Re: Director-less W3C

Hi Daniel

you clearly feel we went too far in assigning roles to the team/CEO/et-al. that seem to be normally done by them. I’d really like to know details of where you feel that.

You mention two new committees, but really there is only one, and it’s built by combining two existing ones — can you clarify (in the GH issue ideally)?

> On Jan 5, 2020, at 5:19 , Daniel Dardailler <daniel.dardailler@gmail.com> wrote:
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> Hello Jeff
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> I've added an issue, couldn't find how to label it with the "director-free" tag though so I put it in the title.
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> Wrt to the single person accountability, I understand the aim, but I think there is not enough distance between persons in our community to justify such a constraint, vs. the qualitative gain of having a few specialized accountable persons.
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> It would be interesting, as a thought exercise, to re-run - with the various replacement models in mind, the few cases in W3C history where Tim had to "really" act as Web architectural arbiter, having heard all concerns and advises, and deciding publicly as a person, engaging his name, like for EME, Patent Policy. 
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> On Sun, Jan 5, 2020 at 1:40 PM Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
> Thanks, Daniel.  Interesting points-of-view.  We've had some of these discussions and I similarly share some of the concerns about concentration of authority with the CEO.  Most reviewers have taken the point of view that it is good to have a single accountable person (who would delegate as you suggest), but your alternative is also credible and should be discussed as well.
> 
> I'm a bit concern that your concerns raised in an email could get lost.  It might be more effective to raise an issue in the process-CG GH repository [1] with the label "director-free".  That will ensure that this gets looked at through the process revision exercise.
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> Jeff
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> [1] https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues
> 
> On 1/5/2020 7:23 AM, Daniel Dardailler wrote:
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> the fate of W3C without Tim has been on my mind long before leaving W3C, so I'll give my 2 cents on the recent proposal.
>> 
>> I'm looking at
>>   https://services.w3.org/htmldiff?doc1=https%3A%2F%2Fw3c.github.io%2Fw3process%2F&doc2=https%3A%2F%2Fw3c.github.io%2Fw3process%2Fdirector-free
>> 
>> I'm concerned by two things:
>>  - the added complexity with two new "committees"
>>  - the power now residing in the CEO hands.
>> 
>> On the second point, there are now hundreds of references to the CEO and Team as decision-makers and with the Team under full control of the CEO, this effectively puts all the process decisions into one person's hands, which could become an issue in the future if this person is not able to handle all this power correctly. 
>> 
>> I think we should try to categorize the current Director's functions along their level of Web technicality, draw a line, and give the most technical pieces to someone else than the CEO. Not sure to whom, maybe not a single person. You could argue that the CEO could delegate these (or whatever) pieces and create such a Technical Director function but I'd rather see this implemented transparently based on due process.
>> 
>> On the first point, new committees, if there is such a TD function, then no need for a new W3C Council providing a higher authority for some of the ex-Director/new CEO decisions. Given the AC appeal mechanism already in place, and if the main technical items are separated, this should not be necessary.
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>> Same idea for the new TAG committee created to select the "Director" TAG seats: it should not be necessary with a appealable Technical Director function selecting them. And it would be better than a pure TAG co-optation procedure..
>> 
>> So IMO having ome sort of  Technical Director function, or a Web Architectural Board, would effectively solve both the CEO power concentration and the added committees issue. Maybe this function could be implemented by a trio: one staff, one TAG, one AB, selected by each constituency for a given period, or maybe just one person, e.g. the chair of the TAG (since it's for Technical stuff). Or maybe by one TAG and a W3C CTO (from staff).
>> 
>> 
>> Anyway, I also think someone should be assigned to do a quick external study on how other relevant SDOs implement their own Technical Director function/Arbitrage, and also how organizations (non-profit or commercial) deal with their structural issues when the Creator (of the technology and the organization) leaves.
>> 
>> Take care.
>> 

David Singer

singer@mac.com

Received on Thursday, 13 February 2020 18:27:37 UTC