AB
Welcome to the AB home page
Left to right, top row: Max Gendler, Tantek Çelik, Elika Etemad, Elena Lape, Wendy Reid, Song Xu; bottom row: Tatsuya Igarashi, Wei Ding, Chris Wilson, Florian Rivoal (emeritus, observer), Seth Dobbs (CEO), Avneesh Singh, An Qi (Angel) Li (team, co-chair)
The W3C Advisory Board (AB) provides ongoing guidance to the W3C Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. This page documents current AB projects, and is open to suggestions from W3C members and non-members. This page is updated by the AB.
- Logo: W3C AB (updated with 2023 w3c icon, and updated blue)
Are you a member of the W3C Advisory Committee? You may be interested in this page:
Who are the AB?
The AB has nine to eleven elected participants, an additional chair, a staff contact, and 2 standing invites for the W3C CEO & COO.
- Tantek Çelik ¹
- Wei Ding ²
- Seth Dobbs (W3C CEO)
- Elika J Etemad ¹
- Max Gendler ²
- Amy van der Hiel (staff contact)
- Tatsuya Igarashi ²
- Elena Lape ²
- An Qi (Angel) Li (Chair)
- Wendy Reid (Chair) ¹
- Avneesh Singh ¹
- Ralph Swick (W3C COO)
- Chris Wilson ¹
- Song XU ¹
See more information about AB participants.
- ¹ Two-year term began 1 July 2023 (see 2023 election results).
- ² Two-year term began 1 July 2024 (see 2024 election results).
The AB is elected by the Advisory Committee. Each year the nomination period typically starts 1 April, and the election typically starts 1 May.
The AB follows the guidelines for communicating as a member of a W3C elected body.
AB Workflow
- 🙌 Overview & role: Being on the AB | AB Guide | Reaching consensus | AB and BoD roles
- 📆 Meetings: Official Calendar | Scheduling & Logistics | Upcoming Agenda & Summaries (Member-only)
- 🌐 Public Resources: AB Priority Projects | Public Issue Tracker | w3.org/ab
- 🔵 Member-only: AB Minutes & Elections history | Member Issue Tracker (archive) | Member Wiki | w3c-ac-forum@ list
- 🟪 AB-internal: Wiki | Issue Tracker | lists: ab@, ab-private@
Open AB Projects
Most Advisory Board projects are conducted in the open, transparent to the broader W3C community, who are also invited to participate:
Priority Projects
Each mid-year the elected AB selects a set of projects to prioritize for the following 12 months. The AB/2025 Priorities:
- Improving Collaboration
- Incubation Transition Guideline
- Defining 3Is
- Vision
- Vision for W3C, maintained by the Vision TF
- Improving Communication Horizontally
- AB + TAG Collaboration/Workmode
- AC Forum Facilitation
- Reorganizing W3C Documentation
Ongoing Priorities
In addition to Priority Projects which are planned for 12 months, the AB has or participates in a number of ongoing priorities:
- Process
- Code of Conduct (FKA CEPC) and related procedures and practices
- Maintained by Positive Work Environment CG, PWE Mailing List, and GitHub Repository
Ongoing Projects
- Meet the Candidates
- AC Meetings
- Surveys and Results
- Designing Acknowledgement of Contributions to W3C
- Formal Objections Dashboard (Member-only link)
Miscellaneous Projects
AB Wiki Editing Itself
Things to work on wiki-editing workflow for (Tantek, additional volunteers)
- long lived projects having their own undated URLs
- using redirects for per year priorities
- incorporate stuff in AB/2013-2014 into specific subpages for more navigable archival.
Cultural conventions for attribution
The new HTMLWG charter allows for working group members to contribute HTML5 Extension specifications using CC-by, and then places attribution requirements on any derivative works.
These attribution requirements are a good start for growing cultural conventions for attribution both inside W3C, and beyond W3C, towards a goal of making attribution founded in cultural norms rather than legal (copyright) requirements, potentially allowing for use of CC0 for contributions to W3C in the future.
See AB/attribution for draft suggested best practices for attribution.
Open AB
The AB is working on (as is evident by this wiki page) doing more and more of its work in the open.
Currently Open AB work is occurring in a few places:
- https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB (all projects on this wiki page)
- https://github.com/w3c/AB-public
- https://w3c.social/@ab
Following the AB
The Advisory Board has a Mastodon account: @ab@w3c.social
Nearly the entire AB has access and can post anything regarding AB-related matters. The methodology is to empower individual responsibility and trust by default, especially in such a small group.
If you are a member of the AB, contact Tantek Çelik on a secure communications channel and he'll gladly share access to @ab@w3c.social.
Previously, the AB had a Twitter account: @W3CAB but it is not really used any more. It was inspired by use of a shared Twitter account by the CSSWG (any CSSWG member may "have the keys" to @CSSWG) and it's been hugely successful in engaging the broader developer community.
Acknowledgement
The Advisory Board has been discussing acknowledging the individuals who have made great contributions for the Web community. And the Wiki page records some initial exploration in this direction.
W3C Community and Tools
W3C Tools
W3C has many tools for community usage.
- See the Tools page for a list and brief descriptions
Related: the AB had a past Tooling Priority Project in 2017, and published the result of that page at: AB/Tooling.
Past Projects
The AB worked on these projects in the past but is no longer actively working on them. In some cases the community and/or Team have continued to facilitate and update them.
Working Group Effectiveness Task Force
The AB takes an active interest in improving W3C working group effectiveness by documenting and communicating existing good practices that help significantly, above and beyond formal processes, for everyone (especially chairs) participating in working groups.
See the Working Group Effectiveness Task Force (TF) home page:
W3C Chairs Training
The Advisory Board has established Chair Training as a priority for 2014. At TPAC2013, Chairs had a breakfast meeting and expressed what additional information and skills they required to improve their effectiveness. The W3C Team developed a list of areas which have now evolved into a quarterly Chair Training program.
- W3C, Process, and the W3C Team, Philippe Le Hegaret, 23 January 2014
- Tools, Ralph Swick, 24 April 2014
- The Human Dimension, Charles McCathie Nevile, 17 June 2014
- Focus and Productivity, Arnaud Le Hors, 23 October 2014
- Focus and Productivity, Arnaud Le Hors, 29 January 2015
- Horizontal reviews, Virginie Galindo, September 2015
- New W3C process, its philosophy, and how to use it for agility, Steve Zilles, February/March 2015
- TBC: Making rapid progress in developing specs in W3C despite the W3C process
- IPR Management in a Github age - repo manager training, Kaz Ashimura, Sep 21 2017
Use of GitHub at W3C
The AB looks at use of GitHub at W3C specifically in terms of impacts on process and IP concerns.
Some W3C groups use use GitHub to develop specifications or edit non-normative documents. While the strategy for using Tracker and/or Bugzilla and/or GitHub is left to WG decision, there are some good practices that can be gathered. That section is pointing to effort to federate experiences and good practices.
- Read the GitHub draft guidelines
- Note that some experimentation is happening in WebRTC WG is order to link W3C mailing list and GitHub, based on Dominique Hazael-Massieux github notify effort
- Ask questions here GitHub.
Remote Participation
The AB is looking at issues related to remote participation in W3C meetings.
- See Remote participation
- Including Ann Bassetti's Introduction to IRC
OpenWeb Tools at W3C
The AB has discussed how to increase the use of OpenWeb Tools at W3C itself (a form of dogfooding). Many (most?) presentations at W3C workshops (e.g. the Workshop on Social Standards: The Future of Business) use non-open-web technologies/formats. W3C should work on good practices to encourage more use of OpenWeb Tools instead of, or at least before non-open-web technologies/formats.
- See open web tool
Side Projects
In addition to the above some members of the AB work on additional side projects related to W3C process, culture, etc.
- One-wiki
- ..
Historical Documents
See AB/Priorities for links to past AB projects by year from 2013 to the present.
Past projects formerly linked on this page:
Updates
This page is maintained by members of the AB, however is open for any W3C Member to help with editorial corrections, fixing links, and minor gardening. If you’d like to help improve this page and are uncertain about an edit, feel free to ask the AB on: