Meeting minutes
lola: this will be an interactive discussion after my presentation
… I'm a developer advocate for Samsung internet
… I'll let Dan introduce himself and the TAG
Dan: I work with Lola in Samsung internet devrel
… I'm also cochair of the W3C Technical Architecture Group
… where we review specs as they're being developed
… during that, we're asking - have developers asked for this? what developers say about this?
… in general, there is a need for developers to be more involved in the stadnardization process
… and demistify it
… I've been a strong proponent of bringing developers earlier in the process
… bringing information to the developers community at large
… the W3C TAG has run developers meeting when we had F2F meetings
… I'm hoping the Dev Council can bring even more developers and broaden the community of developers tha tare paying attention to W3C
Olu: I wanted to join the dev council - I've been interested in getting involved in W3C
… I'm interested in making dev more involved in W3C
… happy to help making that open
… I'm a developer in @@@
https://
Jacky: I'm a consultant making the internet interesting
… there are lots of specs people don't know about, like activitystreams
… what can used today to build cool services
Lola: there is also Boaz from Bocoup who will cochair the group with me
… Part of the role of the developre council is to introduce what W3C is, so I'll start with a quick intro about what W3C is and where the dev council fits into that
… W3C is a standards body for the Web, based on a set of host organizations in North America, Europe and Asia
… it was started by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor the Web
… W3C is comprised of Working Groups, Community Groups, Interest Group, Business Groups
… Being part of a WG requires yoru organization to be a W3C Member
… whereas community groups are open to anyone to join without a fee
… there are also Advisory groups to give official opinions - that includes the Technical Architecture Group that Dan mentioned earlier
… They give feedback on proposals to make sure they meet standards, incl ethical standards
… W3C in the broader internet community is to lead to the Web to its full potential with protocols and guidelines defined as Web standards
… 35 WG, 10 IG, 300+ Community and Business Groups
… lots of conversations happening in W3C, which makes it hard to navigate the system
… How does the council fit into all of this?
… We want to be part way Community Group / Advisory Group
… we're a community group, so any one can join
… we're advisory in the sense that we want to facilitate bidirectional conversations between spec writers and the wider developer community
… to help them ask questions and give feedback on specs
… and have spec writers be confident to come and ask for input
… We want people to join
… How can you join?
… the easiest way is to join the group on the W3C site
Lola: we have a github repo where we will be managing issues and questions
Lola: we have the #devrel channel on Slack where anyone can join
… we want to make The W3C experience for developers a more seamless process
… at the moment it can be quite overwhelming
… even if you have something to say, you may not necessarily how to do it
… as Olu described earlier
… we want to help direct developers to the right places
… on the flip side, we would also be able to help spec writers target the right audiences to get feedback
… I'll now open the floor for feedback and questions
Lola: what are the painpoints of working with W3C you may have had?
… e.g. when I get on the Web site, I find it hard how to login
… or where to find the conversations happening on a given proposal
… what are your painpoints?
Aram: I've only been there for ~ 2 years, still feel like a newbie
… introducing people to IRC would be good
… I've just discovered yesterday the /me convention for instance
Lola: very good point - a lot of the groups I'm in don't use IRC, but slack and Google Docs for minutes
<cwilso> I wrote a cheat sheet for IRC for the Immersive Web WG, which refers to the longer W3C guide to IRC: https://
Lola: this creates inconsistent experiences across groups
Jeff: one of the big problems that I think we have at W3C is that we develop a spec, and we never really know if there is sufficient community to adopt and implement the spec
… the WebAuthn Adoption Community Group has built a community around WebAuthn
… is adoption part of the theme of what you're trying to work on?
Lola: at this time, probably not
… not something we would be measuring directly
… although we expect this would an indirect outcome
… our main focus is pre-adoption phase - getting developers involved in the first instance
… once they're involved and can give their feedback and been heard, they're more likely to adopt the spec
Jacky: having a digestible summary of all the work happening would help quite a bit
lola: like a weekly digest? noted
Richard: I'm the I18N guy in W3C
… one of the things W3C struggle with is getting in touch with developers all around the world, e.g. South America, Africa, Asia
… how will you reach out to devleopers globally? is there a way to reach these communities?
Lola: great question! one topic I care a lot about
… I'm both British and Nigerian; Nigeria has a very strong developer community that I would hope to see more heard in W3C
… we want to work with existing communities in Africa, Carribea, South Asia
… work with the Web We Want who already have established links in these communities
… I want to make sure things are more friendly before we invite a whole swath of developers
… that people feel welcome and know how to navigate the system
… but reaching to non-western developers is one of our priorities
… we want to diversify the set of people who contribute to W3C
… I haven't seen a lot of people like myself in W3C
Richard: tying a bit to that, we have a language enablement program to identify painpoints across languages https://
Lola: I also work with Open Web Docs; we ran a conference at Write the Doc conferences where we got lots of non-English contributors
… everything we do is in English; if we try to reach people all over the globe, we can't assume that everyone can interact in English
Lola: my next question - what are your good experiences of interactions with W3C?
… e.g. for me, in the privacy group, there is a lot avenues for giving feedback - on slack, github in meetings
Dan: one of the good points of W3C in my experience is the community aspect
… most apparent to physical events such as TPAC where you see the camaraderie, the respect, generally good and positive atmosphere
… would like to see that expanded beyond the small group people, to a wider group
… sometimes, any organization can give negative response to people who don't know the codes of the organization, e.g. to ask questions
… mitigating this problem is one thing I hope we achieve with the council
lola: +1 on having the council expanding this atmosphere
… also we should work on working with other existing developer relations community
… and expanding to more communities
Lola: A more general question - what do people see from a developer council? What's your wishlist?
… at the session yesterday, quite a few suggestions lined up with our plans
… a pattern would be the CSS WG wanting feedback from developers - we would organize a session where developers would get a presentation on the feature, and be given an opportunity for feedback
Lola: a few other examples from yesterday
… making sure the council represent the whole community, not just big tech
… also helping adding/removing items to the overall roadmap
… help WGs give a clear path for managing developers
… increase communication between devrel and W3C
… facilitate the advertizing of the best time to give feedback to avoid situations where it's too early or too late
Jacky: in stackoverflow, they have a language survey
… similar efforts to guide standardization efforts
… AMA would be interesting - to help people understand the design of this or that feature
Chris: I'm a bit confused about the ultimate goal of this group
… I've been a lead of Google devrel until a couple of years ago
… There are a few categories:
… what's new? hard to organize - we used to this a lot in Google devrel, but it's a bit scattered across features
… then best practices in using well-known features - MDN & OWD do the heavy lifting
… and in terms of getting input for new features - I want to strengthen the need to link with "the Web we want" effort that Microsoft started a few years ago and in which I'm involved
… this is the place where anybody can ask for new features
… turning these asks into an explainer of the problem space, based on research, then feature design, then attracting implementors interest
… I want to understand better how to connect these efforts more closely
… Google has a very large devrel team, but am not seeing anyone involved here
… Want to help connect
Lola: in terms of the fragmentation, everything is indeed very fragmented
… which maps to the very fragmented conversations in W3C
… this is also reflected in possible conflicts between this session and others that may explain
… this dev council concept is pretty new, and it will be very important for us to connect with existing dev advocates
… the leadership team of the group is connected to various existing communities
… connecting with movements like the "Web we want" is definitely going to help
… likewise with connecting with existing devrel teams in bigger orgs
… dev advocates can help give us broader outreach by expanding our outreach
Chris: what's the output of the Dev Council? The Web We Want has been running for several years and is improving its piece of the developer feature pipeline
… where does the dev council wants to be?
… there is a difference between a community and a council?
… council gives some sense of authority that I'm not sure it has
… The Google team had this "web dev council" in the past with a vetted list of people
… they also have Google Developer Experts
Lola: re fine-tuning the goals, this is what I'm hoping to achieve with these TPAC sessions
… our next meeting will be focused on a working statement to finetune our goals
… we want to be a place where folks can come to find out more about W3C and a place where spec writers can come to reach out to developers
… we want to act as a kind of guide
Richard: the goal sounds good me, but reaching that goal may require a large detour
… a lot of people don't know about W3C and don't necessarily understand its value
… before people can come, they need to understand what they would get out of it
… getting in touch with the communities you've mentioned sounds great
… but you'll need to break the barrier of understanding what W3C is and how it benefits developers
Lola: 100% agree
… when I first joined, I didn't know what W3C was
… I knew it by name, but not more than that
… Olu had that same challenge
… a story I get from a lot of people in the community
… the first phase of our work will be around outreach for W3C
DKA: after attending the Web we want session yesterday, the 1st thing in my mind was connecting it with the Dev Council
… there are lot of organizations with dev advocacy functions, in some cases they're also involved in standradization
… this can be the place where they can connect together when that's not happening yet