The W3C Incubator Activity has completed its mission, which was to foster rapid development, on a time scale of a year or less, of new Web-related concepts. Target concepts included innovative ideas for specifications, guidelines, and applications that were not (or not yet) clear candidates for development and more thorough scrutiny under the current W3C Recommendation Track.
The Incubator Activity allowed rapid start of work within an Incubator Group (XG) without review of the W3C Advisory Committee. XGs were based on a simple, flexible process and were designed to create potential elements of the Web's future infrastructure.
Eleven XGs — Semantic Sensor Network, Open Web Education Alliance, Decisions and Decision-Making, Audio, Library Linked Data, HTML Speech, Unified Service Description Language, Object Memory Modeling, Media Analysis Management Interface, Federated Social Web and WebID are underway at this time.
The Incubator Activity was designed to operate with low staff support. Our experience with 11 ongoing XGs and 17 closed XGs indicated that this is possible, albeit some orientation is necessary during the setup and operation of the XGs. We focused on improvements to group tools and documentation in order to help XGs conduct calls and meetings, track issues, edit and publish.
Several years of experimentation and a growing community willing to bring potential standards work into W3C and contribute led us to evolve the Incubator Activity in order to offer larger numbers of developers, designers, and others passionate about the Web the means to build communities. The W3C Community Groups emphasize individual innovation and allow an easy way for innovation from individuals to move to the "classic" W3C standards process, which emphasizes broad consensus-building and implementation among global stakeholders. Community Groups develop specifications under a Community Group Agreement designed to strike a balance between ease of participation and safety for implementers and patent holders. The new offering complements the classic process and patent policy; it does not replace it.
The Incubator Activity has closed in May 2011. This page will not be updated any further.
The Incubator Activity would not have been successful without the support of the following people:
This Activity Statement was prepared for AC 2012 per section 5 of the W3C Process Document. Generated from group data.
Coralier Mercier, Incubator Activity Lead