Chair's overview - 2024W17 - Farewell!

Hi all,

Back with another “chair’s overview” - more about these in our CONTRIBUTING.md [1] file.

Alas, this will be my last and final overview as today I formally resign from chairing this group and editing the WebID specs. The motivations for stepping down are primarily summarized in [3] and following conversations.

While I effectively resigned on 2024-03-25, suddenly leaving the group without a chair would have been a rather odious move; that is why I decided to formally remain chair until today, hoping to facilitate the transition in case anyone decided to pick up the mantle. Unfortunately, it looks like nobody is willing to do so. 

I had not expected the level of support I received after announcing my resignation, with many calls for me to continue chairing and editing. In honor of these calls I indicated a couple of possible ways forward in [4] and [5], which would have allowed me to continue serving the group with a reasonable amount of confidence that my work would be well-received. Sadly, none of these panned out, which means that it’s time for me to go.

Quoting from a previous email of mine:

> I have merged all open PRs into my fork and done some much needed grunt work (mostly headings and the ToC), if only for the satisfaction of seeing what a potential new ED would look like.

That document is now in the working_documents folder of the main WebID repo, as per my final entry in the "chair’s notes” [2].

As my last words as chair, I’d like to express my heartfelt gratitude to those of you who constructively participated during my time as chair, regardless of whether we agreed or not. Mediating, compromising, reconsidering, assuming good faith, embracing facts, being polite; without these, communities eventually wither and die.

Also, a technical group such as the WebID CG needs people to put in the work. To this end, I am extremely grateful to Wouter and Sarven for their active contributions. Putting something forward for the group to review is much harder and more stressful than providing feedback, which is harder still than not participating at all. While it is in the nature of things for most participants in any given community to coast on the output of a selected few, I think it’s important to recognize that there would be nothing to coast on without them. I have also tremendously appreciated Ted’s infallible eye for details. The effect of Ted’s efforts is cumulative and can only be truly appreciated when looking at a project’s entire lifespan.

Lastly, I’d like to thank all of those who have taken their time to reach out to me, whether in private or in public. You are the “sweet” part of a “bittersweet” moment.

Until we meet again,
Jacopo.


[1]: https://github.com/w3c/WebID/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
[2]: https://github.com/w3c/WebID/blob/main/chair_notes/chair_notes_2024.md#2024-04-22 
[3]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webid/2024Mar/0025.html
[4]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webid/2024Apr/0002.html 
[5]: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webid/2024Apr/0004.html

Received on Monday, 22 April 2024 08:43:21 UTC