Tag: Webizen

Webizen became W3C Developers Avenue

Webizen is no more. Yay! We released W3C Developers Avenue instead, and it’s a good thing! It’s much simpler, streamlined and more scalable.

https://twitter.com/w3c/status/659265539135676416

Webizen kept a public task force busy for a year and went through two major iterations between W3C TPAC 2013 in Shenzhen and TPAC 2014 in Santa Clara, where the W3C Advisory Committee approved the proposal.

In the year leading to last week’s TPAC 2015 in Sapporo, we redid all again! An implementation of Webizen representation groups was going to be a forum. Meanwhile, the Team had been experimenting with a new forum, Discourse, to which anyone can bring ideas; and the Web Platform Working Group charter was being developed, a component of which was for the community to incubate new web platform features via Github and Discourse. So, we slowed down rolling out Webizen as we realised some Webizen participation benefits were going to be made available for free under the Discourse banner, and to rethink what would make sense to put together.

While Webizen was a modestly fee-based participation program, we abandoned the idea of benefits for a fee, and introducing instead a gratitude program, Friends. We focused on how W3C gives developers a greater voice, and which services the Web developers value in particular: our free validators and tools, to build Web content that works now and will work in the future; W3C Community Groups that more than six thousand people have embraced since 2011, to propose and incubate new work; our free and premium Training program, to learn from the creators of the Web technologies; and Discourse, to share ideas and feedback with the community on Web Standards.

It was important for us to release during TPAC 2015, and it was high time we did, really. After all, it was an anniversary date of the question from which it all stemmed. The first anniversary was the approval of a version, the second had to be the launch. And we did it, in the nick of time, but it was challenging.

I tested my abilities to manage a project and I learned a lot for the future, to say the least. Meanwhile, to make up for this, I worked over weekends, in the plane, and every night in Japan leading to the launch. Karen gave good feedback on content and Guillaume, as designer and integrator, scrumed with coding. The foundations of the work had been laid out months ago, but many of the building blocks still needed attention and polish, that we applied right up to the release on the W3C Technical Plenary Day, literally two minutes before the H hour.

I had aimed for much earlier in the day and for a fuller version, but a piece of code in the Friends component stopped working and when it was obvious it was not going to be fixed in time, we had to back-track a little. Donations to support the W3C mission and free developer tools are thus possible via Paypal only at this point, but soon we will accept contributions via credit card through MIT, a 501(c)(3) organization, which are tax-deductible for United States citizens.

Next steps for W3C Developers Avenue are more Developer meetups and outreach, and general (r)evolutions to further developer engagement at W3C and the value of W3C to the Web community. You have thoughts on those? I welcome your input!

I wrote on the topic before: Individuals influencer of the Web at W3C –utopia? (February 2014), Introducing #Webizen electoral college (April 2014).

Introducing #Webizen electoral college

In a previous post “Individuals influencer of the Web at W3C –utopia?”, I drew up some balance sheet of possibilities for individuals to affiliate with the Web community.

What started as a simple fan club design is evolving into something far more appealing, which is re-aligning with my initial interest of individuals having a voice in the Consortium.

One of the key components of the W3C is the Advisory Committee, composed of one representative from each W3C Member. The Advisory Committee has a number of roles described in the W3C Process: review, appeal, vote.

So, what if we told you that Webizens can run for an Advisory Committee position?

The draft proposal is built in a wiki, the sections of particular relevance are:

The section on Package of benefits hasn’t been updated in a while and might need your input as well. And if you have an opinion on a communication strategy, you’ll be my best friend forever!

The design of the framework is still work in progress, is done in the open and public participation is free. We target to deliver a proposal by early June.

I am seeking feedback and comments, and thank you kindly for it! You may:

  • comment in this blog,
  • write to the public-webizen@w3.org mailing list (publicly archive),
  • edit the wiki directly,
  • even use IRC (irc.w3.org, port 6665, channel #webizen).

Individuals influencer of the Web at W3C –utopia?

Can individuals join the W3C? Yes. There is an item precisely on that in the W3C Membership page:

Can I join W3C as an individual?
Yes, by following the same procedure available to organizations. W3C does not have a class of Membership tailored to or priced for individuals. Indeed, the Membership fee is relatively small compared to the investment being made by the organization. Our processes are designed for organizational participation and we do not have the support structure to handle large numbers of individual members. […] Note that academics who are experts in a field may ask the Working Group Chair to be invited to join the Working Group as an Invited Expert.

We do allow individuals to join as organizations. It appears to be under the banner of the Startup Level; which fee ($2,250 / €1950) is for organizations of 10 or fewer employees, but is only available for the first 2 consecutive years of Membership. I have no idea what happens at the end of the second year of Membership of our individual who joined under the level of a Startup. But this is beside the point, anyway.

I’ve always been keen on the notion of individual W3C Members, as opposed to W3C Member organizations.

If I were not employed by W3C, I would want to join as an individual Member. Not just to show support, but to influence the Web at my level. As a user. By that, I mean from the perspective of the user, as opposed to the one of corporate or business strategy.

The question came up again at the public W3C Plenary session in Shenzhen last November. Look for “individual membership“. Alex Russell (a W3C TAG elected member) brought up the question and garnered replies from both Tim Berners-Lee (Director of W3C, inventor of the Web –my boss ♡ <swoon />) and Jeff Jaffe (W3C CEO).

As minuted, Alex’s points included professional affiliation (publicly affiliated w/ W3C), utility and the responsibilities it implies (one issue is we don’t have sufficient representation from UI).

As minuted, Tim’s points and support included receiving e-mail from people who want to join, prestige derived from being a Member, which could be limited to read-only membership, and would still allow one to see what’s going on; or a separate level where you’ve got a W3C account where you can be allowed to read-write. Tim, the Director, said “I’d be happy to revisit this.”

The question also came up mid-January outside of W3C. There was a discussion between a group of French-speaking actors of the Web, which started on Twitter and ended up on a web-based collaborative real-time editor, around the topic of Artisans du Web (Web craftspeople), and how they could assemble and represent their craft at W3C to further the progress of the Web.

I wonder who else, and how many, would join as an individual Member of W3C. And what role they’d want to play, which participation rights they’d expect.

Update 2014-02-20:

In Feb – May 2014, a task force open to the public is going to develop a proposal around a W3C Webizen Program. I have joined the task force today (it has not yet started, so if you’re keen on the topic, please, join!)

Quoting from the public wiki:

It was proposed during TPAC 2013 that we should have an Individual Membership program at W3C. W3C management concluded that we did not need a program which conferred the participation rights of Membership to individuals, since we already have Invited Experts.

Instead, we are looking to explore a “Webizen” program. For a nominal fee (e.g., $100 US per annum), the individual would get some benefits. This project will explore whether such a program is viable and want the benefits should be.

Sample benefits could include: user groups, user conferences, T-shirts, ID-cards, a path to provide user input to Working Groups, recognition as a Webizen for participants in W3C Working Groups and Community Groups.

To join: subscribe to public-webizen@w3.org