Meeting minutes
<florian> slides at https://
fscholz: happy to be here, being doing this for some time, it's hard
… we have a membership model with big companies part of us, but also come and go
… still interested in this
… need the infra for this, and constantly have to prove yourself, with tech companies who are also W3C members
… we use open collective, get some donations, some individuals, but there's not enough to go around
… so don't think crowd sourcing is working for us
… 3rd thing we're doing, try to divercify funding from govs
… for various projects, but to convince them is similar to pitching to companies
… it's a weird work to convince them all
… there are all the independent individuals, and Igalia, and we neeed to somehow get together
florian: if we're independent discussing is not enough
lea: are there benefits for our memberships?
<Zakim> lea, you wanted to react to fscholz to ask fscholz a question
bkardell: trying to move different things, we did an experiment in 2019 with funds
… we toook different proposals in different areas and costs
… bringing this up because even though this is exciting, we need to change how this works
… many ppl gave a lot of money, but it's still not enough to pay a single developers
… tricky to balance this, I think the W3C should do this, to pool money
… everybody is interested in CSS but not in the same things
… there are politics and personalities etc, it's all disconnected from reality
… if we pool the money we can decide together where to put that money
<rbyers> Supporters of Chromium-based Browsers: Supporters-Of-Chromium-Based-Browsers/
bkardell: we did partnerships before, and decide where to spend money, that worked before
… you need something like the W3C or related to collect part of the money and make a difference
… otherwise very hard to pool the money and make it possible
lola: I think it's a great idea
… I've been an independent over a year now, working for Bocoup and smaller companies
… hearing you want money to do the things we know how to do, like documentation
… but also things like a big company need to do specific thing and ...
… want to here more from big tech companies in the room - what does this look like internally? how does this work when you need more deves etc.?
rbyers: it's complicated, any company looks at ROI
… also like the idea of collective, it's very hard to onboard a new contractor/vendor
… like we have some a11y or XML bugs, and then get a contractor for that is a lot of work
… how can we make this more efficient? how can we bootstrap extra work that comes along?
… if we have pooling might make this easier
… another big challenge is [missed]
janina0: glad we're having this conversation
… it's not simple to communicate the value
… people don't see the extra work done around the project
… people are building business models, they have a business, and they get someone to work on one thing, and don't see the things to do around it in other pain points
… example: WCAG 1.0 said no JS allowed
… someone at IBM said this won't work, what can we do?
… how do you communicate at 1998 that we need to get engaged with this?
… how do we communicate the value?
… in APA we need to fix some of those "no JS allowed"
… some of the things are not on the web yet and some of our value proposition is to get them added
florian: I'm aware that this is hard, answering to bkardell
… but we have been doing some of it already
… by being a collective, once you have a trusted relationship the way is open for more to grow
… and evey bit we add is nice
… but don't think we need to crack that to get going
… but there are other things to do
sorvell: pushing back on some of what rbyers said
… it's hard to get with the big tech company
… it would astonish you how much a google dev get paid, and how much it's worth to pay companies like Igalia
… a problem for some devs, like in CSS I feel there's not enough media coverage on this
… I think more could be done, and we need to fund more media coverage
… there's bunch of dynamism in the browser space
… feel there's more potential for it
lola: totally agree with you, I interviewed some people about advocacy for the web and looking for more people
lea: when we talked about crowdfunding it doesn't have to be devs
… could be that we found problems and companies come to us, or that they don't have another money and the get together, not only getting many devs
… I think that "all or nothing" crowd funding works better
… on web platform design you can't work impl. but you can guarantee progress
… you can say "fund us and it will get you somewhre" or " this project..." etc.
… for most smaller companies it might be they need more docs, sometimes docs are in the way of getthing to things
… could be better to have the docs as the selling point
… also to answer bkardell, to work with a big SDO [missed]
<tantek> +1000 Lea. something like this would work better when not scoped to one specific SDO.
bkardell: you only wanna put money if you see the benefit
… in some example in the past it worked because we got 3 big donations, which was enough for some of it
… if the promise is we pool our money and gets you a vote it's a way to accomplish something without being specific
<Zakim> bkardell, you wanted to react to sorvell
bkardell: does it make sense?
lea: it does
miriam: thanking everyone for this
… I agree that funding is difficult, if we go agency model is one way, by having some big names, but how do we make it sustainable?
… if some of the big names stay or leave? how do we continue to support the others?
sarahj: we've been thinking a lot about sustainability fo this work
… getting more people interested and involved
… wanna here about how goverments can do more and help in this
<florian> ack +
<Zakim> +, you wanted to reply quickly to all or nothing
rbyers: even at google it may take a long time to convince people to spend that money
<rbyers> Supporters-Of-Chromium-Based-Browsers/
rbyers: if you have a way to make together propositions on how funding can be spent and what we'll get out of it
<tantek> +1 rbyers need to think about efficiency of this work. IMO that ties into (in)efficiency problems at various SDOs, yes in particular W3C.
<rbyers> ack +
rbyers: could help lower the barrier for starting work
benT: wondering if you could publish real issues that are worked on, time that it needs, amounts, etc.
… something that we can pass to stakeholders
… [missed]
<DKA> +1 to transparency - FYI, Open Web Docs publishes an annual impact / transparency report: https://
<ydaniv2> lea: one of things mentioned was about timelines and showing that things are within reach
that is something we were considering, starting a website about portfolio of work, and exiting projects, exposing timelines and things we've done
florian: I think we're at about time
… let's keep talking
<tantek> thanks florian and lea!
florian: we have a lot of interest here
… let's be in touch
<Ben_Tillyer> The first point was: 1) case studies demonstrating impact on time a modest amount of funding has for this work useful for funders