
   that the poll elicited) knowing that there is a risk of rejection
   3.  continue work but with the goal of a working group note, not a
   recommendation


We have one more option that hinges on the possibility that we can
re-charter the group, as Philippe has outlined to us. The group would be
chartered to do the evergreen DCAT work as well as eventual work on DCAT
v3. The charter would include the three deliverables of our current
charter, with minor updates. This would mean that Conneg could resolve its
issues, do wide community review, get the review of the necessary W3C
oversight groups (internationalization, accessibilty, security), and
hopefully go to CR before the end of 2019, with its exclusion period
extending into the new charter. So the final option is:

4.    continue work on Conneg and go to CR under the new charter

In subsequent plenary meetings we will discuss this 4th option and see what
the team's appetite is for this. (the 3rd option is always our backstop).

In the meantime, we congratulate the DCAT working group and hold our
collective breath as we await the W3C Director's opinion. We hope for the
best!

With very best wishes

Karen & Peter - chairs