W3C Nominations and statements for the December 2022 special election to the W3C Advisory Board


Form for W3C Advisory Committee to vote (W3C Member-only) | Advisory Board public page

This page lists publicly nominations, as they are made, for the special election for the W3C Advisory Board to fill four vacancies as of January 2023. Each person has been nominated by at least one W3C Member.

The W3C Membership elects the members of the Advisory Board. For this election W3C will fill four seats. W3C expects to announce the results on 17 January 2023.

Timeline:

Note: The deadline for votes is 04:59 UTC on 2023-01-15 (23:59, Boston time on 2023-01-14).

Nominations

The following nominations have been made (listed in random order):

  1. Tantek Çelik (Mozilla Foundation)
  2. Michael Prorock (mesur.io)
  3. Wendy Reid (Rakuten Group, Inc.)
  4. Nick Doty (Center for Democracy and Technology)
  5. Elika J Etemad (W3C Invited Expert)
  6. Marcos Cáceres (Apple Inc.)
  7. Annette Greiner (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
  8. Qing An (Alibaba Group)
  9. Jennifer Strickland (MITRE Corporation)
  10. Tobie Langel (UnlockOpen)
  11. Charles Nevile (ConsenSys)

Statements

The following nomination statements have been made (listed in random order):

Charles Nevile (ConsenSys)

Charles Nevile ("Chaals") is nominated by ConsenSys.

Nomination statement from Charles Nevile:

I was an AB member for 11 years until I did not contest the 2020 election so I could focus on my day job. I'm standing now because believe I can represent a range of communities and members, ensuring the AB provide good advice to Ralph, as interim CEO, and the W3C team, as they deal with the transition we are facing.

I have been, in 25-odd years of continuous involvement in W3C, an AC rep (for three different members over 15 years), WG chair, editor, participant, Team contact, and general "person available to help do stuff" across multiple areas of work. I have also worked in other standards organisations both much more and far less formal than W3C, and have learned about many things that makes W3C work well by seeing the contrasts as well as watching W3C learn and improve in many ways.

In this transition phase it is important that we make the various moving parts work together, as well as making sure that each is working well. The AB's job is primarily to represent the members to the management of the Team, and thus to ensure that W3C is focused on what members' goals are for the organisation. Representing the membership itself, these are diverse.

My main work is now a combination of running the technical work for the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, a consortium focused on the use of Ethereum technology (as opposed to the cryptocurrency), and guiding ConsenSys' own efforts in standardisation of various pieces of the Ethereum technology ecosystem.

I live in Spain in an actively multilingual and multicultural world, where I also deal with the mundanities of time zone clashes and remote work intersecting with everyday life, split between the technical world of my job in the tech industry and people who all use (or are used by), but often don't really understand much of our Web technology, and don't have the time to care about learning a lot more.

Marcos Cáceres (Apple Inc.)

Marcos Cáceres is nominated by Apple Inc.

Apple is pleased to nominate Marcos Cáceres for election to the W3C’s Advisory Board.

Nomination statement from Marcos Cáceres:

The transition to a legal entity is going to be extremely challenging for the W3C and for the Web Community as a whole. With the Board of Directors handling the business and management aspects, I’m encouraged that the Advisory Board can in-parallel focus on shaping how the W3C will operate as a Member-led and Director-free organization. It gives the AB a chance to refine the W3C’s governance model, help reshape the W3C's Vision and Principles, and further streamline the W3C Process. I hope through your vote to represent the entirety of the W3C Membership as we enter what will undoubtedly will be a turbulent few years.

I’ve been participating at the W3C for the last 15 years at all levels of the organization: from specification editor, elected member of the Technical Architecture Group (TAG), Chair of the Web Apps Working Group, ex-Chair of the WICG, and even as a member of the W3C Team. In that time, I’ve represented Opera Software, Mozilla, and more recently Apple, in numerous Working and Community Groups. Through my extensive career as a browser/standards engineer and Working Group Chair, I bring a wealth of applied knowledge about accessibility, privacy, security, and internationalization best-practices. Further, given my experience both developing and testing user agents, I’m well-placed to contribute to the AB’s discussion around the so called “four Is” (interoperable, independent, implementation, incubation).

Throughout my career, I’ve been a highly effective change-agent at the W3C. I helped establish the WICG and its mode of operation, helped introduce design reviews to the TAG, enforced test-driven specification development in Working Groups, and created and maintained tooling and infrastructure that specification editors rely on to produce high-quality specifications. As an ex-W3C Team Member, I bring deep institutional knowledge of how the W3C works (and sometimes doesn’t!) as a standards setting body. As an impartial Editor and Working Group. Chair, I’ve plenty of experience balancing the needs of the Membership through consensus building. And as an active Web Developer and member of the Web Development community, I feel I can represent the needs of web developers at large.

Lastly, given my in-depth understanding of the Process, tooling, systems, and how specifications are made at the W3C, I’d like to continue streamlining the Process document by building on what we learned in recent years. In particular, we can more effectively coordinate how changes to the Process document affect tooling and systems, and have all three updated in lock-step. I believe this will reduce the friction that editors, tool maintainers, and the systems team experienced with the previous Process overhaul. And if all goes to plan, it should hopefully encourage more Working Groups to move specifications beyond Candidate Recommendation to Recommendation, which will greatly benefit the W3C community.

Nick Doty (Center for Democracy and Technology)

Nick Doty is nominated by Center for Democracy and Technology.

The Center for Democracy & Technology, a long-time civil society member of the W3C, is pleased to nominate Nick Doty for election to the Advisory Board.

Nomination statement from Nick Doty:

My career has focused on building privacy and human rights into the standards of the Web and the Internet. As a graduate student, I began contributing privacy reviews of Web standards in 2010, starting with the Geolocation API. I subsequently worked for the W3C Team on privacy, including forming the Privacy Interest Group (PING) and editing specifications in the Tracking Protection Working Group. At UC Berkeley's School of Information, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on enacting privacy in the technical standard-setting process. And I'm now a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology, advocating for human rights support in Internet architecture, in areas like advertising, encryption and messaging. At W3C, I co-chair PING, serve on the Privacy Principles Task Force, and identify and fix privacy and human rights concerns in as many community and working groups as I can.

W3C's process, and internet governance generally, is most effective and legitimate when it is genuinely multistakeholder. W3C's governance should include more of civil society, in addition to industry, academia and government, and we must extend further outreach to include more of the world that is affected by our work. I would like to help the Advisory Board to seek user perspectives, to invite a wider range of members including more user advocates, and to make our practices more welcoming to a diverse, world-wide community.

In order to rely more on the community rather than the Director for the standards process, we need to more formally encode the fundamental values that make up our vision for the Web and to more effectively resolve conflict and process objections. I would seek to continue the Consortium's progress here, not just in areas where W3C has extensive experience with horizontal review (including accessibility, internationalization and privacy), but also in considering sustainability, disinformation and free expression.

The transitions to a new legal entity and a community-led process represent an important moment for W3C and our community. I would be honored to serve on the Advisory Board, and will continue to advocate for inclusivity and human rights in Web standards.

Michael Prorock (mesur.io)

Michael Prorock is nominated by Mozilla Foundation.

Nomination statement from the Advisory Committee Representative from Mozilla Foundation:

I am pleased to nominate Mike Prorock for the Advisory Board.

I have known Mike for a few years at W3C and have always appreciated his contributions to discussions in the Advisory Committee, most recently at TPAC in Vancouver.

Having worked on different standards at W3C, I value Mike’s perspective on how standards are developed, and the importance of a breadth of perspectives in the governance of standards development.

We share an interest in sustainability, and how W3C can both consider sustainability in the development of new standards, as well as the broader potential of applying W3C technologies to enabling better sustainability practices beyond W3C.

With his background and active work in emerging standards, I believe Mike would be an excellent contributor to the AB priority projects of the Four Is (Interoperable, Independent, Implementation, Incubation) and Improving The Sense of Community, facilitating a stronger sense of collaboration across different standards and groups at W3C.

Nomination statement from Michael Prorock:

I am mesur.io's AC Rep and am a Co-Chair of the W3C Credentials Community Group, as well as an active participant in several W3C and IETF working groups. I have engaged in internet and web standards for several years, as well as in various aspects of open source development, engagement, and promotion. 

I went to school for English literature and Marine Sciences, and viewed tech as a side gig to pay the bills from time to time or solve problems related to data gathering or analysis, but eventually wound up moving into tech full time in 2005. From that time on I primarily have built and expanded startups, but have also worked in program management roles and consulting in large organizations, especially around data and in what we eventually see as big data and machine learning today.  Currently, I am the CTO of a startup (mesur.io) working primarily in the use of machine learning to help solve environmentally driven issues, and especially those related to agriculture. Increasingly we are working across the supply chain to identify issues related to human rights concerns in the production of food and other goods that use natural raw materials as an input (think textiles and critical minerals). A key goal for us is to democratize access to the critical data needed for sustainable decision making at all levels, and especially at the farm level. Ensuring that tech is accessible to all, and that it is not vendor locked or dominated by a few large players only is a primary motivation for my engagement in standards bodies.

Some things that matter deeply to me are 1) the environment and our shared natural resources, 2) lack of science and data driven decision making in policy, and 3) finding a way to build tech that is both ethical in its use of technology, but benefits the most people possible, especially in relation to real world problems.

In considering a role at the AB based on this nomination, I have thought deeply on the conversations I have had leading up to the recent BoD Election, and also those leading into my accepting this nomination to run for the AB.  This reflection has brought two key areas to mind of focus for the AB as we shift into the "new world" of W3C as a standalone legal entity: 1) The standards process must continue to be optimized to promote advancement and development of standards, and especially in areas of conflict / formal objection resolution (in a director free W3C), and 2) there must be clear communication and an open working pattern between the new BoD and the AB to ensure the stability of W3C and to also ensure that the standards process remains as it is today: entirely member and process driven, and based on the merit of the proposed work. Additionally, we must find a way to continue to make W3C more accessible and understandable to new members, and re-assess areas where we take "tribal knowledge" for granted and ensure that the process accurately documents the intent of the community as a whole for items ranging from consensus, to incubation, to adoption as a TR.

Elika J Etemad (W3C Invited Expert)

Elika J Etemad is nominated by Igalia.

Nomination statement from the Advisory Committee Representative from Igalia:

Igalia is pleased to nominate Elika J Etemad (“fantasai”) to the AB special election.

Elika is a W3C Invited Expert in the CSS Working Group and Internationalization Working Group, and has co-edited dozens of W3C specifications including CSS2, CSS Grid Layout, CSS Writing Modes, and CSS Paged Media. She is intimately familiar with W3C's processes and culture, having been embedded in it daily for the last two decades; and is widely known for her ability to manage details, to communicate clearly, and to generally create order out of chaos. Elika believes that W3C's collaborative, public, consensus-based, and royalty-free standardization process brings out the best in Web technology, and is dedicated to the success of W3C as a home and a framework for developing the World Wide Web Platform.

Elika previously served one term on the AB from 2019-2021, during which she was a crucial leader in:

Since stepping down from the AB she has remained engaged by co-chairing the Process CG (where she also co-edits the Process with Florian Rivoal), by sending occasional informal status reports to the AC to keep them informed, and by stepping in as scribe and secretary when needed. She is running for this special-election term in order to:

Elika started her career in Web standards in 1999, doing spec conformance QA for the Mozilla open source project as a curious contributor before being invited to join the CSSWG 2004 as a volunteer spec editor. This experience indoctrinated a lifelong commitment to bug reporting and open collaboration, and to the value of seriously addressing feedback by integrating it into a solid, precisely-specified, and coherent proposal. She holds an engineering degree from Princeton University, and has spent most of her life in either the SF Bay or NYC Metro areas; she's also spent time living in Norway (to work for Opera), China (to study Chinese), and Japan (to work on CSS Writing Modes), and is also conversant in French and Farsi. Past and present corporate sponsors of her work include Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft, Google, Bloomberg, Hewlett-Packard, Antenna House, EAST Japan, Brave, and Bocoup.

Elika is an independent consultant and is not funded for this position. You can express your appreciation for her work by reading her emails and voting on the Process-related proposals she will be sending to the AC. :)

Tantek Çelik (Mozilla Foundation)

Tantek Çelik is nominated by Google LLC.

Nomination statement from the Advisory Committee Representative from Google LLC:

I am pleased to be able to nominate Tantek Çelik for the Advisory Board.

I have known Tantek for a couple of decades, since his work on the Tasman rendering engine, and I have always appreciated the different perspective he brings to standards development and his continuous advocacy on behalf of users. Tantek has consistently championed the Advisory Board using open communication and adopting a culture of working in the open. He has also grown community interest in sustainability at the W3C, as well as continuing to be an advocate for privacy and security in the web platform.

Tantek would provide valuable insight and hard work in at least two of the major priorities on the Advisory Board's plate - developing the Principles and Vision further, and developing a roadmap for incubation. I am pleased to recommend Tantek as a candidate.

Nomination statement from Tantek Çelik:

Hi, I’m Tantek Çelik and I’m running for the W3C Advisory Board (AB) to help it reboot W3C as a community-led, values-driven, and more effective organization. I have been participating in and contributing to W3C groups and specifications for over 24 years.

I am Mozilla’s Advisory Committee (AC) representative and have previously served on the AB for several terms, starting in 2013. In the early years I helped lead the movement to offer open licensing of W3C standards, and make it more responsive to the needs of independent websites and open source implementers. In my most recent term I led the AB’s Priority Project for an updated W3C Vision.

I co-chaired the W3C Social Web Working Group that produced several widely interoperably deployed Social Web Standards, most notably the ActivityPub specification, which has received renewed attention as the technology behind Mastodon and other implementations growing an open decentralized alternative to proprietary social media networks such as Twitter.

Most recently, I’ve focused on the efforts to clarify and operationalize W3C’s core values, and campaigned to add Sustainability to W3C’s Horizontal Reviews in alignment with the TAG’s Ethical Web Principles. I established the Sustainability Community Group and helped organize interested participants at TPAC 2022 into asynchronous work areas.

The next 6-18 months of the Advisory Board are going to be a critical transition period, and will require experienced AB members to actively work in coordination with the TAG and the Board of Directors to establish new models and procedures for sustainable community-driven leadership and governance of W3C.

I have Mozilla’s financial support to spend my time pursuing these goals, and ask for your support to build the broad consensus required to achieve them.

This statement is also published publicly on my blog. You can follow my posts directly from my tantek.com feed or from Mastodon with @tantek.com@tantek.com

If you have any questions or want to chat about the W3C Advisory Board, Values & Vision, or anything else W3C related, please reach out by email: tantek@mozilla.com. Thank you for your consideration.

Jennifer Strickland (MITRE Corporation)

Jennifer Strickland is nominated by MITRE Corporation.

Nomination statement from the Advisory Committee Representative from MITRE Corporation:

The MITRE Corporation is pleased to nominate Jennifer Strickland for election to the W3C Advisory Board (AB).

Jennifer Strickland is currently a Senior Human-Centered Accessibility Engineer with the MITRE Corporation. They were an invited expert with the W3C before coming to MITRE and bring a 30-year career as a full-stack designer and developer. With skills as both an individual contributor and leading product teams for research, design, and development efforts, they understand a range of roles and how each impacts outcomes. They have a long history of dedication to web standards, professionalism, equity, and integrity. The MITRE Corporation endorses Jennifer Strickland's appointment to the W3C AB. We are confident they will contribute the necessary expertise and dedication to support W3C members around the globe.

The MITRE Corporation will be able to support Jennifer with network and cell phone resources. However, we might not be able to cover all travel expenses; it will be considered on an individual basis.

Nomination statement from Jennifer Strickland:

In 2019, I began contributing to the W3C on the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group and it has been some of the most rewarding work of my life. I recently joined the CSS, Web Performance, and other working groups, am absorbing how they operate so I may bring an equity-centered voice to support discussions. It is clear to me all involved in the W3C share the vision for the Internet that Tim Berners-Lee had: a world where the barriers of the physical world do not exist and everyone can take part. Each member seeks to deliver that world through the range of web standards. We have a long way to go. We are still in the early days of the technology, and we aim to craft a web that is inclusive and equitable so we are one instead of disparate.

My intersectional identity as a woman of color with invisible disabilities brings valuable perspectives to the W3C efforts considering equitable outcomes in standards development. While I currently live in the U.S., I was the child of a military service member and traveled a lot when I was young. This shaped my perspective where I do not view the world as separate countries. Instead we are one, each with unique and valuable attributes. I value diverse perspectives and strategic planning to ensure outcomes are future-ready and inclusive. Many of my W3C colleagues commend me for speaking up about important and difficult views on our work in a thoughtful, open, and respectful manner. I seek to find ways to reach out to those not currently participating to ensure their inclusion. Including non-native English speakers, those who use assistive technology, and come from a range of time zones and organization is critical to the worldwide web standards development. I acknowledge this is hard and that this is an ongoing effort. This inspiring work is compelling and I value the international W3C community engagement. Everything we do impacts the world and beyond.

As MITRE is a not-for-profit manager for Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) for the US federal government, partnering with industry and academia, we bring unique perspectives to the W3C efforts. I aim to support the W3C's evolution at this pivotal juncture and consider how to bring greater equity to outcomes and actions, with the wisdom that some things may need a longer strategic vision.

I welcome the opportunity to serve the W3C community on the AB to support the hard work everyone puts in. I am particularly interested in:

I acknowledge the challenging times we are in, with the pandemic, social unrest, and the constant change. With these challenges we have found greater opportunities to be more inclusive through use of the Internet, such as hybrid meetings. Ensuring that the web standards support the flexibility and performance the world needs from the web is a key responsibility for us all. The world needs the web now even more.

My academic credentials are a B.A. in Art from the University of Southern Maine, but I have 30 years of hands-on experience as a full stack designer and developer. I am self-taught: I learned human-centered design, user experience, and web development because I am motivated to always learn. At the time, academia lacked the education to deliver web design and development. Learning from others and forging new ways is how I learned. The promise of the worldwide web, as Tim Berners-Lee originally defined it, ignited my optimism and provided an avenue for me to take part in forging this new frontier. It is critical that we not repeat the mistakes of the physical world and perpetuate the inequities of dominant voices. We all have so much to learn from one another if only the avenues remain open.

I ask for your top vote so that I may serve you, our W3C colleagues, and the people around the globe to support the future of W3C. Please contact me at jstrickland@mitre.org if there are any questions or concerns and especially how the AB might support the future W3C. Thank you for your kind support.

Wendy Reid (Rakuten Group, Inc.)

Wendy Reid is nominated by Wiley.

Nomination statement from the Advisory Committee Representative from Wiley:

I am pleased to nominate Wendy Reid for the Advisory Board. I have worked with Wendy on Publishing standards for many years. Wendy energizes discussions and is excellent at leading groups to consensus. Her acute awareness of accessibility and inclusiveness inform all her work. Wendy’s ability to address complicated issues with compassion make her an excellent addition to the AB.

Nomination statement from Wendy Reid:

I have always marveled at the power of the web to bring people together, to connect communities, create opportunity, and to create a more equitable world. However, this power must be deployed with intention and I believe we have a responsibility as a web community to ensure the specifications we create, and the conditions we create them in, reflect the world we live in and the users we serve. It is important that we recognize our role in this ecosystem and bring clear vision, processes, and an equitable focus to what W3C does.

I am one of the chairs of the EPUB 3 Working Group, the Positive Work Environment Community Group, as well as a member of Accessibility Guidelines and the Publishing activity. I have managed the recommendation process for several specifications, in addition to editing one myself. In addition to technical specifications, I have helped with the development of the CEPC, and processes for initiatives like W3C’s Diversity Fund. At my day job, I am the Accessibility and Publishing Standards Lead at Rakuten Kobo, where I work on developing company-wide processes and goals for making our products accessible. This work has included advocating for improved accessibility practices within the publishing industry and participation in industry groups to build consensus and best practices. I am also the employee resource group president for Rakuten America’s disability community, a group I formed to serve the disability community within my company.

My approach is to find creative and collaborative ways to solve problems. In the publishing activity, I have pushed for more community participation through initiatives like the EPUB industry-wide survey and most recently, running a salon event for the industry to explore what comes next in publishing standards, calling people in to actively participate where they would usually passively observe. It is my firm belief that lasting change must involve all stakeholders, folding in their needs in order to create processes that are sustainable.

If you have any questions for me or would like to chat, you can reach me by email at wendy.reid@rakuten.com. Thank you for your consideration.

Qing An (Alibaba Group)

Qing An is nominated by Alibaba Group.

Nomination statement from the Advisory Committee Representative from Alibaba Group:

Alibaba Group is pleased to nominate Qing An for the Advisory Board member.

Qing An is now working as the Lead of international standardization of Alibaba Group. He has served as leadership positions in a number of international standardization organizations, such as co-chair of W3C MiniApps Working Group and Community Group, co-chair of W3C Chinese Interest Group, co-chair of W3C WebView Community Group, chair of IEEE SA Robustness of Artificial Intelligence based Service Working Group, etc. Also, he has contributed to the IETF, ITU, IEEE, Bluetooth SIG standardization work.

With more than 10 years of professional standardization work experience and comprehensive background in Web and ICT fields covering MiniApp, WebView, IoT protocol, etc., Qing An has developed good understanding about the operation of a standardization organization and the standard development process on how to reflect the best interest of the global community.

Qing An has been involved in W3C activities since 2015 in various roles including Advisory Representative, group chairs and editor of specs. He has been among the major roles to incubate MiniApp standards in W3C from 2018 by contributing to several MiniApp specs as core author and introduced the MiniApp technologies in W3C community. Then he was appointed as co-chair of the MiniApps Working Group in 2021 and helps to promote the MiniApp standardization work through W3C Recommendation track. This year, he initiated and launched the WebView Community Group by working with WebView vendors and W3C staff. The efforts help to explore more platforms for the Web including Native Apps so as to achieve the goal of “Web on Everything”.

Next year W3C will move into a Legal Entity. Many things will need to be explored and revisited in the new W3C Inc. If elected as Advisory Board member, Qing An will leverage his strong standardization background and experience to help to contribute to an agile and productive W3C Process, efficient Next Big Thing incubation, and W3C’s globalization by encouraging participation from diverse industries and regions.

Qing An has Alibaba’s full support from all necessary aspects to accomplish the duties and responsibilities in this area. We appreciate your support in the coming AB election. If you have any questions, please contact Qing An via email <anqing.aq@alibaba-inc.com>.

Annette Greiner (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Annette Greiner is nominated by GS1.

Nomination statement from the Advisory Committee Representative from GS1:

I have had the privilege of working with Annette on a variety of data-centric standards at W3C. Her work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is focused on maximizing the reusability of data for scientific research through standardization and the provision of metadata, and its through that lens that she consistently raises the kind of issue that others would simply miss when it comes to data on the Web. She is extremely knowledgeable, knows W3C well, and would add substantial value to the AB as W3C redefines itself, making sure the voice of Web users outside the browser is heard and understood.

Nomination Statement from Annette Greiner:

As W3C moves forward as its own legal entity, we have a new opportunity to consider carefully what direction we want it to take. The Web is a beautiful piece of engineering that clearly benefits humanity in myriad ways, yet we are seeing also that it can be used for harm. While the solutions may not always lie within the purview of a standards organization, I think it is incumbent on us, as a group of people concerned with leading the Web to its full potential, to consider what we can do and to point the way to a sustainable Web with less disinformation, fewer security risks, greater personal privacy, and universal access. We must do this while preserving the inherent openness of a worldwide distributed system whose primary purpose is the sharing of knowledge. We must do this in such a way that we give due consideration for the many positive ways in which people use the web, while engineering for new ones. This is crucial work. I hope to be of service in leveraging the amazing capabilities of this organization to address these issues.

I'm excited by the encouragement I've received to run for a seat on the Advisory Board, both from the W3C side and also from the Berkeley Lab side. While the current members of the AB have taken care of a huge portion of the work to switch to the legal entity, I expect the incoming board will undertake a fair amount of activity to catch up the inevitable loose ends. Along with that, I'm eager to help shepherd the transition to a robust director-free process that yields practical solutions. I have deeply appreciated the opportunities W3C has given me in working groups and community groups (honestly been blown away by the welcoming attitude in general), so I look on this as a chance to give back.

About me: I've been developing web sites for the sciences since 1994. I earned a Master's in Information Management and Systems from the University of California Berkeley in 2010. After graduation, I joined the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. At NERSC, I work in the Data and Analytics Services group, creating Web applications to enable the collection and sharing of scientific data. In 2011, I became the AC Rep for the Laboratory. I helped author the Data on the Web Best Practices recommendation and am currently active in the Dataset Exchange Working Group. I'm also active in the Positive Work Environment and Credible Web community groups. I'd be honored to serve on the AB as well.

Tobie Langel (UnlockOpen)

Tobie Langel is nominated by UnlockOpen.

Nomination statement from Tobie Langel:

Now that the clamor of the Board election had died down and that the new legal entity is in good hands, it is time to refocus our attention on some of the other important issues that our organization is facing.

I see three in particular for which the Advisory Board’s role is critical:

  1. Completing the transition to a director-less process and strengthening our institutions to support these changes, notably through the concrete implementation of a new process to manage dissent (Formal Objections). With W3C’s work increasingly falling in the limelight and commensurate scrutiny from legislators and policymakers, W3C needs to define a process that it fair and demonstrate its ability to implement it without the organization risking to come to a standstill.
  2. Pursuing the Vision and Principles work that was rightfully paused while the AB focused on the more pressing issue of the transition to the legal entity. During the recent Board elections, I expressed my thoughts about W3C’s current mission statement and the importance of defining actionable organizational values, mission, and vision to frame W3C as a key player for governance questions pertaining to the web. W3C needs to position itself—and the open standardization process it champions—as a bridge between policy and technology. And our vision and principles need to reflect that. I plan to help revive that effort and collaborate with the TAG to produce a coherent and comprehensive set of foundational documents to underpin W3C’s standardization work.
  3. Improving communication channels between the organization’s governing bodies, staff, membership, and the general public, and driving good governance principles across the organization, in particular around transparency and accountability. As a concrete first step, I would like to see the AB nurture a stronger and deeper relationship with the membership (that we shouldn’t forget elects it). I believe the AC forum needs a chair to help focus and drive conversations, and better tools to improve membership visibility into the organization and keep governing bodies accountable. I plan to kickstart a conversation on this topic and help usher the ac-forum mailing list into a more efficient future, in much the same way as I helped accelerate the spec editing process in the past: by demonstrating the concrete benefits of better tools and working modes and addressing objections until there’s clear and unanimous buy-in.

At a high-level, these three issues share a common goal: strengthening W3C’s legitimacy to prepare it for an increasingly important role in the future of the web’s governance. Yet despite that, they remain concrete, actionable items which will directly and positively impact the organization’s day to day. That is why I believe they are worth pursuing.

If this resonates with you, please consider giving me your voice.

If you want to learn more about my position on key W3C issues, I encourage you to read my answers to the Board of Directors Candidate Questionnaire (member-only, unfortunately) or my prior Board of Directors nomination statement.

If you have any questions, thoughts, or just want to chat about W3C, please feel free to send me an email or schedule a call. Thank you.


Xueyuan Jia, W3C Marketing &Communications
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