Re: Dissatisfaction with HTML WG (and story telling)

On Thu, 2008-01-10 at 12:49 -0800, Preston L. Bannister wrote:
> On Jan 10, 2008 9:44 AM, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org> wrote:
[...]

>         As I say, each week we update the list of things the chairs
>         want
>         the WG to focus on:
>         
>          http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/agenda
>
>         And yet it seems you have not even noticed.
>         
>         I'm not sure how to fix that.
> 
[...]
> Someone needs to tell the story, for each story.

Indeed... and not only for each story, but for each audience...
sometimes for each person.

> What we have here is a lack of communication, and the lack is in that
> no one is telling the story. 

"no one" is a bit strong, I think. Various people are telling
the story; but not enough to satisfy everybody.

Meanwhile, there's a risk that too much repetition of
the story overloads the email channel and squelches novel
conversations.

The story told by the WG homepage (http://www.w3.org/html/wg/ )
includes:

"When you join, you will be subscribed to public-html, the publicly
archived mailing-list for the group. Please use the tasks survey to let
us know a little bit about yourself and which tasks you're most
interested to help with."

In that tasks survey, we find an opportunity to volunteer for
"orientation: documenting group norms, helping people learn them"

That's after the survey invites WG participants to tell me
a story about their background.

I'd appreciate if you would fill out that survey, Preston.
And Sylvain. I think it was closed as of 1st Jan because
last spring I picked 31 Dec as a due date for responses
arbitrarily. I wonder if that survey is linked from
the message that new subscribers get in their email
inbox. Mike, do you know?

Dean Edridge chose 24 December to air his gripe to the whole
WG, complaining about non-responsiveness from the chairs,
when the chairs had been reasonably clear about being away
from the office over the holiday period. But at least
he had filled out the tasks survey before doing so...

 "I'm an experienced Web Developer with skills in HTML and XHTML and
CSS. I am involved with the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) in
Auckland New Zealand and am always looking for new ways to make the web
more usable for everyone.

What tasks are you here to help with?
      * tutorial development, quick reference, course materials, ...
      * usability testing
      * design principles, goals requirements (drafting, review,
        liaison)
      * orientation: documenting group norms, helping people learn them
      * web browser maintenance (esp. fixing bugs around spec
        compliance)
      * authoring tool development
      * validation/checking service development
      * validation/checking service operations
      * issue tracking, summarization, and clustering"



> At an end point or milestone in any discussion there is value in
> writing up a summary.

Quite. I've gone to considerable effort in that direction
(see http://www.w3.org/html/wg/#events ). Perhaps
I missed some. Can you think of any particular milestone that
lacks a summary?

Perhaps one of the people who has offered to help with
orientation will help me/us tell that story:

      * Ryan King
      * David Dailey
      * David McClure
      * Nicolas LE GALL
      * Roman Kitainik
      * Yannick Croissant
      * Marco Battilana
      * Stephen Axthelm
      * Jason White
      * Justin Thorp
      * Dean Edridge
      * Ivan Enderlin

Shall we get together and talk about orientation and
story-telling at the next WG teleconference?

It's scheduled for Thu 18 Jan at 4p PT, i.e. 
Friday, January 18, 2008 at 00:00:00 UTC time
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=01&day=18&year=2008&hour=00&min=00&sec=0&p1=0

Ah... concidentally, that's the due date for Chris Wilson's ACTION-33:
Investigate an HTML WG blog, a la the way the I18N WG does it
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/actions/33

I can afford maybe a few 1-1 phone calls, or maybe we can meet randomly
on IRC. Or you can write to me and Chris and Mike, preferably with a
public
archive: 
mailto:connolly@w3.org,mike@w3.org,Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com,www-archive@w3.org

>  The purpose is to bring everyone onto the "same page", so that all
> involved are clear on:
>       * What was the original question.
>       * What alternatives were considered.
>       * What (if any) conclusions or consensus was reached.
> You would be surprised (though hopefully not) at how often
> participants are unclear on at least one of the above points. For a
> large enough group that would be always.
> 
> As the prior messages indicate, the story is not getting told. :)
> 
-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
gpg D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Friday, 11 January 2008 17:01:38 UTC