What's the point of Incubation?

• Allow exploration without lock-in
• Allow explorations to fail gracefully
• Allow features to move at a natural pace
• Allow competing ideas to incubate

Web Platform Incubator Community Group (WICG)

• (This is from Dom's update at the Quebec AC meeting)
• Launched in 2015 to incubate new browser features
• Chaired by Marcos Caceres (Mozilla), Yoav Weiss (Google),
  Chris Wilson (Google), and Travis Leithead (Microsoft)
• 500+ topics discussed, 100+ github repositories started
• 30+ features or specs brought to standardization, through input from various stakeholders, incl. non-browser vendors
• Detailed assessment review by the Advisory Board

Incubation isn't only in the WICG

• We created the WICG to have an easy-to-join place to incubate
• Sometimes, there’s a community already ready-made
  • We have paired groups in Immersive Web - IWWG and IWCG
  • We also have the same with Web Audio
  • This still allows features to compete, and to fail

The Process

1. “There’s a problem space to solve” → (public!)
2. WICG post →
3. Work with community, prototype solutions →
4. "Minimum Viable Design" - get web developers to try it out
5. Community-building, iteration, graduation, →
6. WG (horizontal review, iterate, lock down, implementations) →
7. REC

What should you take away?

• Incubation is a great tool to explore without lockin
• Incubation can happen in multiple places
• As inserted into UA process, it can help prevent proprietary design
• We usually shouldn’t start new web platform features with a WG