Beta Testing Community and Business Groups

In April I wrote about W3C Community Groups and Business Groups, two new programs designed to make it easy for developers, users, and other stakeholders to discuss and develop Web technology. Since then we have been generating interest in new groups. We have also been putting the infrastructure for the new programs in place.

Today I'm pleased to announce that we have begun to beta-test the new system with a few of these groups:

• Declarative 3D for the Web Architecture
• Web Payments
• XML Performance

I expect we will be working with 5-8 groups during the beta period. We are targeting 25 July for the public launch. On that date, anyone will be able to propose new groups and join any Community Group with no fee.

For the next several weeks we will be completing our infrastructure, making the system more robust, refining our style sheets, and stepping up our outreach so that we have a diverse set of groups ready to go at launch. Please contact me if you would like more information about starting your own Community Group or Business Group at W3C.