Proposal for "Community Meetup" experiment -- was RE: Summary and minutes of 4-5 March 2014 Advisory Board face-to-face meeting

> I support bringing the Process Document up to date. I would not support a Process Document that overly

> constrains the Team and community from finding productive ways to interact.



We're struggling with a widespread perception that W3C is too "old school" to be a good venue for timely and focused work on hot topics even though there is little in the process document that actually forbids doing what people are saying they want to do.   I was reasonably satisfied with the outcome of the AB discussion because someone pointed out that 5 people could get together, create a community group, and hold a CG meeting that could get key people together under the W3C umbrella to discuss some hot topic, without the (perceived) constraints of organizing a Workshop.   But that's a bit of a hack ...



This reminds me a bit of the discussion that led to Community Groups a few years ago:  Maybe we can experiment with a similar "W3C Community Meetup" mechanism that would make it easy to propose a meeting topic/venue and if enough people endorse the idea, W3C-hosted tools could support registration, announcements, discussion documentation, etc.  Just as CGs supplement but don't replace the WG process, W3C Community Meetups could provide a lightweight complement for formal workshops that would offer a different value proposition.



What value would Community Meetups offer?



*         Organizers:  It would let people propose a topic, assess the degree of interest, and provide a free registration tool.  There would be very minimal team involvement to ensure that the topic is in scope for W3C, there is sufficient notice, etc.



*         Potential attendees: W3C would provide a credible hub for announcements that people could browse on demand or subscribe to, with some assurance that the agenda is technical / community building and not mostly marketing.



*         W3C : Meetups that don't quite meet the criteria for Workshops are held under the W3C umbrella, reinforcing W3C's "brand" as the trusted venue for conversations about how to improve the Web, from Meetups about challenges and opportunities, Community Groups for spec incubation, and Working Groups for standardization.



Some questions:

- If Community Meetups had existed, would  organizers of things like the Extensible Web Summit or the Next Game Frontier have considered using that mechanism?  If not, what features are missing from the sketch above?



- Do existing services such as Lanyrd and Eventbrite do the job and W3C wouldn't add much value?



- Could the W3C infrastructure supporting Workshops be economically repurposed / exposed over the Web in a manner similar to how www.w3.org/community ?



- How much effort should the W3C staff expend on vetting proposals / establishing criteria for appropriate Community Meetups?



- Bottom line, is this idea worth the team / AB / W3Process CG investigating more deeply?



-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Jacobs [mailto:ij@w3.org]
Sent: Tuesday, April 1, 2014 5:56 AM
To: Daniel Glazman
Cc: w3c-ac-forum@w3.org
Subject: Re: Summary and minutes of 4-5 March 2014 Advisory Board face-to-face meeting





On Apr 1, 2014, at 3:18 AM, Daniel Glazman <daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com<mailto:daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com>> wrote:



> On 31/03/2014 21:19, Ian Jacobs wrote:

>

>> Some additional points for discussion:

>>

>>  1) We have held 2 developer conferences (W3Conf) and are planning our next one:

>>       http://www.w3.org/conf/

>

> Excerpt from [1]:

>

>  In general, W3C does not organize conferences.



That still remains true, although that practice is evolving.



>

>>  2) We have organized a number of developer meetups, such as the 2012 meetup in Lyon:

>>      http://www.w3.org/2012/10/TPAC/meetup-Lyon.html

>

> Excerpt again from the same document:

>

>  The Team organizes Workshops and Symposia

>

> Nothing about meet ups.



There are many activities of the Team not discussed in the Process Document.



>

>>  3) We have branded and helped organize a number of "test the web

>> forward" events

>

> Yes, and they don't fall in the "Workshops" or "Symposia"

> categories as defined in Chapter 9. They're not a WG meeting either.

>

> This is exactly what I said earlier: Chapter 9 is not flexible enough

> and we already work around the limits imposed by that part of the

> Process. We're also not clear about what is a Workshop since I was

> told it _had_ to be position-paper-based and it's not the case.

>

> I am calling for a entire revamp of Chapter 9. I would like the W3C

> Communication Dpt to have all ability to label an event "W3C xxx".

> I would like the six and eight weeks delays in Chap.9 to be deleted.

> I would like the final note to be deleted. I am not even sure this

> Chapter 9 should not be deleted entirely.

>

> At the minimum, this Process's section is outdated. At the maximum,

> it's totally useless.



I support bringing the Process Document up to date. I would not support a Process Document that overly constrains the Team and community from finding productive ways to interact.



Ian





>

> [1] http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/events.html#GAEvents

>

> </Daniel>

>

>



--

Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org<mailto:ij@w3.org>>      http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs

Tel:                       +1 718 260 9447