Re: Consolidation of Task-forces

Tim Anglade wrote:
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> Le 10 févr. 09 à 21:35, Harry Halpin a écrit : 
[snip]
> iverables. It's just saying, instead
>> of 7 task-forces spread among what appear to be about 20 people
>> delivering what appear to be 18 reports, let's go for 4 reports that we
>> can actually get done, and assume that we have a core of about 15-20
>> people working on things, which is what we seem to have. I am against
>> putting things in the charter we cannot reasonably deliver within a
>> year. The criteria for "reasonably deliver" is that these do not already
>> have someone who wants to work on them, i.e. volunteer to edit.
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> This criteria, to my knowledge, is not a W3C one.

No, it's not a W3C criteria. However, it is a relatively common-sense
way of approaching doing work.

> Again, your plan for deliverables all but ensures that there will be
> no more than 4 subjects tackled and only 20 people in the group.
> Leaving even the “empty” task forces in is a good way to open the door
> to 30 more people joining in later. Again, openness, welcomeness:
> traits I think our XG should have.

No, it does not.  First, I think the division of subjects, i.e. division
into User Experience/Contextual data and Distributed
Architectures/Interoperability are both not useful or coherent
divisions, and if someone feels excluded by any of the consolidation,
speak up and *also* explain why you think these things can not
consolidated and *who* you think would would work on this subject only
if it was not consolidated. I find example-driven thinking helps here,
think concrete examples.

Just because we have a bunch of marketing buzzwords does not mean that
we have to break down into 7 task forces to write 18 marketing reports
about said buzzwords. To me, that is not a good way of approaching work,
and I have *never* seen a WG or XG pursue with any success such an
approach. Others who have been involved in standardization, please speak
up.

Generally, also past experience shows that groups start big, then get
smaller but more dedicated and active. At the end, usually its the
chairs, the editors, and the implementers left standing, and then the
time to attract new people will then be when the XG transforms (perhaps)
into a WG or multiple WGs. I feel that Tim and Christine wish to have 7
WGs, but that is unfeasible since this is not HTML5, with it seems not
many large vendors involved or people.

Usually starting vague and large, based on marketing buzz-words, with no
clear deliverables or responsibilites, leads one to the situation of
DataPortability.org and other non-W3C vendor-neutral attempts to move in
this area.


>> I could see the case for a separate "Business" report, if people felt
>> getting into the nitty-gritty on micropayments and such would be
>> something they would work on.
>
> Micropayments would probably be a bigger subject treated elsewhere.

Then what would business practices talk about? It seems obvious that
business models could be built around a decentralized social web. I am
not sure if that merits a whole report, or how that report would
substantially differ from a marketing report by Forrester or the like.
The only thing that most people will read out of the XG will be it's
final report (notice that every XG has a final report for future work),
so that seems a logical place to talk about business.
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Received on Wednesday, 11 February 2009 06:48:14 UTC