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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: W3C's 'Moral Majesty'
 At 03:40 PM 9/11/99 +0800, Rick Jelliffe wrote: >All standards processes are subject to the same constraints that >face-to-face meetings require travel, which requires money. Indeed, >this fact makes W3C into largely a rich Westerners' club; there seems >almost no participation from non-residents of Western countries (except >Japan, which is rich). I think this is a little misleading. A. You don't have to be rich to be involved in the W3C. HWG is a prime example of limited budget, yet commited participation. (we're a non-profit organization (US tax-exempt 501(c)3)) No, we can't send someone to every WG out there, we choose the ones most important to us, and have participation in as many non-travelling Interest Groups as we can. Yes, the expenditures we make are still beyond the means of most individuals, but (for better or worse, a different argument) W3C doesn't allow individual membership. Invited experts often have their participation funded, at least in part, by their employers. It's not impossible to participate for individuals who have the expertise and work at establishing appropriate contacts to be recognized as a viable participant. B. If the complaint is about the lack of Australian firms, or Israeli firms, Indian firms, or some other geographic area being represented, that in part is a function of how many members there are from those areas. A 50MM company in Australia is no different than a 50MM company in Germany in terms of being able to participate. You must make the decision to fund the effort. The W3C is proactively trying to recruit membership in areas that are "underrepresented" through the process of opening offices in new areas (Hong Kong now has one, in terms of the Pacific regions, to name just one), and more are being considered. Within individual working groups, the location of face to face meetings is determined in part by the makeup of the group. If there are 20 participants, 10 are from the US, 5 from Europe, and 5 from Japan/Pacific, you'll probably have 2 meetings in the US, 1 in Europe and 1 in Asia/Pacific over the course of a year. Everyone travels. If, on the other hand, you have 15 participants from Asia/Pacific, 3 from the US, and 1 from Europe, the meetings are likely to be concentrated in Asia/Pacific areas. There's no concerted effort to place meetings in far flung locations just for the hell of it (don't know how many non-WG members have ever travelled 12-14 time zones for a 2 day meeting, but it's not exactly a vacation). In the HTML WG, we've had 3 US meetings, and (counting our meeting coming up in 2 weeks) 2 European meetings. We only have two participants from Japan, and they're both attached to the W3C, so it doesn't make sense to have everyone else travel to Asia at greater expense. And finally, I must agree with Tim wrt: the value of face to face meetings. In fact, if we *weren't* so global in nature, I'd argue for *more* face to face meetings, rather than fewer, as productivity is so greatly increased during those periods. Ann xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...) 
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