Starting the W3C MRS CG process

W3C Mixed Reality Service Community Group Members

As chair of the Mixed Reality Service Community Group, it is an honour to welcome new members to this group. Thank you for your participation in a project that works to define an important and unique new direction for the ‘locative’ Web.

There are now 47 of us in this group - nearly double the number just a fortnight ago!

Community Groups have been designed by W3C to form the foundation of an open Web standards process. 

Through the valuable assistance of W3C Community Group support staff, we now have access to a wiki (https://www.w3.org/community/mixedreality/wiki/Main_Page <https://www.w3.org/community/mixedreality/wiki/Main_Page>) and a GitHub repository (https://github.com/w3c/mixedreality <https://github.com/w3c/mixedreality>).

Both of these resources will be employed as we progress toward a draft specification for the Mixed Reality Service.

Here’s the roadmap for the next steps in the process:

a) Agreeing a Charter:

A draft version of the Mixed Reality Service Community Group Charter will be placed into the GitHub repository next week. This charter sets out what we intend to do, what we intend to deliver, and how we intend to use this Community Group to achieve those ends.

We’ll be able to review and edit the charter as needed, then vote on accepting the charter. 

We will aim to have a vote on the charter by the end of June.

If you want to access or work on our Charter, please make sure you’ve linked your W3C account to your GitHub account by visiting the following link: 

https://www.w3.org/users/myprofile/connectedaccounts <https://www.w3.org/users/myprofile/connectedaccounts>
b) Investigation: 

Just from the few emails that have already flown by on this list, we can see that people have a lot of ideas, and see similarities to other Web standards. 

During this “investigation” period, Community Group members are encouraged to post projects similar to or aligned with Mixed Reality Service to the Wiki.

This common, shared base of knowledge will serve to inform us as we move forward. It will keep us from re-inventing wheels, and accelerate our work. It will also link us to other standards throughout the Web community.

While the investigation process will be ongoing, we will aim to have the majority of the work completed by the end of July.

c) Identification:

In parallel with the investigation process, Community Group members will work to identify the core, minimal features for a Mixed Reality Service.

This will likely be a vigorous discussion of the minimal / maximal features for any Mixed Reality Service, projected use cases, and deployment / adoption strategies.

We will need to work hard to complete the identification process by the end of August.

d) Specification:

The identification process provides a clear and unambiguous set of features to be codified into a draft specification for the Mixed Reality Service.

The group will work to completing this draft by the end of October - and, ideally, ratify its work with a vote.

In early November, TPAC (the technical meeting of all the W3C Community and Working Groups) takes place in Burlingame, California, and we’ll use that meeting both to have a F2F gathering of this Community Group, and to use it as a springboard for introducing our work to the broader Web community.

At that point we may be ready to ‘graduate’ into a W3C Working Group status, or we may receive advice from W3C and other groups that we need to continue our efforts. Time will tell.

That’s the process proposed for our next six months: Charter & Investigation, Identification, and Specification.

This timeline is significantly compressed from the one presented a fortnight ago - but that was before Facebook’s F8 conference made it abundantly clear that the need for Mixed Reality Service (or something very much like it) is of immediate importance. 

If we take too long, chances are the world will move on without us. So let’s get underway. 

Thanks,

Mark Pesce
Chair,
Mixed Reality Service Community Group
mark@markpesce.com