Overview

• W3C has created five task forces:
  • Continue and Strengthen Core Mission, Chair Philippe Le Hegaret
  • The Place for New Standards to be Brought, Chair Ian Jacobs
  • Sustainable Business Model, Chair Jeff Jaffe
  • Drive a Global and Accessible Web, Chair Judy Brewer
  • Increase Value Proposition for Users Web, Chair Ralph Swick
• Between May and Nov 2010 we will develop a plan to transform W3C regarding new work and participation

How We Got Here

• Standards Landscape has changed since 1994
  • Easier, faster to deploy technology
  • More stakeholders
  • Changing expectations about SDOs
• Barriers to W3C participation cited over the years
  • organizational commitments v. individual participation (IPR, AC Rep role)
  • cost of membership
  • process overhead / too slow / don't need consensus-building
  • not my community
  • different vision of Web (Architecture)
  • different infrastructure for work

What Can We Learn from Experience?

If some specifications might have been candidates for W3C and didn't come here, why not?

• What specifications might be instructive? (Atom? RSS? OpenID? OpenSocial? OAuth? HTML5? Others?)
• Organizations are popping up to work on specifications. What do we learn from that?

On the question of "which specs should be brought to W3C?" other task forces will be looking at various criteria.

(Draft) Goals of the Task Force

• Make W3C an attractive venue for standards development and pre-standards-track incubation
  • We expect different processes of different weights for different community goals
  • The community will decide how far it wants to go; not all work will become a global core standard
• Create a smooth path from start to finish, while not expecting or requiring all products to use all mechanisms.
  • Look at the entire standardization process, from "germ of an idea," through "small group of very motivated people not interested in broad consensus" through "widely supported, well-reviewed, consensus-supported spec" to "de jure standard."
  • It is not a goal to scrap the W3C Process. If there are process barriers, we should lower them. Understanding the whole process should be useful up front to establish context.
• Make it extremely easy for people to become part of the W3C community as individuals.
  • But since W3C RF patent policy benefits from organizational commitments, think about transition from individual to organizational commitments.
• Identify ways to actively seek out new communities of interest to W3C and to connect with them
  • Revisit our liaisons work; identify ways to seek out potential communities to work with, and how to maintain that effort over time.
  • Examine relationship to research as one source of new ideas
  • Identify mechanisms that encourage international participation
  • It is not a goal to discourage innovation outside W3C. Indeed, liaison efforts will have the effect of encouraging outside groups.

What Value Does W3C Add

• International community with strong values
  • Consensus and respect
  • Vendor neutrality
• Openness
  • Web freely available to all
  • RF patent policy
  • Public Accountability part of process
• Exposure
  • Strong relationship with IT members
  • Liaisons with governments and other standards bodies (including de jure, e.g., PAS Submitter status effort)
  • Relationships with research bodies
• Experience
  • Track record
  • Staff expertise
  • Horizontal review (accessibility, i18n)
• Infrastructure and tools

Questions For the Task Force

• For a target audience of Web technology developers (companies or small groups or individuals) seeking broader dissemination, what are their needs?
• In terms of a participation model and offering for that audience, where do we want to be in 10 years? 3? 1?
• How do we change W3C to get there? What can we learn from other organizations? What processes of different weights do we need?
• How do we communicate clearly this offering?
• How do we measure success?

W3C Incubator Integration

Timeline Overview

• Early June: Start work
• Late-July: W3M check-in
• End September: Proposal to W3M for management meeting
• Early October: Revise proposal based on W3M feedback.
• Late October: Send Proposal to AC in advance of TPAC 2010
• November: Discuss with AC at TPAC 2010

Work Plan

• Part I (June): What People Want
  • Interviews with potential customers. Identify 3-5 candidates and work with them through the process. What networking opportunities to make contacts?
  • Expression of Use cases and requirements
  • Identification of process, legal barriers (perceived and real)
• Part II (July): What We Should Do
  • Proposed solutions (see "considerations" on later slide)
• Part III (August-September): How We Should Do It
  • Detailed plans (and how they address "considerations")
  • Any commitments from candidates?

Note:

• Parts are serialized
• Within each part, can work be done in parallel?

Some considerations to keep in mind

• Process
• Revenue streams (including "none")
• Impact on Membership (by organizations)
• Impact on Staff (e.g., coordination role)
• Legal (e.g., organizational ipr commitments after individual commitments)
• Architecture (e.g., any filter for moving to Rec track?)
• Infrastructure (e.g., new social networking mechanisms)
• Culture (e.g., liaisons, any new meeting approaches, ways to improve international participation)
• Branding (e.g., associating W3C with innovation, reinforcing positive messages about participation in W3C, promoting participation)

Relation to Other Work

• This task force focused on "how" w3c process works; other task forces focus on what w3c should do (core, global, users)
• This task force and sustainable business model task force will work together on discussions of business model ideas
• Some previous ideas in this space
  • OpenW3C (Halpin, Jacobs)
  • Outposts (Berjon, Appelquist)

Initial Participants

Others I should contact?

Participation

• Work in public (email, wiki)
• Proposed hour teleconf every 2 weeks, perhaps weekly initially
• 2-3 hours per week commitment?
• No ftf meetings planned