Re: Suggested response to the Yandex "cannot iive with loosening of TAG participation requiremens"

> On Apr 16, 2015, at 9:49 AM, Wayne Carr <wayne.carr@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 2015-04-16 00:30, Carine Bournez wrote:
>> Just my 2cts:
>> 
>> On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 09:12:35AM +0300, Daniel Glazman wrote:
>>> I have similar stories to tell. In certain circumstances, employers
>>> push on employees' shoulders. Even if it's possible in the TAG, I think
>>> the structure of the TAG makes it almost impossible for such employers
>>> to impose a view that is not consensual anyway. And it's considerably
>>> harder in public www-tag.
>> Once upon a time, W3C had restrictions on the number of employees of
>> a given company in a Working Group. This limitation has disappeared
>> a long time ago, while formal voting still has one company = one vote
>> anyway. It does not make sense to continue the bikeshedding for ages
>> for a special case that happened only once in many years. The simplest
>> rule is to let the person at least continue until the next election so
>> that no new election is needed. She/He can still resign voluntarily
> 
> There isn't any requirement for a special election if someone resigns.  The chair can request it.  Apparently, they often do request it.  Maybe they shouldn't.

We request the election when we feel we need the extra headcount to deal with the workload, or if there are skills we feel we need that aren’t best represented by the current membership and we hope can be filled by an election.

> Otherwise it gets dealt with like in the current Process at the next election.  The person is off the Tag or AB.
> 
> As I understand it, the AB and TAG can invite people to attend meetings.

Yes, and we regularly do. As a rule, all former members are welcome at our meetings.

> They could choose to invite whoever lost their seat due to affiliation change to attend for the duration of their term (without any process change) and, if that person is influential, they continue to have influence without formally being in the TAG or AB.  If the AC or AB need someone to do more work, they could ask for volunteers if the person who dropped the seat because of change in affiliation didn't want to continue informally.  If it's a matter of some formal title to justify travel expense, the TAG or AB could have helpers they call upon in an "extended AB" or "extended TAG" that the group selects to help them with work.  I don't think there needs to be a process change for that.

The problem is a matter of travel expenses, employers often aren't willing to fund a person’s travel if they’re not officially a member of the TAG, even if they could be doing good work.

We can generally get former members and volunteers to call in to telcons, but I have yet to see a non-TAG member get travel budget to attend a face to face (when they show up, it’s generally because we’re meeting where they already are). It sounds trivial, but the formal title goes a long way to convincing layers of management who aren’t directly involved in the work.