W3C Developer Program

This proposal addresses the creation and development of a W3C Developer Program: the Webcraft Activity.

Executive Summary

This proposal suggests that we bootstrap a Web education activity (the "Webcraft Activity") by using our proven online training courses, but with training supplied by our members in a revenue-share model rather than relying on EC grants, to acquire funding to hire part or all of an FTE. This FTE would explore opportunities for more funding, as well as set up the community process and framework for expanding and maintaining those materials. As funding sources are procured, the FTE would expand their activities.

The second aspect of this activity is consolidating existing W3C educational materials into a user-friendly framework.

The third aspect of this activity is partnering with Members to offer training events (perhaps subsidized) associated with seminars, conferences, and corporate training.

Any partnerships with members would require that the training materials be made publicly available under a CC-BY license, improving our online educational materials.

This proposal requests that authorization be given to execute on the early stages of this effort, specifically in setting up online training and hosting of curriculum materials, with generated revenue earmarked toward ramping up this activity.

Contrast with Core Mission Proposal

The Core Mission Task Force, as part of the W3C Vision exercise, suggested funding for a Web Curriculum. Since funding was not approved, an alternate source of funding is under investigation, but in tough economic times, grants and donations are difficult, competitive, and time-consuming to procure.

This current proposal is to use a related project —online training— in an attempt to secure funding in 3 low-investment phases to eventually pay for the curriculum effort:

1. Revenue through online training courses via members
2. Use funding from online training courses to fund part-time staff to pursue further funding activities (write grants, approach charitable foundations, etc.)
3. If funding is successful, hire full-time FTE to launch Web Education activity proper.

Introduction

W3C has moved beyond defining document formats, and into defining a full-fledged application development environment (or platform), one of the most widespread and approachable platforms ever. When an organization (usually a company) creates a platform, there are certain key things they do to ensure its success: invest in efforts around authoring tools, deployment, partnering, branding, documentation, and developer programs.

W3C has partners already: the major vendors (especially the browser and authoring tool vendors), and content creators. We have concentrated on branding: the HTML5 logo (and other logos) are part of that. We even have quite a lot of documentation: the technical specs themselves, and some quick-reference materials, tutorials, and best-practice guidelines.

But we have not been systematic about developing training materials and reference materials, nor about developing materials for different audiences (such as novices and teachers), nor about making it easy to find those materials we have developed, nor about maintaining those materials.

This proposal addresses the creation and development of a W3C Developer Program: the Webcraft Activity.

Approaches to Educational Materials

Besides specifications themselves, which are aimed at implementers, there are several relevant kinds of materials, for different audiences and different purposes:

• Reference Material: W3Schools has developed an extensive library of simple, quick-reference guides; W3C has begun creating materials at this level, such as the HTML Elements, SVG Elements, and MathML Elements
• Tutorials: MDC (the Mozilla Developer Centers) is probably the most comprehensive developer reference resource for ; W3C also has tutorials scattered throughout out site, including MobiWeb, internationalization, accessibility and many others
• Curricula and Course Materials: There are many different approaches to curricula, including the excellent efforts by the Opera Web Standards Curriculum (WSC) and WaSP InterAct; W3C has some start on a more modest approach with our Educational Materials page
• Training: W3C already offers some online training, and we can expand that; we can also explore training events as a source of self-sustaining revenue.

Webcraft

This proposal consists of 3 orthogonal but related activities.

1. Consolidation of existing W3C resources
2. Process for development, review, and maintenance of curricula and educational materials
3. Active Training

Background

Need

There is a definite need for this comprehensive approach to Web Development and Design Education.

While there are many sites out there that specialize in conveying specific information, those resources are too often inaccurate, or are not maintained long term; such materials are actively harmful to the Web platform (see W3Fools for more; the people from Google and Opera behind that are interested in seeing improved resources online).

Yahoo! trains their employees for 8 weeks when they are first hired, to teach them the skills that they did not learn initially, and to help them unlearn bad practices; this is costly to them and similar members. Ensuring that Web developers are trained well in the first place will lead to savings for our members.

There is a natural inclination to let others develop and maintain such materials; it adheres to the principle of decentralization. However, in the 20 years since the Web's beginnings, no reliable source of Web education has emerged, and universities do not teach Open Web Platform skills in any comprehensive manner. This does not serve our community well. There will always be other sites that can and should make alternate or improved training resources, but W3C can raise the standard of quality higher for such sites just by participating.

Why W3C?

Why should W3C be the place where this happens? What are the benefits to W3C and its members?

• It builds our brand, establishes W3C as the place to do Web-related work
• It would increase "buy-in" and adoption of Open Web platform as preferred platform over proprietary platforms or native platforms
• Few organizations have our stability, neutrality, and commitment to best practices
• Our reputation can help spread this among respected institutions
• W3C has robust community participation model, including public accountability and attribution
• Our members can directly benefit by providing feedback on what skills they want to emphasize in their future employees, so they don't have to train them themselves
• W3C staff can benefit from free training by established experts, improving Team skills
• Increased "buy-in" and adoption of Open Web platform as preferred platform over proprietary platforms or native platforms
• Higher quality of feedback and more standards participation by next generation of Web professionals
• Potential to attract new W3C members, including universities and companies with interest in training
• Self-sustaining revenue source

Finally, with our high search engine rank, if we offer suitable materials, we will prevent novice authors from inadvertently relying upon inferior (or even incorrect) resources.

Consolidation of Training Material

Should we have funding available for some part or whole of a full-time equivalent, one priority would be to adapt and transfer existing W3C materials to a more user-friendly and easily discovered framework, perhaps some kind of developer portal.

This would also involve integration of the curriculum materials on offer from Opera and WaSP, and outreach to educational institutions that may benefit from its use.

Activity Process

A critical aspect of ensuring quality over time is to establish an open process for development, review, and maintenance of curricula and educational materials. The assigned staff member would work with the community to establish a credible and practical process. Some software infrastructure would be helpful as well, and we could leverage the Community Groups infrastructure for that.

Team Resources

In any situation where W3C's reputation is on the line, it is good to have Team oversight. Members of the staff who have time and are willing can review any proposed training materials for accuracy and vendor-neutrality; this is likely to take less than 3 hours a week at most. If we have funding, we could even contract with trusted parties on a short-term to review materials.

However, in many cases, it is not clear that the W3C Team has the pragmatic, real-world development skills for the very specifications and technologies we are producing. While everyone tries to keep their skills current, there are many people in the Web development community with greater expertise and hands-on experience with using these technologies, who could offer better review.

Peer Review

W3C has proven expertise in community-based peer review; our training curriculum and materials would follow a similar model.

• rather than rely upon W3C staff, we would also rely upon our members and community
• curriculum materials would be developed, reviewed, and taught by trusted community members and W3C members
• lower staff costs, less commitment of resources, for equivalent or improved outcome
• bootstrap nature of training means that no comprehensive coursework has to be available beforehand
  • only topic-specific material relevant to course
  • material developed on demand, then reusable for future courses or tutorials
  • no lengthy start-up period

Training

W3C currently offers limited online training through our W3 Tech Courses site, a hosted Moodle instance; topics are by necessity limited to those which match criteria laid out in relevant European Commission grants. There is considerable administrative and accountability overhead in reporting on the status and outcome of the courses, to satisfy EC requirements. The training materials have not been made publicly available, and are limited to those students who have paid to participate in the course.

This proposal would leverage the existing framework laid out by the EC-grant model, but with a few modifications: all training materials would be freely and publicly available, under a CC-BY license, since the work and value lie in the training itself, and the larger goal is to improve our training materials; it would not rely on EC grants, and would therefore reduce the overhead, and decrease the dependency on procuring grants; it would decrease staff requirements by relying on members to do the training; it would cover more topics, depending upon student interest and market need rather than EC criteria.

This proposal can be carried out in parallel to our existing EC-grant training, and would not interfere with it in any way; in fact, if W3C builds an increased reputation for training, it may be even easier to procure grants. To students, there would be no discernible difference.

Existing Interest

There is already interest by some of our members in participating in this project, as part of a revenue-sharing or promotional basis.

These companies would make their training materials available for free, under a CC-BY license. We would not commit to any exclusivity in either of these relationships, nor would we be bound to repeat these courses if we don't wish to.

We also have early interest from other prospective members in doing such training.

Training Events

There may be future opportunities to partner with our members to organize training events, associated and perhaps collocated with seminars, conferences, and corporate training. This needs to be made more concrete before proposing any further action.

Training events, like conferences, have a number of secondary benefits, such as increasing our "street cred", discovering new topics for standardization, and even connecting with potential new members.

Risk

There is little risk of decrease in W3C's reputation so long as quality is maintained. A systematic review and student feedback on training courses and trainers, as well as assessment by employers on the pragmatic value of particular courses, combined with our ability to decline to invite trainers back for subsequent courses, will quickly correct negative outcomes. Provision may be made for refunds to students who are dissatisfied with the training or who withdraw before a certain point (e.g. before the end of the first week of training).

Certification

This proposal does not, at this time, recommend any official certification.

However, over time, as the activity matures, it may be appropriate to look into some types of certification, if it best serves the requests of our stakeholders.

Previous Proposals

There have been at least two previous reports within W3C that addressed the topic of training or certification: Study of a W3C Certification Activity by Daniel Dardailler, in April 2003; and W3C and Training, by Thierry Michel, in January 2004.

Study of a W3C Certification Activity concentrates largely on certification, and the risk to W3C's reputation if the quality is not up to our expected standards. Since we would not be offering certification of any individuals or institutions, the former concern is not relevant. The risk to W3C's reputation is relevant, but minimal, since we will be relying on trusted sources, and will vet the materials and training by monitoring the course.

W3C and Training deals largely with training or auditing at the corporate level, specifically by the W3C staff. This is not relevant to the current proposal, which concentrates on providing training materials and on member-based online training.

W3C Offices

The W3C Offices made a recent proposal to offer W3C Certification as a revenue stream. This has the risks that concerned W3M regarding W3C's reputation. However, if we could exercise some quality control by developing a peer-reviewed and vetted curriculum, along with training materials, we would have more assurance as to the quality, and have a basis by which to assess the effectiveness of Office training.

The Offices could play a vital role in translating the material for localized use.

Official certification would not necessarily be part of the first wave of effort, due to concerns about our reputation, but the W3C brand on the training offered would still add value to their training.

Failure is an Option

There are several worst-case scenarios that should be considered, along with the likely degree of negative impact and suggested solutions.

Lack of Trainer Interest

There may be a lack of critical mass in interest by schools and training institutions to adopt the curriculum or training materials. In this case, the assigned staff would refocus on other aspects of webcraft, such as reference material and tutorials.

Lack of Contributor Interest

The community may not exhibit interest in contributing to the curriculum and educational materials at W3C. Should this happen, we would scale back the goals to meet those aspects of the activity that are meeting success.

Too Much Success

It is possible that our training courses may become too numerous or popular (either among students or prospective trainers), and the administrative overhead and Team review becomes too much of a burden relative to the income (i.e. there would be a lot of work for the assigned staff, but not enough income to pay for additional staff). In this case, we can simply scale back our training efforts to a more manageable load, and set more modest goals.

Loss of Funding

If the sources of funding do not sustain the activity and assigned staff, in the worst-case scenario, the staff may need to be let go; this should be made clear at the outset when hiring any personnel. Even in this scenario, we will still have an improved framework and set of materials for use, and could perhaps rely on community volunteers to maintain them.

Conclusion

This proposal requests that authorization be given to execute on the early stages of this effort, specifically in setting up online training and hosting of curriculum materials, with generated revenue earmarked toward ramping up this activity.

Timeframe

The initial stages, the online training and partnering in workshops (Phase 1), could happen as soon as Q2 2011, if approved. Based on the outcome of that stage, and the interest in pursuing particular aspects by our members, we can assess further what would be the most likely quick successes (the low-hanging fruit), and what we can afford financially.

The initial duration of this activity is suggested to be 1 year for Phase 1 and 2, with an additional 3 years for Phase 3 if Phase 2 is successful.

Budget

Phase 1

The initial phase, online training, does not require direct monetary investment, though there would be an investment of ~3-4 hours/week staff time (0.075 - 0.1 FTE) for the duration of each course, to review the materials, monitor the course, and conduct course-end evaluation. Each course would last approximately 5 weeks, and would net an estimated 5K-10K USD for W3C (depending upon course fee, number of enrollees, and negotiated share for W3C).

Phase 2

The secondary phase, a short-term contract to seek full-time funding, can happen concurrent with later stages of Phase 1 (e.g., once we have money from the initial online training courses). A rough budget for a fund-raiser might be $5-10K.

Phase 3

This is a target budget for Phase 3, with estimated projected costs per year for at least 3 years:

• One full-time staff member (1 FTE): $150K (including MIT overhead and benefits)
• Travel budget, conference fees, other expenses: $60K
• Technical infrastructure (server, Moodle, etc.): $20K
• Part-time technical staff (0.25 FTE): $20K
• Total: $250K/year

Overhead costs may be lower if done through ERCIM or Keio. If only part of this budget is realized, we can prioritize on activities. Training itself will not fund this activity; stage one (the training) would largely fund a partial FTE to attempt to procure the larger budget.

Alternate Sources of Funding

There may be other opportunities for funding, such as partnering with the Web Foundation or AIGA. Partnering with our members, such as Microsoft or Google, may also be effective, by reaching out to a different department with a different budget than the standards team; marketing and evangelism departments are likely partners.