W3C Team appointments to the TAG ratified

Following the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG)'s election results, the W3C Team has chosen and the Advisory Board and Technical Architecture Group have ratified the appointment of the following to the TAG for the remainder of the 2024-2026 term:

• Tristan Nitot
• Jeffrey Yasskin

Tristan Nitot is an influential leader who was appointed advisor at the French National Digital Council (Conseil National du Numérique). Tristan has a wealth of experience in product and communications roles, as well as in the open source ecosystem. His background in promoting web standards and privacy aligns well with the W3C and TAG missions. The Team expects Tristan to be a strong ally to sustainable and respectful technical advances.

Jeffrey Yasskin has a long, committed, and consistent participation in W3C, including strong privacy implementation involvement serving as editor of TAG’s Privacy Principles and a leading participant in the TAG privacy task force and multiple privacy Groups. In addition, the Team feels that it is important to retain a strong connection between the TAG and the Chrome and Chromium projects for design reviews.

This procedure is the result of new rules set forth by the Process Document regarding TAG appointees and follows a public call for nominations which together with nominations from the W3C Team and Members surfaced a list of several non-traditional candidates. The Team considered what each on the list would bring to the TAG. In addition to the aspects mentioned in Process, the Team considered cultural diversity and gender diversity. No two of the candidates filled every criteria the Team wished to have been able to fill. The Team did not approach everyone on the list to measure their interest and some of those who were approached declined, for a variety of reasons. 

As this was the first instance executing the provisions of Process 2023 for Team appointments to the TAG there were delays due to interpretation, questions on selection criteria and so forth. In future, the Team will begin the process of soliciting candidates much sooner than we did this time. 

About the W3C TAG

The TAG was created in 2001 as a special W3C working group, chartered to steward the Web architecture. To do so, it fulfills 3 missions:

• to document and build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary;
• to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG;
• to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C.

The TAG is part of the Horizontal Review Process and reviews a large number of specifications done at W3C and outside, even during their early stage.

The TAG and the W3C Advisory Board are also part of the W3C Council to help resolve objections on specifications.