W3C

IDCG meeting

01 December 2020

Attendees

Present
Ada Cannon, Coralie Mercier (koalie), Dan Appelquist (dka), Judy Brewer, Laura Morinigo, Lola Odelola, Liz Lutgendorff, Léonie Watson (tink), Tzviya Siegman, Wendy Reid
Regrets
Amy Guy (rhiaro), Wendy Seltzer, Jeff Jaffe
Chair
Léonie
Scribe
koalie

Meeting minutes

Previous (2020-11-17)

[Léonie reminds the participants of meeting minutiae]

Léonie: Let's do introductions around the room as we have a few newcomers
… warm welcome to all of you

Introductions

Léonie: I'm Léonie Watson, AC rep of Tetralogical at W3C
… co-chair of the IDCG and Webapps WG

Coralie: I'm Coralie Mercier, the other co-chair of this group for a few more weeks. I'm the head of MarComm at W3C and I've been around over 20 years.

Wendy: I'm the co-chair of the Publishing and Audiobooks groups

Dan: I'm the co-chair of the TAG, work at Samsung and I'm in the UK, in London

Estella: I work at a research group in catalunya
… accessibility and web accessibility
… work with European projects

Laura: I work at the samsung internet advocacy group

Liz: Part of the digital gov service in the UK
… no part of any other group yet
… will need to leave at half-past

Lola: developer advocate at samsung
… I have experience in non-profit and civic-tech space
… I also help black women get into tech
… I run a podcast and blog about this in the industry

Nishad: I'm an Indian in Japan
… I work with the @@ community
… I work with datasets, interop

Tzviya: I am co-chair of the publishing steering committee and audiogroup wg, chair of the pwe cg

Ada: I'm another person from samsung
… I did some work with the PWE TF
… I'm one of the authors of the current CEPC
… chair of the Immersive WG

Tobie: I've been involved with W3C on and off for a long time

Merge the IDCG and PWECG?

Léonie: let's consider if this group should merge with Positive Work Environment CG
… suggestion came in the wake of Coralie and I announcing we're stepping down as co-chair at the end of December
… we put out a call for volunteers
… the missions of the two groups overlap

Tzviya: since someone contacted me about this, I'll add that
… PWE is focusing on the code of ethics
… and the ombuds program
… other than that, our objective is the same
… make W3C more positive, more inclusive
… and our membership has overlap too
… I think it's a good idea

Léonie: I want to open this up for those here to think about

Dan: I'd like to be optimistic about this proposal!
… seems to be making good use of people's time
… the code of conduct is done now
… it feels like the merged group would not be dominated by the development of a new code of conduct
… this feels like this would be a good move

Léonie: From my pov as current co-chair of this group
… I think this is a great idea
… I have looked at the activity of the PWE CG
… there's a lot of common ground
… there are distinct areas as Tzviya said
… seems worth exploring to me!

Lola: I had a question about objectives of the 2 groups
… I understand they're both similar
… in what the outcome we want
… what was the objective of this group and that group?

Coralie: PWE started as a team + member taskforce which I chaired many years ago and after we released a first version of a code of ethics, we opened that group to our community given the interest. IDCG was started in 2018 during a TPAC as a Women of W3C group to exchange tips, share experiences, improve inclusion, etc. It raised curiosity of men of course, but at some point after a few weeks we changed that group to welcome all and focus on diversity and inclusion.

Léonie: the remit was then for W3C to become more welcoming
… we would like more people from more communities to join us
… we look at the language we use
… the practices we have

Liz: maybe combining efforts would help progress work
… from my perspective, as we struggle with this at GDS too, this is worth exploring

Tzviya: Both groups changed mission over time
… PWE is shifting to looking at the ombuds program
… IDCG two years ago was only focusing on women alone
… but in the meantime it has come to the fore at W3C

WendyR: Merging the 2 groups is a good idea
… it's a good idea at this kind of phase in both groups
… inforcement of CEPC should be done through the lense of inclusion

<dka_> +1

WendyR: It's a perfect moment

<koalie> +1

Lola: A concern of mine (but I'm brand new here):
… if the PWECG has already a large undertaking, will there be capacity for what the IDCG wanted to achieve?
… will that stretch the team in a way that would be unproductive?

Léonie: good point
… my immediate thought on the question is that the team is already the same
… there are so many people that attend both sets of meeting, until so many new people turned up here today!

Tzviya: by merging we can have the same group of people assess that capacity

Laura: I have a question related to how you actually organise the group
… is the other CG open?
… do you work with other communities outside W3C to invite other people at least as listeners?

Tzviya: yes, the PWECG is open
… we have not done much outreach yet
… we're open to that
… but asking people outside of W3C to volunteer their time had not occured to me :D

Léonie: yes, both groups work in a similar manner
… same characteristics whether the groups stay separate of merge.

Judy: I had seen the suggestion to merge these groups
… There's so much to do in each area that I thought some may be lost but there's so much overlapping
… and there even are overlapping wiki areas
… and overlapping sentiment from my perspective
… it would be possible to have specific focus on different meetings

[Dan nodded; Coralie too]

Judy: we may end up with sub-groups discussions
… I'm interested in both groups
… I'm Judy Brewer from W3C team
… happy to help the groups

Léonie: before Liz heads off, quick straw poll

====

straw-poll

Leonie: hands up in zoom if you are in favour of merging?

[11 out of 13]

Leonie: anybody against?

[none]

====

Dan: next steps?
… combined charter? if so can I offer my help?

Léonie: Tzviya needs to have that same conversation in the PWECG

Tzviya: I suspect there will be similar sentiment, to be confirmed
… I will take you up Dan if we think we need a charter!

dka++

Léonie: a charter seems like a good idea

[Liz departs]

Progress on actions

<tink> https://github.com/w3c/idcg/issues/

Coralie: I would like to report progress on 3 issues

Extend the diversity fund

https://github.com/w3c/idcg/issues/8

Coralie: in the case of issue 8 "Extend the diversity fund", I proposed to close as done
... I indicated that for W3C Hosts it's difficult to reimburse or pay for people's time and impossible to pay for services like Child, elder, or personal care.
... chaals further commented that it may be a good reason for which we may want the fund to be managed elsewhere
... so this is still up for discussion.

Judy: we may have a problem if W3C is unable to pay/reimburse
… it may be that with our different hosts and financial options we can find ways to do that

Coralie: manage fund elsewere is on the table as part of this issue

Léonie: this year we failed to do anything we set out for this diversity fund

Dan: possibility to use open collective to manage that fund?
… that alternative could have more flexibility

WendyR: I like that idea
… one of the questions we had this year was whether we were going to have the same problems as last year
… but this year was particular
… the pandemic has shaken everything up, we had few applications

<tzviya> +1 to wendyreid

WendyR: any care wasn't allowed due to pandemic regulations
… we need to solve this funding issue: if we can't deliver funds to people who need them, it's useless

Coralie: I'm interested in Dan's suggestion
… I'm interesting in hearing more about how opencollective can help redistribute funds (as opposed to just collecting funds)

Dan: Jory Burson has more experience

Tobie: associated 503c3 in the US

Léonie: that might work. Tetralogical donated towards ReSpec and I know the developer was able to collect the funds.

Judy: I wanted to suggest that we re-explore the payments through w3c issue
… I've paid similar services in the past

Léonie: we encountered problems eventhough we set ourselves up the best we could to NOT have them

Update to the design principle language?

https://github.com/w3c/idcg/issues/26

https://github.com/w3c/idcg/issues/24#issuecomment-661801816

Coralie: This is "Update to the design principle language" and I ran the proposal in the team last August: the 5 people who responded did so to push back for a variety of reasons that I summarised in the issue comment.

Tzviya: I think the text needs to be updated
… in the discussion on another issue
… I had suggested adding something about black lives matter
… to the statement, or at least who it is the Web is for
… it talks about web for all, and different categories
… there are lots of things
… this would be a good place to mention BLM
… we don't mention race there

Tobie: the wording behind my proposed rewording:
… there was somewhere in our BLM something that looked like the W3C statement
… the suggestion was to use the W3C's value statement
… which happened to be needing an update
… what we have needs fixing
… the fix wasn't mine

Léonie: I agree this needs to be updated
… "physical and mental ability" is outdated language
… we talk more about cognitive than mental ability
… I agree with what Tobie and Tzviya said
… whether the proposed words are right, probably not
… but if we can we should update it

<Judy> +1 to Leonie that the disability language should be updated

<estella> +1 to update language

Léonie: should we close this issue and open a new one?

<koalie> +1 to updating the language

[we're keeping this open]

Write up BLM statement Intro, install the statement on the W3C site

https://github.com/w3c/idcg/issues/27

Coralie: This is "Write up BLM statement Intro, install the statement on the W3C site" that I proposed to close because we don't need to install it on the site as we're apparently not writing one further to this group's resolution to focus on actions rather.

Lola: why can't we have both, why either/or (re: blm)
… statement and actions
… a statement holds the org accountable
… valuable and will show the black community that W3C cares
… such a statement could make w3c more knonw in the black community

<dka_> +1

Judy: there's room for taking a fresh look at the statement
… we have some credible actions lined up
… so that the statement could be linked to things we're doing

<wendyreid> +1 to Lola's point

Judy: your point about getting something out there to increase accountability is helpful

Tzviya: I agree
… I'm not convinced this CG should be writing it
… as this requires W3C AC review again
… we're likely to get the same feedback
… we could write a draft
… and W3C could take this through AC review

<estella> +1 to Lola's point and to Tzviya approach

Judy: we had strong and positive support overall
… let's be preprared for objections next time

Laura: is there a way to follow what happened to the statement?

<lola> https://github.com/w3c/idcg/wiki/Draft-BLM-statement

Léonie: The statement in on our wiki ^^
… the reasons the statement stalled were two-fold
… Kim CReighton's feedback that it wasn't going to achieve as is what we wanted it to
… and there was one formal objection from the AC

Léonie: Let's close this issue but a parting shot: it seems there is consideration we should continue with a statement
… we would need a v2

Mext meeting

[December 15]

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 124 (Wed Oct 28 18:08:33 2020 UTC).