How to send advance notice of work to the Advisory Committee
This document describes the Strategy Team’s implementation of the Process Document requirements related to advance notice to the Advisory Committee of charters in development. See the background for the advance notice policy and this document.
Sending advance notice to the Advisory Committee
- Who/Where
- The Strategy Team determines when
to inform the AC of work-in-progress. These announcements are sent by
the W3C Communications Team to w3c-ac-members@w3.org
and then forwarded to chairs@w3.org.
Unless an advance notice strongly requires Member-only confidentiality (which should be rare), we also inform the public via public-new-work@w3.org (see example) and new-work@ietf.org. This is done by the W3C Communications Team.
- When
- Specialists, in conjunction with the Strategy Lead, make this
decision based on early assessment of the factors available in the
“Evaluation” section of the Funnel,
as well as considering when it is useful to encourage broader input to
discussion. In the Process-required notice to the AC, the Strategy
team will give an early status report on the work and likely timeline
for further progress (from information captured in the Funnel).
Advance notice is not an indication that work will necessarily be sent for charter review, but an indication that the Team is seriously evaluating possible work, and seeks wider feedback.
- How/What
- There is a template
for advance notice</a>. Please look for recent examples in the
w3c-ac-members archive.
The advance notice announcement to the Membership MUST include this information:
- A summary of the intended work.
- A statement welcoming the Members to use w3c-ac-forum for general expressions of interest and support.
- A request that Members send substantive comments and engage on substantive discussion on a different mailing list or github repository (i.e., other than w3c-ac-forum).
- If applicable, a statement that the archive of this second list is Member-visible.
- Contact information if people have questions; generally these will be the names of one or more people on the Team.
The advance notice announcement to the Membership SHOULD include this information:
- Expectations about when a formal Advisory Commitee Review might begin.
The advance notice announcement to the Membership MAY include this information:
- Pointers to draft materials. In other words, the announcement is not required to include a draft charter, but if one is available, please include it.
- Information about other mailing lists for comments, as the situation requires.
Background for this document
The Process Document requirements for advance notice were introduced in response to requests from Members to be more in the loop earlier for work in development. These requirements were added to provide additional transparency to some work carried out (in general) by the Team, to encourage Members to show support for work in development early (on w3c-ac-forum), and to enable those interested in shaping a charter to participate on a separate list (so as not to flood w3c-ac-forum).
Hence the sentence in the Process Document:
Advisory Committee representatives MAY provide feedback on the Advisory Committee discussion list or via other designated channels.
These ideas are further discussed in Tips for Getting to Recommendation Faster, in particular:
When a Charter is proposed to the Advisory Committee, garner support from fellow W3C Members on w3c-ac-forum. When there is substantial support for new work among the Members, the Team may create a special mailing list for discussion among Members and Team about Group charter development. Start discussions with proposals, calendars, statements of expected resource commitments, and other such signals.