W3C Statements about Advisory Board Nominees

Form for AC to vote | AB home

Note: The deadline for votes is 23:59 ET, 31 May 2014.

The following statements were sent about the nominees (in alphabetical order by nominee family name) and made public with their permission:

  1. Arthur Barstow (Nokia)
  2. Jim Bell (HP) *
  3. Virginie Galindo (Gemalto)
  4. Jay (Junichi) Kishigami (NTT)
  5. Kelvin Lawrence (IBM)
  6. Soohong Daniel Park (Samsung Electronics)
  7. Milan Patel (Huawei)
  8. Boaz Sender (Bocoup)
  9. David Singer (Apple)
  10. Jean-Charles Verdié (MStar) *
  11. Lea Verou (Unaffiliated)
  12. Stephen Zilles (Adobe)

An asterisk (*) indicates that the nominee is a current AB participant. All individuals were nominated by the AC Representatives of their organizations unless otherwise indicated below.

Arthur Barstow (Nokia)

I have been an active collaborator in the Web standards community for many years, first as a W3C Visiting Fellow, and more recently as chair of several working groups focusing on Open Web Platform technologies, including "cat herding" for the WebApps WG and more "traditionally" run Working Groups, including the Touch Interface, Pointer Events and Web Application Formats WGs. I also contribute to my groups' testing efforts and help the groups make forward progress while minimizing process overhead.

My chief motivation and methodology in Web standards participation has been and continues to be interoperability, by creating standards that are broadly implemented and deployed. It's this perspective and experience that I believe will make me especially well-suited to increasing the relevance and impact of the Advisory Board (AB). The WebApps WG, in particular, is working on a large number of critical deliverables, and tracking those will be important to any decisions the AB should make.

As a long-standing Advisory Committee (AC) representative, I continue to proactively advocate the AC and the Consortium become more inclusive and open. I lead an initiative to help new AC members become familiar with the Consortium by creating the ACwiki and adding several documents such as the AC Newbie Guide, AC representative Introductions and AC Meeting Value Proposition. I also created documents that facilitate gathering Member and Public feedback for initiatives to update the W3C's "events process", to transparently and consistently evaluate new work proposals and to define requirements for common group "dashboards". Additionally, since the majority of Members do not attend "distributed meetings" (such as AC meetings and W3C Workshops), I have persistently advocated adding video support for AC meetings to facilitate both remote participation and post event viewing. I will also continue to encourage the "silent majority" of Members to become more active in the AC and the Consortium and I welcome ideas on how we can achieve that together.

In my role as AC representative, I have taken the responsibility to read, understand, and report to my company all of W3C's activities, to find where it effects us and where we can make the most of our participation, and I think the AB would benefit from a similar approach of looking at the breadth of W3C's activities to make more coherent and comprehensive strategic decisions.

I think the AB has the potential to be a useful asset to the Web Community. However, to successfully "lead the Web" and to help extend the reach of the Web to the next billion users requires an AB that is commited to transform the Consortium as the Web continues evolving, to provide strong leadership via actions (i.e. less talking/advising and more doing) and to seek unfettered open collaboration. That can be only be achieved with an AB that is transparent, open and inclusive. The Consortium must once again focus its limited resources on its key value proposition - creating broadly interoperable standards. If you share this view of the AB, I would greatly appreciate your support.

-Regards, AB

Jim Bell (HP) *

Dr. James R. Bell is a member of the W3C Advisory Board and is Hewlett-Packard Company’s representative to the W3C Advisory Committee.

Jim has played an active role in the AB, the AC, and the W3C community. If re-elected to the Advisory Board, Jim’s priorities will include (1) ensuring that the W3C remains the premier organization in developing standards for the infrastructure of the rapidly evolving Web, (2) responding to important new web usage cases such as the social web and the Web of Things, (3) increasing the security, trust, privacy, and accessibility of the Web, (4) accelerating W3C’s outreach to web developers, (5) exploring the use of web technology to provide better support for remote participation in W3C’s activities, and (6) stimulating effective coordination with other standards organizations and consortia.

At Hewlett-Packard, Jim is the Director of Industry Standards. He is responsible for leading effective, coordinated participation in more than 200 industry consortia and standards organizations by over 500 people from across HP’s businesses. He also manages the activities in product accessibility across HP’s businesses, including HP’s participation in W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative. If re-elected to the Advisory Board, he has a firm commitment from HP to continue to provide him with the necessary time and resources to be a productive contributor to the AB.

Jim’s immediately previous position at HP was General Manager of the Open Source and Linux Operation, and before that General Manager of the Embedded Software Operation. Over the course of his thirty four years with HP, he has been Group Engineering Manager for almost all of HP’s computer businesses.

Prior to joining HP in 1980, Jim was the Corporate Director of Research at Digital Equipment Corporation for eight years. Earlier he held software engineering positions Bell Labs, IBM, and SRI International. Jim has taught Computer Science at Stanford and Northeastern Universities and has published journal articles and a book on a range of computing topics.

Jim has extensive experience with standards groups and consortia. In addition to his seventeen years on the W3C Advisory Committee and fourteen years on the W3C Advisory Board, he has represented HP on the Boards of the Object Management Group, the Precision RISC Organization, and The Open Group, where he currently chairs the Governing Board. Earlier Jim served for fifteen months as President and CEO of X/Open, President and CEO of the Open Software Foundation, and after their merger, President and CEO of The Open Group. He has also been active in professional and philanthropic organizations, including serving as past president of the UniForum Association and currently on the Board of Healthwise, a large public charity which uses web technology to provide health information to over a hundred million people per year.

Jim earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Virginie Galindo (Gemalto)

Over the past three years, Virginie has taken a central role in W3C's effort to deliver better security on the Web by chairing both the Web Crypto WG and the Web Security IG. She could put to work the extensive experience with security topics that she acquired working for Gemalto, a security company, and with a broad set of security-related organisations (ETSI, TCG, GlobalPlatform, GSMA, SIMAlliance) over the past decade.

Driven by a topic that cuts broadly across the W3C's activities, this has provided her with a unique viewpoint from which to observe not only the breadth and diversity of topics that the Consortium covers but also the issues in communication and coordination faced by groups and participants, as well as numerous inefficiencies that regularly plague our deliverables.

Building on this particularly broad viewpoint and her existing contributions to improve the W3C, Virginie will use her AB term to help our 20 year old organization evolve to serve both its members and its community at large better. Rather than discuss these topics solely within the confines of the AB as has happened maybe too often, she intends to systematically engage the Advisory Committee directly in discussion of the evolution she wishes to foster.

As first wishes, based on her exploration of W3C life, Virginie intends to focus first on the following items:

  1. Increase visibility of W3C deliverable for members and non-members, by supporting the creation of dashboard
  2. Improve web developers community feedbacks, involvement and representation in W3C (leveraging openness of W3C with public event and webizen-like project)
  3. Maintain motivation of contributors, including education and supporting tools, with a specific focus on editors and chairs.
  4. Ensure that securing the web sits at the core of the evolution of the consortium, as required by device manufacturers and security-sensitive companies

Jay (Junichi) Kishigami (NTT)

Jay (Junichi) Kishigami is a former Executive Director of NTT Cyber Solutions Laboratories as well as a Vice President of NTT's Strategic Business Development Division, and a former professor at a number of universities, including the University of Tokyo and Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) in Malaysia. He is currently a Senior Visiting Researcher at Keio University and a senior advisor for standardization strategy at NTT.

He received a Doctorate in Engineering from Hokkaido University in 1989 and his activities as a researcher at NTT included work on innovative technologies for high-capacity information storage and wireless communication.

He has a wide range of experience in standards development through close participation in SDOs such as the TV Anytime Forum, IPTV Forum Japan, the Japan Standards Association, and the ITU-T — where he was a Rapporteur for ITU-T Study Group 16 (Multimedia coding, systems and applications). He has also worked extensively with the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) as chairman and member of a number of committees in areas including digital content distribution and Web archiving.

Given his deep background in both the industry and academia and his professional experience in standards development, we believe that his participation on the W3C Advisory Board would be highly valuable to the W3C as the W3C continues to seek closer alignment with industries worldwide. We believe he can contribute to helping the W3C ensure that the Web continues to grow and mature as the optimal platform for businesses, governments and other organizations of all kinds to build successful services and applications for their users.

Kelvin Lawrence (IBM)

Kelvin Lawrence, who currently lives in Austin Texas, was born and raised in the UK. His earliest involvement with W3C goes back to around '98 as a founding member of the SVG Working Group, a technology he continues to champion today. He recently re-joined the WG and, partnering with one of his colleagues, contributed to SVG's improved accessibility. Kelvin blogs extensively on the topic, publishing and maintaining a repository of over 600 SVG samples on his website at http://www.kelvinlawrence.net Kelvin was also a member of the W3C XML Binary Work Group and before that an early evangelist for XML technologies, both inside and outside IBM. Kelvin has also participated in key standards efforts at other venues, most notably at OASIS, where he was the co-chair of the Web Services Security (WS-Security) Technical Committee and the Web Services Secure Exchange (WSSX) TC.

As an IBM Distinguished Engineer working on IBM's Open Technology & Cloud Labs efforts, Kelvin works with a dedicated team of open technology developers. He actively promotes open standards and open source, attending and coordinating workshops and conferences around the world, helping programmers and architects better understand how to engage open communities and leverage and create standards. He helped W3C run a developer track at the WWW2001 Conference in Hong Kong and in 2013 joined the W3C efforts exploring how it might expand its global community. Kelvin not only participated in the W3C Headlights Activity he also helped design and sponsor the 2013 joint W3C/OpenSocial workshop in San Francisco focused on the Social Web, which will bring two standards efforts and eventually their communities, OpenSocial and Activity Streams, within the W3C purview.

As a member of the W3C Advisory Board, Kelvin hopes to bring his practical experience working with a variety of standards organization models and processes to help improve and modernize W3C's processes to meet the demands of today's fast paced development community. At his disposal are the insights gained from IBM's Social, Mobile and Cloud platform teams and its interactions with the development community working in both standards and open source ecosystems.

Kelvin holds a B.SC (Honours) degree in Computer Science from the University of Brighton (formerly Brighton Polytechnic) in England. He shares his thoughts and details his technology efforts on his personal website at http://www.kelvinlawrence.net.

Soohong Daniel Park (Samsung Electronics)

I am Soohong Daniel Park, I work for Samsung Electronics and some of you may remind me as Samsung's AC-Rep before 2012. Starting in 2007, I also got involved into Video on the Web as Samsung's IPTV Research Scientist and am currently serving as co-chair of the Media Annotation WG on ontology metadata to be used with Samsung IP-enabled smart devices.

Prior to W3C participation, I was already involved in Internet Standards, in particular with IETF, IEEE802 and ITU-T. I kickstarted the new IETF 16ng WG back in 2005 and successfully co-chaired that WG.

I recently took up a new role at Samsung as Open Source Strategist at Samsung to increase Open Source and Standards adoption in Samsung smart products, an effort that will obviously expand across all Samsung business markets.

Samsung Electronics nominated me for the current W3C Advisory Board election because we think we can provide a new and quite unique point of view on the process and operations of W3C. We're in particular highly interested in the following topics:

  1. The "Webizen" initiative: we think the W3C standardization process relies more and more every year on contributors that are not Members, most of W3C mailing-lists being public and encouraging contributions. The only way W3C currently has to increase these people's engagement is through Invited Experts nominations, a mechanism that obviously cannot be expanded ad infinitum. We then highly support the Webizen initiative and even think Individual Members should gain some official visibility at W3C, for instance at the AB. If elected, I will actively take part in this proposed process change.
  2. External events: as our representative Daniel Glazman pointed out in the AC Forum recently, W3C events are old-style, too academic and formal, and cannot well represent the needs of the community in 2014. The Next Game Frontier conference Microsoft and Samsung kickstarted and co-organized is an example of such new events. We need to review the way W3C events are discussed, shaped, organized, officially supported, co-sponsored and even named. We also need a way to materialize clear and fast support to some events that are important for the Future of the Web but organized without any W3C involvement.
  3. SuperGroups: the high cost of WG rechartering remains an issue for everyone in W3C. Some important WGs of the Consortium stay around forever, don't change of scope at all but we still have to recharter them every three years or so. This costs an incredible amount of time to Chairs, W3C Team Contacts, ACs and Members' Legal Departments. We feel the Charter amendment process is also too expensive and should be changed.
  4. Community Groups and transitions between Community Groups and Working Groups: we think Community Groups need a deeper review. Many CGs are inactive or never produced valuable results. Some CGs are used to produce spec work, that is sometimes considered by implementors as "good enough", resulting in a weak or even absent transition to WG work.
  5. Liaison with other Standard Bodies: we think the current liaising system is rather weak, relying almost only on individual participation. It lacks some formalism and that can create issues between, on one hand, W3C and the other Standards Bodies relying on W3C Recommendations, and on the other hand between other Standard Bodies and W3C when W3C relies on their work.
  6. The AB itself: we have welcomed the changes implemented in the AB since Q4 2013 but think the AB should even more work in the open and for instance accept meeting observers for non-confidential matters.
  7. Gravity center of the W3C: despite of having offices all around the world, the W3C remains US-centric in a lot of ways. The W3C Korea, China and India Offices and the increased participation of Asian companies - like Samsung Electronics that will co-host the first W3C WG meeting ever in Korea this May - shows an evolution in the W3C Membership. We look forward to increasing an Asian point of view on both operations and Standards.
  8. The AB election: despite of visible changes since 2012 in the number of candidates at each AB election, there is still a over-representation of some companies in the AB. We think the "Webizen" initiative and the need for W3C to be more attractive to SMEs will require some changes in the AB election process, allowing these potential new contributors to be represented better at the Advisory Board.

I look forward to having your support and vote in this AB Election.

Milan Patel (Huawei)

Milan has been involved in standardisation activities particularly in the Internet and Telecommunications forums of IETF and 3GPP, and remains a key contributor to 3GPP. A relative newcomer to the W3C, Milan’s current interests includes the application of Web technologies in the communications technology industry, including their relevance in carrier network services, enterprise and vertical industries.

Milan’s expertise in the telco industry, where the importance of Web technologies is rapidly increasing beyond the Mobile Web, brings another perspective to Web Technologies considerations. He is a proponent of Ubiquitous access to the Web, Web openness, and as a nominee for an Advisory Board position aims to continue to promote Web technologies in the telco industry. Furthermore, he will aim to promote the interest of Chinese developers, and increase the awareness of accessibility and internationalisation of the Web.

Boaz Sender (Bocoup)

Nominated by Mozilla Foundation

Boaz Sender is the Managing Director of Bocoup where he spent the last 5 years working to help the largest companies in the world adopt Open Web technologies at the core of their enteprise.

Boaz got started contributing to the open web through working on the official jQuery documentation, learning materials, and plugins before querySelectorAll. Boaz began contributing to Open Web standards at the W3C with the audio-data API (and subsequently web audio) during the lead-up to the launch of Firefox 4. Boaz has also participated in W3C community groups, unsuccessfully attempted to design a cross W3C automated testing scheme, and spoken at the WWW conference in Lyon on Open Web game development.

Most recently, Boaz has organized public forums for ECMA's TC-39 and the W3C's TAG at Bocoup with the goal of opening channels of communication between these groups and local developer communities. After leading Bocoup's business since 2009, Boaz rejoined the engineering team in 2014, and is now working on large scale URL centric web applications.

Boaz wants to bring the W3C Advisory Board his practical knowledge building web software, creating dialogue between developer communities and standards groups, and helping enterprises find the business value in Open Web standards.

David Singer (Apple)

I am one of those odd ducks that think that good governance is important, and can even be fun. I like to include people, make sure that positions are heard (and — when possible — respected). Those of you in the privacy area will know that the Do-Not-Track group has tested my resolve on this (strenuously, on occasion) and I think it remains intact!

We have two ‘steering’ committees at the W3C: the TAG and the AB. Quoting a little to set context:

Advisory Board
"Created in March 1998, the Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. The Advisory Board also serves the Members by tracking issues raised between Advisory Committee meetings, soliciting Member comments on such issues, and proposing actions to resolve these issues. The Advisory Board manages the evolution of the Process Document. The Advisory Board hears appeals of Member Submission requests that are rejected for reasons unrelated to Web architecture; see also the TAG.” (see <http://www.w3.org/2002/ab/>, quoting the process document).
TAG
"The TAG is a special working group within the W3C, chartered (under the W3C Process Document) with stewardship of the Web architecture. As outlined in our charter, there are three aspects to this mission:
  • to document and build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary;
  • to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG;
  • to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C.” (see <http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/>).
As I see it, for the most part, the two are distinct — TAG is about architecture, AB is about governance. Until we get to talk about strategy or relevance, they mostly work separately.

The W3C is also an ‘odd duck’, in many respects. We often try to merge the good aspects of modern ‘agile’ processes, open/collaborative development, and community-based approaches, with the good aspects of the more traditional ‘standards committee’ approach. Where the optimum balance lies is a question of tuning and watchfulness, and changes over time.

I like finding solutions that are not only 'right' but can be seen to have the desired effect: I am a pragmatist. I think that process, to a large extent, protects us from the unexpected and serves the unseen. We need process not when things are going well and we are in peachy consensus, but when we have problems. The process gives us a meta-language for making progress in the face of problems. Process also is there to serve the people not at the table: can they follow what’s going on, rely on it, and so on? Making process work for all the people — both inside and outside it — and for all the situations, is an art, and worthy of study and thought.

I also like reducing the temperature, finding light rather than heat, and being ‘diplomatic’. I think we need people at the AB who can help reach out, and bring in, and help reduce alienation.

OK, so you need the usual boilerplate (which has, as they say, the advantage of being true): I would be honored to serve on the AB

* * * *

A bit about myself: I have worked in the contexts of a wide variety of 'standards bodies' -- not only the W3C, but also MPEG, trade associations such as Blu-ray (I was on the board) and 3GPP, technology-focused associations such as the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (I was board chair for a while), and others. This experience has taught me that there is no 'right' model or way, and that a lack of introspection – and resulting stasis – are bad for any association. I believe (passionately) in open, level, playing fields with the lowest possible 'cost' of entry: it is good for society, and good for innovation.

I spend enough time with marketing people, lawyers, and so on, to be aware of their concerns and perspectives, as well as those of engineers. I enjoy working with the staff and AC representatives (and indeed, the whole W3C community). I am aware that I bring not only my own opinions and those of my colleagues, but the experience and insights I glean from all of you, and a perspective that we are building something for society as a whole — everyone — that, if we continue to do it right, will be powerfully enabling and transformative.

I hope if you have questions for me, or hopes, or concerns, you'll feel free to contact me. Email is a good place to start, but I'd also be happy to chat over the phone, or make contact in any reasonable way you like.

David Singer, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Jean-Charles Verdié (MStar) *

I have been seating at the AB for two years and tried to bring the voice of a different industry and culture.

Actively invested in the Web and TV IG and co-chair of the Media API TF in this IG, I contribute to bringing this industry requirements to the W3C and building bridges between this organisation and compelling standards which emerges in the past few years to fill the gaps. My professional track record resounds with the words "digital TV", "embedded system" and "web-based technology interfaces".

As a member of the new AB, I’m intending to give some of my time on addressing the workshop definition & organisation issue we are facing, which is currently discussed in [2]. I believe there is room for improvements: the world has changed, the way to gather information and/or people has changed, and the W3C is definitely the right place to experiment new options, in addition to the existing tracks. I’m thinking for instance of a light-weight organisation for specific small or regional meet ups, which would be, if you want, what TEDx is to TED [3]: same spirit, same branding but smaller attendance and/or focus. Also there are new usages such as webcast which should be explored, even more with WebRTC!

I’m willing to sponsor and work on this item, which I’m sure will bring a lot of interest and new (un)expected traction.

In addition, I intend to keep lobbying for a voting system reform [4][5] which we might have failed to explain enough last year during the ballot [6] but I'm convinced would benefit the W3C by increasing diversity of opinion in elective colleges. I plan to propose the launch of a Community Group to push this forward [7], as many AC reps expressed interest in it.

As a member of the AB I intend to keep my style, which means remaining silent when I have nothing to add which is clever than what I already heard, and to promote and voice a different mindset from the industry I'm working with, and the specific French/Taiwanese cultural mix. I am and will remain supportive of changes and efforts to make things better or to make things happen in a positive [8] yet critical way [9].

[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Queuille#Citations
[2] http://www.w3.org/mid/53399318.7030209@disruptive-innovations.com
[3] https://www.ted.com/about/programs-initiatives/tedx-program
[4] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-forum/2013AprJun/0071.html
[5] https://www.w3.org/2013/06/12-ab-minutes.html#item04
[6] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2013OctDec/0004.html
[7] https://www.w3.org/2014/03/05-ab-minutes.html#item10
[8] https://www.w3.org/2014/03/05-ab-minutes.html#item01
[9] https://www.w3.org/2014/03/04-ab-minutes.html#item04

Lea Verou (Unaffiliated)

Nominated by jQuery Foundation

Lea is an Invited Expert in the CSS Working Group and has previously worked as W3C staff in the Developer Relations team. She has been programming for 16 years and an active web developer for nine, so has the unique perspective of both a standards geek and a web professional. She is very active in the community, both through her open source projects which are used by many web authors, as well as her talks at web development conferences worldwide. She currently spends her time writing an advanced CSS book for O’Reilly and is soon moving to Boston to do postgraduate research on web technologies & tools at MIT.

Stephen Zilles (Adobe)

Steve Zilles has been a standards contributor in the W3C since May 1995 (the second AC meeting). He was an author of the original W3C Process and has continued to contribute to matching the process to the needs of current development styles and practices. He has been an AC Representative (Adobe Systems) and Working Group Chair (XSL) and is currently a Working Group participant (CSS) so he has experienced many of the roles that make the W3C work. From 2002 to 2013 he was the appointed Chair of the Advisory Board. In that role, He helped facilitate updates to the AC Meeting format, the introduction of the W3C Patent Policy, the hiring of Jeff Jaffe as the W3C CEO, the modifications to the W3C Process currently in Last Call, and a number of other initiatives.

Steve has represented Adobe to a number of Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) other than the W3C, including IETF, ANSI INCITS, ISO JTC1 and industry consortia, such as “the Printer Working Group” and understands the working styles of these organizations. This has become more important as the W3C interfaces with more SDOs. He looks forward to continuing work on updating the W3C Process and keeping the W3C being the primary membership organization for Web Standards for the next 20 years.


Ian Jacobs
Last modified: $Date: 2014/05/09 13:42:35 $