Re: Director-less W3C

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.

Jeff

[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.
>
> 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.
>