TPAC/2020/FAQ

This TPAC 2020 FAQ.

What is TPAC?

TPAC is the acronym for our annual "All Working Group meetings, Technical Plenary, and Advisory Committee Meeting week". TPAC has three components:

Meetings of as many W3C Working Groups who choose to meet during this week;
Breakout sessions;
A meeting of the W3C Advisory Committee.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, W3C is holding a Virtual TPAC 2020.

@@More?

What is the confidentiality of the breakout sessions?

Most proceedings are public.

How does the agenda get built?

Participants are invited to contribute their Breakout session ideas (comment on existing ones) as early as possible and until October 18 EOB.

The goal is to have a near-final breakout sessions schedule by October 19.

The W3C Team will make the @@final session grid@@ available on October 22.

What if I think of a great idea for a session in the middle of the day?

TBD

What is good practice for organizing a session?

At the beginning

Give context
- What is the nature of your session (presentation or discussion or other)?
- What are your goals?
- What minimal background must people know in order to follow the discussion?
Find a scribe (not required to be W3C staff)
- Your session has been @@link TBD@@pre-assigned an IRC channel for your breakout notes. "/invite RRSAgent", take notes on IRC; see RRSAgent instructions for more.
- Record names of participants (e.g., by having them "sign in" on IRC: present+ name_surname)

At the end

End on time: 5 minutes before the following session.
Discuss a summary before the discussion ends
- Create public minutes (in IRC "rrsagent, make logs public" and at the end of the session "rssagent, make minutes"); or you can add a summary directly as part of your session proposal.
  - Notes: your minutes will be linked roughly every hour in the @@link TBD@@breakout session grid.
- What to cover:
  - Main points of discussion, consensus, or disagreement?
  - What are the next steps (possibly none)?
  - Who is responsible for carrying them out? (Could be a person from the session, or a group where work is ongoing, a new community group, the staff, etc.)

Encouraging international participation / managing language barriers

State clearly the goal of the breakout
Summarize from time to time, check for understanding, clarify when necessary.
Scribe on IRC
Speak slowly and clearly, avoid idioms and jargon
Invite people to participate

How do we share our breakout discussion with others?

For all sessions, we would like an electronic summary that we will link from the breakout schedule. The W3C Communications Team will review session summaries and possibly build a comprehensive summary for the W3C Blog.

We expect summaries to NOT be too verbose and to be to the point.

People may also wish to disseminate their summaries via email, or in a new Community Group, or through other means. Ask W3C Comm team members <w3t-pr@w3.org> if you need assistance.

How long is a session?

Usually, up to an hour. A session may span more than one timeslot. We will determine room allocation in the agenda-building phase.

What else ...??

... would you like to know? Put your question here and we'll answer.