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On TPAC Group and Joint-Group Meetings

This Guidebook is the collected wisdom of the W3C Group Chairs and other collaborators.

The goal of Group meetings during a W3C TPAC is to gather the community together, to create momentum and collective brainstorming around challenges faced by the Web. The technical plenary is a set of collaborative meetings, bringing together W3C technical groups, the Advisory Board, the TAG and the Advisory Committee for exciting, coordinated work. The benefit of assembling the community for thought-provoking discussions is invaluable.

While W3C Groups meet throughout the year in a variety of ways (teleconference, Zoom, F2F), the annual TPAC plays a unique and special role in the annual calendar of a Group. What sets these meetings apart is that by having the Group together for 2 days (and also adjacent to many other groups), the Group can get done that which it cannot normally do - specifically (see below).

TPAC 2021

With the pandemic, many Groups did not meet for TPAC 2020, and other groups met briefly and did not fully achieve the full goals of a TPAC meeting. That has caused a deficit in meeting the special objectives that we previously have only been able to achieve through TPAC Group meetings.

In TPAC 2021, since we are still virtual, it will still be challenging to achieve all of the benefits of a physical meeting. But two years into virtual meetings, it is recommended that Groups try to get together to achieve some of these benefits. At a minimum they should consider doing an overview of the state of the Working Group and its deliverables, looking at big challenges ahead, where the priorities should be, and use a different agenda from your regular recurring meetings.

Since we'll be virtual, a few reminders:

1. Make sure it's easy for outsiders to discover your meeting. Add your meeting to:
   1. the TPAC 2021 page.
   2. the W3C Calendar of the Group.
2. A distributed meeting is one where most of the attendees are expected to participate from remote locations (see dealing with timezones).
3. See our considerations regarding zoom, including recordings and automated meeting transcripts.
4. If you plan to make a presentation, we recommend you to record them in advance. Ask the events team for assistance if needed but they require 2 weeks lead time (deadline is October 11). See also our recording tips.
5. Consider if a breakout session might be useful.

TPAC Group meeting

TPAC meeting is an opportunity for a Working or Interest Group :

1. look on the progress and goals of the Group as well as the deliverables;
2. look at related work (e.g in Community Groups) and what's new out there within the scope or related to the Group's mission;
3. welcome new participants, understand their interests, get their questions/feedback on the Group, and potentially mentor them on how to contribute;
4. welcome observers, understand their interests in the Group, and get them interested in joining the Group and helping;

On the deliverables:

• State of the Working Group and its deliverables (past, present and future)
  • high level view of the Working Group (success/challenges, goals, how close is the group to meet its charter goals?, etc.)
  • Reports on deliverables. Make sure to go through each, even if nothing changed and it gets brief, since some might in needs in any case.
    • state of issues/pull requests
    • state of tests
    • state of implementation
    • last 12 months progress
    • expectations/hopes for next 12 months (eg important milestones coming up)
    • what contributions would be welcome from other/new participants
• Blocking issues that are difficult to progress in weekly calls. Some indicators of such issue:
  • Does the issue need more than 25% of the Group to be present to be moved forward? if you only need to talk to 2 or 3 individuals, take those on the side unless asked otherwise
  • Does an issue require participants from outsiders (participants from other groups, etc.)
  • Does the issue need a whiteboard in the room to be discussed?
  • Do you need guidance or help, such as choosing between several designs/solutions?
  • Ask participants which issue they would like to dive in? (limit of [2? 3?] per participant?)

TPAC Joint Meetings

• TPAC is an opportunity for joint meetings between Groups:
  1. issues (blocking or otherwise) that you'd be able to advance if you can schedule a joint meeting with another Group, or with representatives from that Group
  2. horizontal issues raised during wide reviews that have been queued
  3. requests sent to other Groups that did not progress in there

TPAC Breakouts

If your Group has topic(s) of general interest, consider organizing a breakout session to attract a wider audience.

Feedback is to @w3c/guidebook and is welcome on GitHub