Re: A proposal for revising the rules on TAG Participation

Hello Noah,

On 2014/07/13 00:08, Noah Mendelsohn wrote:

> Furthermore, and I suspect at the core of Marcos' concerns: even
> enlightened and well-intentioned bureaucracies tend to more easily
> recognize the value of, and plan for, formally committed employee
> activities. Joining a committee gives an organization a one-time chance
> to ask the questions: is this what we want (e.g. Marcos) to do? Are we
> committed to supporting (him) with travel money and work time? When that
> same employee is making that same contribution more informally, the
> organization has a less clear opportunity to buy into that commitment. I
> saw this at IBM all the time, and indeed I see it now: when I was
> officially chair of the TAG, Tufts University (my current employer)
> easily understood my contribution. If I tell them I participate in
> discussions like this to continue to help the W3C they tend to ask "but
> what are you really doing?".
>
> In short, there are good and understandable reasons why contributing to
> the TAG informally can be harder than formally participating as a TAG
> member.

Having always participated informally, and not even assuming that I 
could get my employer (an university like in your case) to get to 
support my official contribution, I very much understand your argument.

However, my guess would be that making sure that TAG participants come 
from a variety of organizations would give a variety of organizations a 
one-time chance to ask the above questions, which I'd consider a good thing.

Regards,   Martin.

Received on Sunday, 13 July 2014 12:39:04 UTC