Proposed Process Change Regarding TAG Participation Rules

Hi folks - as some of you may know, we have had a special election in the TAG this year, necessitated by one of our members changing affiliation to an organization which already had a “representative” on the TAG. This has been a great distraction to us and has struck us as overkill, especially considering this is the second year in a row that an affiliation change has triggered a special election. The negative impacts include losing momentum, getting engaged in the distracting process of the election cycle and losing good people who are willing and able to put energy into our work. Compounded on top of that, we now have to put these seats up for election again in the regular election cycle.

With all this in mind, we had a discussion on the TAG mailing list[1]  which concluded with a very positive process change proposal from precious TAG chair Noah Mendelsohn. This proposal is to relax the terms of participation in the TAG, specifically[2]. I would like to open up discussion on this proposal in this forum with the aim of amending the process (see proposed change below).

I will also note that we have had increased calls for diversity in the TAG - calls which I support. I believe that a loosening of affiliation rules will help us in the goal of making the TAG more diverse.

The proposed change to the process document is as follows (excerpted from Noah’s email):
2.5.1 Advisory Board and Technical Architecture Group Participation
        Constraints

Given the few seats available on the Advisory Board and the TAG, and in 
order to ensure that the diversity of W3C Members is represented:

  * A Member organization is permitted at most two
    participants on the TAG. However, if a change of affiliation of an
    already seated member causes this limit to be violated, up to three
    members from the same organization may participate until results of the
    next TAG election become effective.
  * A Member organization is permitted at most one participant on the AB.
  * An individual MUST NOT participate on both the TAG and the AB.

If, for whatever reason, these constraints are not satisfied (e.g., because 
a TAG or AB participant changes jobs), one participant MUST cease TAG or AB 
participation until the situation has been resolved. If after 30 days the 
situation has not been resolved, the Chair will declare one participant's 
seat to be vacant. When more than one individual is involved, the 
verifiable random selection procedure 
<http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/organization.html#random <http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/organization.html#random>> 
described below will be used to choose one person for continued participation.
Thanks,
Dan

1. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2014Jul/0049.html <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2014Jul/0049.html>
2. http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#AB-TAG-constraints <http://www.w3.org/2014/Process-20140801/#AB-TAG-constraints>