– DRAFT –
(MEETING TITLE)

Introduction

ydaniv: Yehonatan Daniv from Wix

tzviya: Tzviya Siegman from the Team

ydaniv: This is discussion and brainstorming about how can we make AC participation and discussions more effective.
… AC is a community that varies a lot in terms of members, company size, goals, interests
… They also come from various technical backgrounds, cultural backgrounds
… They converge currently only on the AC email list.
… Which has several hundred participants and is not very effective.
… We want to kick this off with an issue from Brian Kardell suggesting a tool that would allow the AC to poll itself.
… This could be the starting point for people to suggest issues, join in with a +1 or -1 (which is not doable on a high-traffic mailing list)
… And then we also want to hear more issues, complaints, suggestions, on how we can get the AC to surface what they think and where they want to take this community
… How to make people contribute more, discuss, and support W3C activities

ydaniv: So this is the goal: concrete ideas on how to improve the effectiveness of AC
… Agenda is start with bkardell's issue, and discussion of more ideas

tzviya: Let's hear from Brian

Bkardell's Proposal

bkardell: Let's have some background context

bkardell: It frequently comes up that there's not alot of feedback on a whole lot of things

<mchampion> Link to Brian's issue is w3c/AB-memberonly#295

bkardell: question is how much is a feature ,and how much a bug?
… we elect people to represent us, but those people don't have any power
… whatever they do is supposed to come back to us to ratify, to discuss, to agree upon
… It's AC who is supposed to have the power
… A lot of time, it's a feature of the system that we don't ahve to worry about all the things all the time
… We have ~400+ members, can't pay attention to all the things al the time.
… There are 1-person shops where they want to work on one particular specification, or because they want to be affiliated with W3C, all kinds of reasons people to join
… Being an active AC is a lot of work that might not be part of their interest
… one of the problems when we elect people
… For example, I vote for a person because -- we have this STV system that encourages us to factionalize -- I vote for the one top representation that I want
… Relevant to this because we cast one vote, and we vote for someone to represent in this one way
… but if I vote for you for accessibility advocacy, but what does it mean when discussing transparency of finances?
… Discussions are complicated.

bkardell: So my idea is that if we have simple touch points, when AC is having a discussion
… has some positions, why not come back to AC and say "what do you think?"
… Can add words if you want, but simple sentiment poll: I agree with this position, I agree with that position

<Igarashi> +1

<anssik> +1

bkardell: May continue to be a small set of people (not necessarily a bug), but it will be a bigger group of people than currently

<Zakim> florian, you wanted to comment on "we elect people"

florian: As a person who has been elected to bodies (previously AB, and now on Board), and now speaking as myself, I agree
… I want to be doing the things that the Membership cares about
… and it is extremely difficult to know what that is

<Igarashi> +1

florian: Knowing whether people love something, hate sometehing, care about something, or don't
… It would be immensely useful to know these
… Especially from Board perspective, AC ability to poll itself rather than only answering questions I ask, because I am mindful of orienting the debate by even asking

anssik: Anssi, Intel AC rep (I took over when Eric retired)
… I've been shadowing Eric many years, and now I'm in the sausage factory
… I haven't been very vocal on AC Forum, because I wear too many hats
… I would welcome ability to easily +1 / -1 on proposals
… I'm very supportive of this proposal
… A Japanese member also spoke up recently, he has many roles internal and external, and he appreciates the forum but doesn't have the time to participate in the discussions
… so that is my feedback
… I appreciate Brian putting forward this proposal
… let's start with something simple and we can improve as we move along

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to ask brian to elaborate

tzviya: Before I was on the Team, I was on the AB for many years
… It would have been very helpful to get a "tally" of what the membership was thinking
… it might be challenging to implement
… I would love to hear more about how you've done this at Igalia, Brian
… and I think it would be great to get a pilot running

bkardell: Igalia is a flat company. We don't have bosses, we collectively are the boss.
… We vote on everything, literally eveyrthing.
… We use a system called Lumio, which is a polling system.
… Not everyone votes on everything
… Some things require certain thresholds, but not everyone has to vote on everything
… you can abstain on things, and that's a feature, not a bug
… We try to get a critical mass of feedback
… For many things we want to know, how do people feel about this? before we work on things
… These aren't binding decisions, but they are ways to gauge the temperature
… Not unlike CSSWG or OpenUI where there's no right answer, and we have several options that could be good, and we do a quick poll e.g. emoji on github

<tantek> +1 bkardell. GitHub emoji poll

bkardell: Something simple, or maybe 3 options, let's not get too complicated with it

<Zakim> Igarashi, you wanted to react to tzviya to Igalia' vote

Igarashi: I have a question for Igalia, what is the voter turnout?

bkardell: It's very high! You're highly motivated to vote on things. But occasionally get busy, and dont have time to follow thread.
… So can abstain
… You have to vote, but you can abstain. We get around 90% response, but maybe 30% abstain.
… You also have ability to add a comment.
… A lot of those cases, I say, I trust my peers.
… I have no desire to block this, sounds reasonable, but that's another level.

ydaniv: Putting my AC hat on

<astearns> 30% abstention would be multiplying our real vote totals by 3-4x?

ydaniv: As an AC for a smaller company, just getting the barrier lower to triage opinions, to gauge the temperature, to try out an idea
… E.g. "soemthing about this felt off, want to see if others agree"

<cwilso> @asteans yes, that's correct

ydaniv: Lower the barrier to get that

<Zakim> mchampion, you wanted to suggest we eat Brian's dogfood and do a quick poll on whether to ask the Team to provide the AC a polling mechanism

<bkardell> astearns: you don't want queue to say something there?

mchampion: I suggest that you just poll the zoom and IRC participants here to see if anyone disagrees
… should we ask the Team to provide a self-polling mechanism?

<Zakim> naomi, you wanted to react to mchampion

naomi: I agree with you.
… Let me speak with my Member Relations hat
… Rather than technical discussions, I really would like to see AC members their +1 and -1 to boost member engagement
… The answer can never be reduced to +1/-1, but hearing the voices is necessary
… Creating a github issue and collecting +1 -1 from AC members for a week, might not be formal consensus
… So how about gathering AC opinions via WBS. I would be happy to do that.
… For better or worse, W3C have a ground for gathering opinions

<tantek> ^ I q+'d to respond to that (among other things) for why "week" and "WBS" is insufficient for use-cases

naomi: But we may not always be able to shape that outcome
… So I reflect on that.

<tantek> +1 run mchampion's poll, since he's an AC

bkardell: So, we would create a new repository or ...?

<bkardell> loomio

<tantek> bkardell, PROPOSE: create an github.com/w3c/AC repo where the AC can create issues for polls.

<cwilso> +1 run the poll

<tantek> +1 run the poll

mchampion: My suggestion was to poll for whether to do this, and then follow up with a mechanism

<Igarashi> +1 to the poll, the discuss furthure

<bkardell> https://www.loomio.com/blog/2022/09/19/igalia/

POLL: Should W3C offer a way for the AC to poll itself?

<florian> +1

<tantek> +1

<hober> +1

<bkardell> +1

<Igarashi> +1

<wschildbach> +1

<astearns> +1

<ydaniv> +1

<anssik> +1

<mchampion> +1

<jugglinmike> +1

<fantasai> +1

<shiestyle> +1

<cwilso> +1

<phila> 0

<hirata> +1

<JennieM> +1

<caribou> 0

<mjackson> +1

<amy> I can confirm the Team is happy to take this action to suggest a polling mechanism.

<anssik> On Consensus and Humming in the IETF

anssik: I'd like to suggest another mechanism used in IETF, called humming

<tantek> I'd prefer the AC propose a polling mechanism

anssik: If you agree you humm

florian: How do you hum on a mailing list?

[ various jokes about this proposal ]

anssik: I think this experiment did not succeed

florian: I agree that we shouldn't spend whole meeting discussing details
… but I want to briefly highlight that just doing GH won't cut it
… Using it as a staging space to prepare the poll would work
… But as we see already,using it to run the poll is not good enough

<Zakim> Igarashi, you wanted to react to fl to the result of poll

florian: WBS is antiquated, but it is very accessible

Igarashi: Regarding the poll, should we hear from people who didn't +1 what they think, if they have a reason to not support this?

tzviya: Nobody who objected

bkardell: Reasonable question

phila: I put 0 because I don't care.
… I've been WG chair, staff member, AC rep, or whateer last 20 years
… and I still don't care
… I care about W3C a lot
… but my job is to represent my employer, and my employer couldn't care less
… If I vote in a poll it's because my employer cares about it

<Igarashi> I do not like humming since we can not see view of -1 and 0

phila: It's not that I don't want the thing, go ahead, I don't want to stop it and delighted making progress

<tantek> +1 Igarashi

phila: But it's really irrelevant to what we do.
… CSSWG is super super important! But irrelevant to GS1.
… I abstain passively by not answering on many things
… because I represent a company and the company doesn't care.

caribou: Working for W3C, same thing
… it's not that I don't care, but I think that the form is not going to reveal anything
… OK to hvae one more tool, but we have diverse ways to get member feedback, e.g. on charters we have a GH repo etc.
… There's always been the "usual suspects" crowd of AC, those who are actively involved in these discussions
… It's their job to participate in this role

<tantek> disagrees with "usual suspects" framing and considers it unproductive (blaming humans instead of systems)

caribou: Some others are paid only to read 1hr / week the maling list, can't expect the same level of participation
… Let's not introduce solutions to problems that don't exist
… Introducing another mechanism for feedback isn't going to change anything
… That said, I think there are other things to fix than tooling for getting answers

<Zakim> cwilso, you wanted to respond to caribou on bandwidth and the usual suspects

caribou: The fact that it's a mailing list isn't the problem, it's the people that's the problem.

<brent> +1

cwilso: "The usual suspects" is a good framing of the problem.

<tantek> strong disagree that it's the people that's the problem

<tantek> blaming the people is the problem

cwilso: But that's the problem.
… I woudl like to have other people's voices also.
… I can write a 2-page response to mchampion's post on AC Forum any time!
… But other voices are not present

<tantek> +1 cwilso, on email, can't tell if lone voice or larger sentiment

cwilso: So I think polling is a super useful thing to do for that reason

<bkardell> +1

<Igarashi> +1

cwilso: Yes, our voting turnouts *are* very low, but still.

<Zakim> tantek, you wanted to note multiple use-cases of AC polling itself, AB polling AC, and perhaps Board polling AC as well. also allowing "open-ended" polls, and polls with comments. GitHub issues seem more well-suited than WBS for this. Also enabling Membership to lead itself, not dependent on W3C-specific mechanisms.

tantek: I think there's a few important points here
… Thanks Brian for identifying this as an important use case
… I think enabling Ac to poll itself is key part of pushing W3C to be more Member-led

<Igarashi> +1

tantek: Similarly, wrt AB, having beein on AB, there have been many times when we wanted to lightweight poll the AC, but had no mechanism
… So in addition to AC polling itself (use case #1), I would also support the AB being able to poll AC quickly and trivially

<bkardell> +1 - this is actually the use case that brought it up for me

tantek: Lastly, I'd infer that there would be opportunities for the Board to want to informally poll the AC
… rather than doing something more formal
… Certainly from my experience as AB Liaison, I've seen scenarios where such a tool would have been useful.
… I want to particularly emphasize that AC asking for ability to poll itself, should not be gatekept by Team
… Should just do it, not wait.
… Florian has some concerns wrt GH, but one of the nice things is that it works across standards orgs, doesn't require custom tooling, administration, etc.
… All of those things have been sufficient barriers from my time on AB, so let's not use custom tooling
… IMHO that includes WBs.
… These are polls, not votes. WBS is great for purpose it has already
… but gh is more accessible, so that's my suggestion
… Let's try something and iterate.

<Igarashi> +1 to poll,　not votes

florian: I fall on opposite side of Tantek wrt familiarity and usability.
… I agre we should just try something and move on, whichever.
… But I want to respond to "usual suspects" comment.
… I'm in lots of communications in backchannels
… I hear from people who react and don't share their response
… and that's what we're trying to surface

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to talk about other ways of engaging members

<tantek> +1000 Florian, for every such "usual suspect", there are many, "quiet majority" who agree in private. that has been my experience as well

florian: Finding and surfacing those opinions would let us hear what people really think

tzviya: We're more than halfway through this discussion.
… saw general consensus in the room about doing polls, but not about how
… we don't have great communication among the AC, and maybe we can progress about how we can move forward with other ways of participating in AC

<bkardell> if only we could we could use a poll to choose between the 2 semi-obvious answers

tzviya: We have overall problem of communication, and AC discussing together would be great.

<tantek> bkardell, that sounds more like a vote among 2 semi-obvious choices :)

tzviya: maybe we can offline the conversation about implementing?

florian: Sure, but with a bias towards action first and discuss+tweak later

<tantek> +1 florian bias to action first and tweak rather than long discussion

fantasai: Lets come up with one or two different options for how this could run

fantasai: and then poll that and then run a pilot

<tantek> +1 fantasai, specific concrete actions

fantasai: I'd like to see concrete options this week rather than, say, next July

<Igarashi> +1

<tantek> +1

fantasai: And I think a specific concrete proposal is a necessity for that

<tantek> what I don't want to see: long GitHub issue discussion, forming a task force to spend weeks to understand the poll and come up with a proposal, then appeal to some existing authority to evaluate the task force proposals etc. etc.

wschildbach: The ask also was, let's talk about how to better particpate in the AC Forum
… As someone new to W3C and AC Forum, I came into this with the charter of some technical stuff
… and I found myself on AC Forum
… But I don't feel I'm part of AC
… because I didn't come here for that

cwilso: Well you are now!

wschildbach: Yeah. But I think AC doesn't feel that it's a team.

<phila> +1 to wschildbach

wschildbach: and maybe this is part of the problem of participation

anssik: Let me riff off of this
… I'm in small group that participates together, and we become friends
… But AC is a huge group of people
… But if we find the interest groups within the AC, maybe we can create this type of personal connection
… Personally my leadership goal is to do this. I try to delegate to my WGs, trust my people, focus on high-level strategy

<brent> I think we need a single person to volunteer to take the lead on the polling thing, to make sure next steps are taken, but otherwise we should move on to other topics.

anssik: I set the charte,r direction, and things move on

<tantek> +1 anssik: let's empower the AC to self-drive.

<astearns> +1 brent

<Zakim> phila, you wanted to talk about balance

phila: Around October I got automated emails from "Alex" reminding us about paying W3C
… I would like a phone call or discussion about why I should give to W3C
… That's where that engagement needs to happen
… We ask 2 million ppl for money
… It's the job of Team, maybe through regional offices, to engage with the Members
… We don't do browser stuff

<florian> +1 to phila

phila: I'm concerned about stuff that isn't discussed by loud browser vendors
… Some kind of personal touch would help me feel heard
… I still have to make argument to my management every year about why we pay W3C ues

<tantek> +1 phila. why some of that money should go to W3C

phila: Chevron has billions, but AC still has to argue to his boss, who has budget of thousands, to spend on W3C

<Zakim> tantek, you wanted to also respond on the "usual suspect" and "people are the problem" comments and to also +1 fantasai bias to action. do not want issue discussion, then task force to study and make a proposals etc. and to specifically note, we don't need an initiative to form a task force to investigate

tantek: I, too, at Mozilla, have to look at and justify why are we paying for W3C this year
… Fortunately easy to justify due to CSSWG and A11y groups provide a lot of value

tantek: I really want to push back on "usual suspects" framing, or anything that implies people are the problem
… UX 101: never blame the user, always blame the tools
… If problem is not getting enough participation, only hearing from a few people out of hundreds
… Conclusion shouldn't be those people or the silent people are at fault
… but rather the tools or how they are presented is the problem

<anssik> +1 to tantek

tantek: We should have empathy for people, and support them

<cwilso> +1 Tantek

tantek: Lastly, I really don't want to have an initiative to form a task force and come back months later with things
… Bias towards action.
… That bureacratic thing is caricature of W3C
… Let's take action. Quick poll, and move on.
… No task force to investigate. Too much of that.

fantasai: I want to synthesize this into specific actions

<tantek> I proposed a specific repo above

<tantek> github.com/w3c/AC

fantasai: Putting together a poll requires figuring out what we want to ask

<tantek> ^ there, poll the creation of that

fantasai: But we also want to move quickly without spending, say, six weeks to figure out wording

fantasai: I think a one-week expectation for wordsmithing is reasonable

fantasai: Once you have prepared the poll, the next step is to execute. Separate step

fantasai: I propose we create a repository dedicated to poll creation

fantasai: Any AC rep can create an issue to propose a poll that includes suggested wording

<tantek> +1 fantasai, sounds like a reasonable start. let's go

fantasai: If three members approve, then we send it off

fantasai: I suggest three people as a means to avoid enabling one troll to bug the AC

fantasai: If five people oppose the poll, that's not a problem. You're only sending out a poll

fantasai: I think if we get to a place where there are too many polls, then we can solve that problem at that tie

<tantek> to answer tzviya, email ac-forum the link to the issue and encouragement to comment / emoji. done

fantasai: I think this approach is lightweight enough to be effective and simple enough that we can enact it immediately

fantasai: And I think naomi can execute the polls which satisfy those criteria

tantek: My bias to action overrides my personal tool preference
… so let's prototype and try something
… so I support Elika's proposal

<Igarashi> +1 to 5 AC reps

ydaniv: So we have agreement to do this

hober: Should we straw poll the proposal?

<tantek> i'd rather try SOMETHING and iterate based on experience than spend too much time designing in advance

<tantek> +1 ok with 5 AC reps also

<brent> +1

bkardell: some people in the chat are suggesting requiring five votes of support?

fantasai: Fine. We can refine this later

POLL: Pilot this idea by 1) creating an ac-polls GH repo to draft and refine poll wording 2) using WBS set up by Naomi to execute the polls and 3) executing a proposed poll once at least a week has passed since the proposal and at least 5 AC reps have marked LGTM to the poll idea.

<bkardell> +1

<florian> +1

<Igarashi> +1

<astearns> +1

<phila> +1

<tantek> +1

<mchampion> +1

<jugglinmike> +1

<ydaniv> +1

<fantasai> +1

<brent> 0

<shiestyle> +1

<mjackson> +1

<JennieM> +1

<hirata> +1

<anssik> +1

<wschildbach> +1

<tantek> thank you, great demonstration of how the AC can move quickly when not beset by tons of bureaucracy

<bkardell> 👍

ydaniv: Brent, any comments or want to silently abstain?

<hober> +1

Brent: suggested to move past this topic earlier but sure let's try this or not or whatever
… let's move forward

RESOLUTION: Pilot this idea by 1) creating an ac-polls GH repo to draft and refine poll wording 2) using WBS set up by Naomi to execute the polls and 3) executing a proposed poll once at least a week has passed since the proposal and at least 5 AC reps have marked LGTM to the poll idea.

ACTION: Naomi set this up

<bkardell> -1 for having 5minutes more

<cwilso> +1

ydaniv: I relate to what phila said about getting approval each year
… Have to justify every year
… Also me employer doesn't care
… So I'm at the same position, where my employer doesn't care
… At hte same time, when I report what I'm doing
… They still don't care
… But they say "We trust you. So you do it. Whatever you care about, we'll care about that too.

phila: Yes, true.
… But if I wasn't in any groups, I would have difficulty justifying our membership. I assume that's true for everyone

Feedback

tzviya: We don't have much time, but Naomi and I are working on Membership and we want to ehlp members feel more engaged
… We've started a quarterly call for new AC reps, for example
… But it's clear that the AC is a little bit confused how to be

<mchampion> Please start a GitHub issue somewhere (AB Public or AB-Memberonly) on the participation question,

<tantek> +1 mchampion

tzviya: We've discussed how to have effective discussion, tooling, etc. Please reach out to me, Naomi, let's discuss it
… Let us know how to improve

<tzviya> ac kme

<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to ask for feedback about participation

tantek: General feedback, anytime Team says "please reach out to us", I would strongly prefer to open a GH

<Igarashi> +1 to tantek

tantek: I am opposed to ask Members to overcome the barriers and intimidation of directly reaching out
… Prefer lower-barrier invitation to comments
… Rather than putting cognitive load on entire AC to figure out who on the Team should I reach out about what issue
… This isn't the 90s.

ydaniv: +1. Intimidation, yeah.