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.
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 |
Heather Flanagan, Spherical Cow Consulting Jet Ding, Huawei |
| Team Contacts | Xueyuan Jia (0.1 FTE) |
| Meeting Schedule |
Teleconferences: monthly
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.
- 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
For all deliverables, this Interest Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG.
This Interest Group should collaborate with all the groups developing proposals and specifications to coordinate about industry and technology trends.
- Media and Entertainment Interest Group
- The mission of the Media and Entertainment Interest Group is to provide a forum for media-related technical discussions to track progress of media features on the Web within W3C groups and use of Web technologies by external organizations, and to identify use cases and requirements that existing and/or new specifications need to meet to achieve a tighter support of media services on the Web.
- Web & Networks Interest Group
- The mission of the Web & Networks Interest Group is to explore solutions for web applications to leverage network capabilities in order to achieve better performance and resources allocation, both on the device and network.
- Web of Things Interest Group
- The mission of the Web of Things Interest Group is to counter the fragmentation of the Internet of Things by complementing available standards through Web technology capable of interconnecting existing Internet of Things platforms, devices, gateways, and cloud services.
- Web Payment Security Interest Group
- The mission of the Web Payment Security Interest Group is to enhance the security and interoperability of various Web payments technologies.
- Web-based Digital Twins for Smart Cities Interest Group
- The mission of the Web-based Digital Twins for Smart Cities Interest Group is to identify and document use cases and requirements that W3C specifications need to meet to support various services within Smart Cities.
- Advisory Board
- The Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the Team on issues of strategy and conflict resolution.
- Technical Architecture Group
- The TAG is a special working group within the W3C, chartered with stewardship of the Web architecture.
- Web Platform Incubator Community Group
- The Web Platform Incubator Community Group (WICG) provides a lightweight venue for proposing and discussing new web platform features. Please see the charter for more information.
Participation
The Chairs are expected to contribute half 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
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. 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 emerging web-related technology trends, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.
This group primarily conducts its work 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).
As this group is exploratory, the group will:
- gather information, ensuring that all sides of controversial ideas (e.g. blockchain tech, the potential benefits and perils of AI) are considered,
- seek consensus on matters of fact, and if possible on matters of prediction/prescription,
- publish reports recording the various positions, and may record the rough division of opinions in the group across those positions.
To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. Group participants have a one week period to comment on provisional resolutions.
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.