Member-Driven

Like all membership organisations, W3C does what its members expect and ask of it.

• Member support is critical to anything;
• Members, not the Team, decide what work is done, what standards are created.
• All substantive work is done in public.
• Anyone can comment on W3C standards as they are created. Your comments matter and will be considered.
• Individuals often join working groups as Invited Experts [policy on acceptance].

The Recommendation Track

• Working Groups have a charter that must be approved by the members (and the management team in terms of available resources).
• Any number of working drafts may be published with changes noted, usually with links to the comment that triggered the change.
• Eventually a Last Call is made. This signals that the WG believes its design work to be complete.
• Substantive changes may trigger a second Last Call. Group must prove that all comments have been answered and that the commenter is satisfied with the answer.
• Next stage is Candidate Recommendation - Call for Implementations. Minimum requirement is two independent, interoperable implementations of every feature in the spec.
• Candidate Recommendation - almost there. Just need final sign off from the Director acting on feedback from the members.
• Recommendation.

And that's why W3C Recommendations matter!

Incubator groups (XGs)

• Incubator Groups are light weight groups operating within W3C but without Team support that do not produce standards.
• They do background work, build the community, and report on what standards work might be undertaken.
• They typically run for no more than a year.
• Work may feed directly into a full Working Group.
• A list of current XGs is available.

This workshop

Working Group, Incubator Group, neither?

That's what we're here to find out.