W3C : this is all about spirit, tools and fun

For people doing me the favor to visit my blog, they know that I am a big fan of W3C. Not by principle, but because W3C as an organization brings a lot, in a good spirit. Let me explain you a bit how, sharing with you an amazing experience : the W3C TPAC meeting. TPAC (Technical Plenary and Advisory Council) is the W3C yearly general assembly, combined with a large number of Working Group meetings – the actual specifications writers. This is where all W3C members meet, with an amazing mixing of population, engineers, strategist, representing startup, big companies, public organizations. The event gathered this year 480 people attending the technical plenary and 30 Working Groups. And the magic relies in the fact that this group of human, gathered once a year, fully benefit from that by constantly sharing, talking, learning, being all equals.

A spirit. Anyone you speak to here is nice, this is just a mindset that anyone naturally endorse. The reason for that is that any exchange is valuable here, and people are looking for it.

Tools. W3C participants are offered a large number of tools in order to make their life easier when following the meeting : everyone is logged on a common meeting channel thanks to IRC, volunteered scribes are typing all discussions happening in the room – or at least what they can understand from it, bots register automatically actions, issues, and generate minutes. Well except when there is a bug…

This combination of fruitful exchanges and supportive tools makes that all Working Group meetings are productive, most of the time.

Unconferences too. In this week, the great moment where everyone join together is the actual Technical Plenary on Wednesday. Instead of having long boring presentation for its general assembly, the W3C team has decided since last year to make that day BarCamp style. Can you imagine that ? 480 people attending this meeting, coming from all around the world, with no pre-provisioned agenda. Just the promise that there will be great exchanges. And it works ! Results of discussions is publicly available here.