W3C Working/Interest Group Chair

The W3C Team appoints (or re-appoints) a Chair (or more than one co-Chair) for every Working Group and Interest Group (“Group”). The Chair’s primary role is to facilitate consensus-building among Group members. The Chair works together with the W3C Staff Contact. Key roles of the Group Chair are listed below. Additional information on the role of the Group Chair is in the W3C Process Document.

Chair Buddy System

The Working Group effectiveness Task Force helped establish a Chair Buddy System by which experienced buddy-mentors help buddy-mentees.

Interested parties should visit the dedicated Chair Buddy System page.

Role of the Group Chair

Creates Group charter and convenes Group

• Develops Group charter together with the Staff Contact.
• Is familiar with the W3C Process, the W3C Code of Conduct, the Antitrust and competition policy, and Guidebook.
• Convenes Group and ensures Group members oriented to W3C Process with assistance of Staff Contact.
• Schedules deliverables and sets milestones towards completion of deliverables.
• Appoints document editors. (NOTE: Editors are responsible for ensuring that Group decisions are correctly reflected in Group documents, and for maintaining an issue list.)
• Proposes invited experts with assistance of Staff Contact (W3C staff must be involved in decisions regarding inclusion/exclusion of participants). Makes sure that all participants have filled out a call for participation and have disclosed their IPR in accordance with W3C process.
• (If there is a Co-chair) Establishes clear and close coordination with Co-chair.

Coordinates with W3C Team and other W3C Working Groups as needed

• Maintains close coordination with W3C Staff Contact.
• Maintains coordination with assigned liaisons from other W3C working groups.
• Participates in the Chairs mailing list (archive) and attends Chairs meetings.
• Works with the Communications Team and Team Contact in preparing press release.
• Communicates with the press, when necessary and appropriate, and with prior coordination with the communication team, on behalf of the group.
• Ensures all participants have proper access to Group data with assistance from Staff Contact.

Maintains Group Process & Organization

• Solicits drafts, encourages participation.
• Judges items in or out of scope for the Group.
• Generally stays neutral in discussion but can participate in technical discussions if announces in advance that will remove their chair “hat” at that time.
• Keeps Group’s charter compliant with W3C Process, and initiates charter update as needed.
• Ensures participants abide by the terms and spirit of the W3C Code of Conduct
• Find suitable time slots for distributed meeting where most of the attendees are expected to participate from remote locations (e.g., by telephone, video conferencing, or IRC). (see also Organizing a distributed meeting ) and revisit those time slots on a regular basis.
• Announces calls, meetings, events with appropriate advance time and through proper channels.
• Ensures minutes are taken and posted in due time.
• Defines meeting agendas.
• Maintains home page of Group using W3C authoring guidelines (receives access privileges for doing that).
• If it is necessary to take a vote, supervises voting and announces results, with assistance of Staff Contact.
• Resolve issues that motivated “No” votes (facilitate reaching consensus).
• Revises deliverables timeline as needed.

What to look for when choosing a chair

The following bullets based on suggestions from Joseph Reagle

• Experience in chairing similar groups, committees, and/or conferences;
• Previous participation or technical contributions in related communities;
• Ability to satisfy the time commitment (from you and/or your organization/management);
• Familiarity or willingness to learn W3C Process and document formatting rules;
• Familiarity with the W3C Code of Conduct;
• Ability to keep the Working Group “in Charter”, both for technical and IPR issues;
• Ability (both actual and perceived by the Working Group – including potential competitors) to forge consensus fairly and without bias from your affiliation/employer and, sometimes, even your own technical positions.

The Team contact should arrange for the Chair and the W3C Team to meet (by phone if necessary) to make sure they’re on the same wavelength about things like:

• where the group’s work fits into Web Architecture
• where does it fit with other groups
• testing, test suites … generating tests as you come to each
• responsibility not just to the group – working toward consensus of the whole community
• cost of delaying wider consensus - negotiating your reviews and really getting in touch with people - versus time to market and specification relevance
• formal objections, i.e. the tricky bits of W3C process