Re: Seeking feedback from AB nominees on a few items

Art and all,

For a long time I have been calling for W3C to define who *all* of its
stakeholders are, because it is clear that there are many individuals,
organizations and communities who are not members but who have a vested
interest in (some) W3C technologies (for example, in cases where a
REC-track specification involves some aspect of public policy,
governmental organizations would often need to be engaged). Conducting
some AB discussion in the public could probably ease the process of
engaging these stakeholders and would further promote the view of W3C that
it is an "open" organization.

That said, and having participated in the AB for many years, it is clear
to me that it would be *very* difficult to have *all* AB discussions in
the public (as it is, there are repeatedly discussions that are not even
member-accessible, or even minuted at all -- usually for a good reason).
Wrt. the process discussions, however, I see no problem exposing them to
the public; it is yet to be fully understood, however, how it would change
the nature of the AB's work if the public also (actively) participated in
these discussions.

I have mixed feelings about the self-selection idea. We want people on the
AB who have an interest (and the drive, energy) to further "the cause", to
help the W3C; self-selection might get us more of those folks. On the
other hand, what we don't want -- I think ;-) -- is the 500+ member
somewhat chaotic group (say, like the early HTML5 group); the latter is
unlikely to happen, though. One of the strengths of the AB, in fact, is
that it is small.

Again, if the self-selection helped us engage important non-member
communities (say, by some folks from those communities nominating
themselves), I think the idea would be good and worth of support.

Regards,

	- Ora

-- 
Dr. Ora Lassila  ora.lassila@nokia.com  http://www.lassila.org
Principal Technologist, Nokia




On 2013-05-21 5:02 PM, "Arthur Barstow" <art.barstow@nokia.com> wrote:

>Hello AB Nominees,
>
>I am interested in your comments on two items ...
>
>1. One of the things that is somewhat unique about AB members is they
>are expected to "use their best judgment to find the best solutions for
>the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or
>user" [1]. Since this implies AB members represent "everyone" including
>non W3C Members, it seems somewhere between ignorant/remiss to at least
>a tad bit hubristic, for the AB to continue to conduct its process
>related discussions in a non-Public forum. To address this issue, I
>propose:
>
>* All AB discussions related to W3C processes (e.g. the W3C Process
>Document) are to be conducted in a Public forum (e.g. public-w3process
>list).
>
>2. A few years ago [2] and again this week [3], some members of the
>Advisory Committee discussed a proposal to change the AB to be
>"self-selecting" i.e. to eliminate the voting. Unfortunately, those
>threads are Member-confidential so if you can't read them, I can at
>least highlight my comments on those threads (if you'd like me to do so).
>
>I would appreciate if the AB nominees would please share their thoughts
>on these two items.
>
>-Thanks, ArtB
>
>[1] <http://www.w3.org/2002/ab/>
>[2] 
><https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-forum/2009AprJun/0146.html>
>[3] 
><https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-forum/2013AprJun/0158.html>
>

Received on Wednesday, 22 May 2013 10:34:45 UTC