Expanding Participation in W3C - a new Membership Level!

As W3C continues to evolve the breadth and depth of our work, we need to continue to address how we're packaging and pricing our Membership options. In 2012 we added a tier designed for Startup organizations, which has enabled a significant number of these organizations to join our work. In 2014 we introduced the Introductory Industry Membership to allow organizations with a singular focus on a specific industry segment's use cases to have a seat at the table.  Again, by all measures this has been a successful program. With the IDPF combination, we put a Transitional Publishing Industry Membership together to allow former IDPF Members a way to engage with us at a rate that is based on their prior IDPF fees with the understanding that it would lead to becoming regular Members at the end of that program. As with the other two, we've seen a significant number of organizations join the work at W3C via this program.

In December 2017 there was a discussion between W3C and a significant publishing company which showed that the step up for that publisher from TPI to regular Membership was too big a step. We found this informative, as they are one of the bigger organizations in the Publishing Industry. Based on that conversation, and exploratory discussions with potential Members, the W3C Business Development Team, and within our current Membership, we defined a new Membership level which would be aimed at public organizations that have revenues between $50M and $500M USD.

Today, I'm pleased to announce that W3C is moving ahead with that as a trial program to determine if this offering will be successful in attracting new Members to W3C.  To determine if you qualify for this program, please go to this site. If you do qualify, the Membership Application System is ready for you! If you have any questions about the program, please don't hesitate to send me a note to abird@w3.org.

Cheers,

J. Alan Bird W3C Global Business Development Leader