REALLY, Decision to go to CR, and ATTENDANCE

Regarding the CR transition, we *really* need you to consider the editor's 
draft in Stephen's link below.  We really need you to consider whether a 
comment is substantive or editorial.  Editorial changes can wait until 
after the CR transition because they will not invalidate people's 
implementation experiences.  If there are any substantive reasons why you 
cannot live with the transition to CR, then please say so now.  Please 
also say if you support the transition to CR as soon as possible.  We are 
late even according to our new charter, but after 3 years it is really 
time to ship 1.1 (which really should be 1.5). 

I am disappointed with this working group that it was necessary to delay 
this decision to next week's telecon due to lack of attendance, esp. 
considering that the W3C paid a lot of extra money to make a polycom 
teleconference phone available.

If you are not able to attend in person, at least making yourself 
available on the phone is really important to being able to continue to 
make progress on XForms.

After the CR discussion, we will need to discuss what needs to happen in 
2008 with respect to good standing in the working group.  We are at the 
end of a very difficult road of tightening the rigorousness of XForms that 
we desperately needed for interoperability, scalability, clarity to 
implementers.  As of the XForms 1.1 CR we will be at the beginning of an 
exciting and creative time for XForms, and we really need each member of 
the working group to evaluate the enormous business value you gain from 
participation in the standard and as a result reinvigorate your commitment 
to that participation.

Working group membership is a minimum 20% time commitment by your company. 
 That's about a day a week.  I agree that a rigid adherence to the minimum 
would cause the employer to subtract some hours per week to accumulate 
hours needed to attend face to face meetings.  I would ask employers not 
to hold to such a rigid interpretation, but if that's unavoidable, please 
note that this would still not subtract more than 2 or 3 hours of one your 
day per week.  This means that your participation needs to be greater than 
just showing up for the one hour, telecon if that.  You should have a 
couple hours to read or at least skim *all* the email and respond to a 
couple that interest you most, and you should generally have a couple more 
hours each week to contribute creatively to one of the *many* proposed 
future features as well as developing for presentation your own proposals.

Moreover, all of this assumes that you do actually attend the face to 
face.  Which means that you should be able to attend, even in the case of 
travel expense woes that we all sometimes experience.  The fact that you 
are in a different timezone means that you will have some interruptions 
for meals, driving the kids, etc.  I didn't list sleep because it turns 
out that if you did actually take the trouble to travel to the new 
timezone, then your sleep would be interrupted anyway.  I'm not trying to 
be the tinman, here, though, so if you are not able to attend a face to 
face meeting in person, then we need you to be more proactive in helping 
to define an attendance schedule that is not too cruel so you can show up 
by phone and IRC and be available for critical decisions like a CR 
transition.

In conclusion, I would say that we really need all of you to actively 
attend and participate as much as possible, where the level of attendance 
right now is clearly not as much as you can possibly do. 

* I would like to ask each of you to go into your calendars and book a 
minimum of two 2-hour time blocks for XForms work beyond the one hour 
entry you have for attending the telecon.
* I would like to ask each of you to discuss with your employer the 
importance of XForms to your organization and the importance of your 
spending this time on XForms.
* I would like to ask each of you to discuss with your employer the plan 
for increasing your availability for our quarterly face to face meetings.

These are *our* meetings and *our* specifications, and 'you' are the 
central figure in 'our' group.

John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM: Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer





"Steven Pemberton" <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl> 
Sent by: public-forms-request@w3.org
11/07/2007 08:01 AM

To
"Forms WG" <public-forms@w3.org>
cc

Subject
Decision to go to CR







Group,

We decided that because of low attendance at the FtF that we would take 
the decision to go to CR at the next phone call.

Please be present at the call so that we can make the resolution. If you 
cannot be present, please send a message if you do not think that this 
version should go to CR.

Dated version of CR spec (editor's draft):
    http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/specs/XForms1.1/index-all-20071106.html
(diff-marked):
    
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/specs/XForms1.1/index-diff-20071106.html

Here are the General Requirements for Advancement:
http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr#transition-reqs
1. Record group decision to request advancement
2. Public documentation of all changes, substantive and minor (diff marked
version; need report of substantive changes, if any)
     * substantive == change that we reasonably expect invalidates an
individual's review or implementation experience
3. Report any changed requirements since last transition (none)
4. Report any changes in dependencies with other groups (none for 1.1)
5. Show evidence of wide review (144 LC comments resulting in > 1000
diffs)
6. Formally address all issues (need report of LC comments)
7. Report any formal objections (none)

Steven