RE: Google to pay for HTMLWG invited experts at TPAC 2009

Still, the process is biased toward people who are eager
to send a private email to "ian@hixie.ch" and against those
who might hesitate, for whatever reason. (Do I need
to elaborate the reasons why one might hesitate?)

Google could have avoided this simply by asking some
neutral party to administer its donation to reduce
or eliminate the registration fee for attendees whose
financial support would otherwise prevent it.

The inability to see how a process can be biased even
when the intent of the participants  is to act in an
unbiased fashion is a persistent difficulty.

And this donation and the noise around it seems
inconsistent with previous positions about the 
value of meeting time:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jun/0616.html

much less, the value of the time of the individuals
organizing such a donation program.

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net


-----Original Message-----
From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Ian Hickson
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 3:25 PM
To: public-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: Google to pay for HTMLWG invited experts at TPAC 2009

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> As you may have heard, the W3C will be charging $50 per day per person 
> for permission to contribute to the specifications we are working on at 
> the TPAC event this November.
> 
>    http://www.w3.org/2009/11/TPAC/
> 
> Because Google values the input from the public, and does not believe 
> you should be charged for your feedback, Google is hereby announcing 
> that we will pay these W3C fees for up to 20 people.
> 
> This offer is open to all members of the working group who are not 
> members of W3C member organisations, on a first-come first-served basis. 
> Google is willing to pay for November 4th, November 5th, and November 
> 6th (the plenary day and the two HTML working group days).
> 
> If you are interested, please let me know.

Apparently some people are concerned that Google intends to reject invited 
experts on some basis other than first-come first-served.

If you have asked to take part in the above programme and not received a 
reply from me, your e-mail may have gotten spam filtered. Please let Mike 
Smith know so that he can get us in contact.

If Google ever rejects anyone before the 20 places are taken, please feel 
free to make a public fuss about it. It won't happen. It really doesn't 
matter how much you have criticised me, or Google, or HTML5, or anything 
else. Google is interested in supporting open standards development and 
that means getting input from everyone, even the harshest critics. The 
only condition is that you be a "public invited expert" to the HTML 
working group.

Currently 5 of the 20 places have been claimed. The deadline for this is 
around mid September, so that we have the time to send the W3C the money 
before the fees increase even further. (If there are still places open 
after that, and if there are people who are only able to find out if they 
can go after that, Google may be able to continue to offer this but in 
some adjusted form; it depends on what the higher price ends up being.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Friday, 7 August 2009 19:48:38 UTC