DRAFT Exploration Interest Group Charter

The mission of the Exploration Interest Group is to provide W3C Members with a forum to explore and discuss emerging web-related technology trends and consider how the community could collaborate to shape those trends for the benefit of web users.

Join the Exploration Interest Group.

This draft charter is available on GitHub. Feel free to raise issues.

Charter Status	See the group status page and detailed change history.
Start date	[dd monthname yyyy] (date of the "Call for Participation", when the charter is approved)
End date	[dd monthname yyyy] (Start date + 2 years)
Chairs	[chair name] (affiliation)
Team Contacts	[team contact name] (0.1 FTE)
Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: topic-specific calls may be held or something else Face-to-face: we will meet during the W3C's annual Technical Plenary week; additional face-to-face meetings may be scheduled by consent of the participants, usually no more than 3 per year.

Motivation and Background

The W3C Process indicates that a role of the Advisory Board is to provide strategic guidance to the W3C. Analogous to Process Document management, the Advisory Board recognized that there is interest among the broader Membership for these discussions and encouraged the creation of a dedicated Interest Group for ongoing strategic conversations.

The goal is to provide a platform to help W3C (including the W3C team) investigating emerging technology trends, analyzing their impacts on the evolution of Web technologies, and proposing ways for W3C to collaborate shaping the trends for the benefit of the Web users.

Scope

Monitor industry and technology trends and analyze their potential impact on the Web.
Based on these findings, develop strategic narratives to help the W3C community understand these trends, the relevance of W3C activities, or a gap analysis where there are no current W3C activities.
Provide a forum for members of the W3C community (including the W3C team) to share updates with the Membership as part of broader strategic discussions (e.g., Strategy Team's Incubation Pipeline updates, liaison updates, Community Group updates). This is intended to complement other venues for updates, including both Member-focused discussions (e.g., AC meeting or AB-led Member meeting) and broader community discussions (e.g., TPAC breakouts). The value proposition of this Interest Group is to support deeper ongoing strategic conversations.
Provide a forum for members of the W3C community (including the W3C team) to seek in-depth strategic input from the W3C Membership. Examples of who might seek strategic guidance from the Interest Group: Community Groups considering transitioning to a Working Group; parties who seek help resolving strategic issues related to a charter in development (as opposed to issues for which another group such as the TAG would be more appropriate).

Deliverables

Updated document status is available on the group publication status page. [or link to a page this group prefers to use]

Reports about industry and technology trends, their potential impact on the Web, and how W3C might play a role in shaping their trajectory.
These reports would be informative only and could be reviewed by the W3C community, and where there appears to be consensus, published as Interest Group Notes.

Success Criteria

Reports published by the IG inform strategic conversations within W3C, leading to visible activities such as new Community Groups, improvements or greater consensus around draft Working Group charters, W3C Workshops, AC meeting agenda items, TPAC breakout sessions, structured email discussions within the broader Membership, and productive liaisons.

Coordination

This Group is expected to coordinate with any relevant group...

W3C Groups

[other name] Working Group: [specific nature of liaison]

Note: Do not list horizontal groups here, only specific WGs relevant to your work.

Note: Do not bury normative text inside the liaison section. Instead, put it in the scope section.

External Organizations

[other name] Working Group: [specific nature of liaison]

Participation

To be successful, this Interest Group is expected to have 6 or more active participants for its duration. The Chairs are expected to contribute a quarter of a working day per week towards the Interest Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants.

The group encourages questions, comments and issues on its public mailing lists and document repositories, as described in Communication.

The group also welcomes non-Members to contribute through its public communication channels.

Participants in the group are required (by the W3C Process) to follow the W3C Code of Conduct.

Communication

Technical discussions for this Interest Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of specifications will be developed in public repositories and may permit direct public contribution requests. (Does the IG plan to write EDs and WDs?) The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) will be available from the Exploration Interest Group home page.

Most Exploration Interest Group teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.

This group primarily conducts its technical work pick one, or both, as appropriate: on the public mailing list public-[email-list]@w3.org (archive) or on GitHub issues. The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.

The group may use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (for example, via email, GitHub issue or web-based survey), with a response period from [pick a duration within:] one week to 10 working days, depending on the chair's evaluation of the group consensus on the issue. If no objections are raised by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Interest Group.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 5.2.3, Deciding by Vote) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Disclosures

The Interest Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Interest Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Interest Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Interest Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the licensing information.

Licensing

This Interest Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 3.4 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Charter History

Note:Display this table and update it when appropriate. Requirements for charter extension history are documented in the Charter Guidebook (section 4).

The following table lists details of all changes from the initial charter, per the W3C Process Document (section 4.3, Advisory Committee Review of a Charter):

Charter Period	Start Date	End Date	Changes
Initial Charter	[dd monthname yyyy]	[dd monthname yyyy]	none

Change log

Changes to this document are documented in this section.