Why am I running for W3C Advisory Board?

I’ll never forget the day when I got the call from Tim Berners-Lee, asking me if I would co-chair the W3C Technical Architecture Group, along with Peter Linss. I had previously been an elected member of the TAG, which I already counted as a great honor. And now, I was being asked to help lead this group during a time of great change. A “new guard” had been elected to the TAG, bringing with them a new vision for change – change in what TAG should focus on and how it should operate. Tim needed Peter and myself, who had some W3C and TAG experience, to help facilitate that change.

Together, as a group, we built new TAG processes, such as the mechanism of design review; we instigated developer meet-ups to make the TAG (and web standards in general) more transparent to the developer community; we moved much of our work to GitHub and Slack, and away from Email and IRC. Later, we moved to a “breakout” process to parallelize our work, both during in-person meetings and through our weekly calls. Importantly, we continued to evolve our process, most recently launching the TAG Associates to widen our community of practice. We also reimagined what Technical Architecture should mean for the W3C – by building TAG into a technical design authority, and by codifying core principles such as the Priority of Constituencies and the Ethical Web Principes.

I’m immensely proud of the work that we’ve done in the TAG in the last decade+ and the role I’ve had in that work.

During that time, I’ve come to understand that the web is more than just a collection of technologies and the W3C is more than just a specification-writing industrial consortium. The web is a vital platform that empowers “an equitable, informed, and interconnected society”, in the words of the Ethical Principles. And the W3C is the heart of a community – a community of people that care about the web.

W3C is also an organization in transition. In 2023, W3C has moved from its structure of a consortium between academic institutions to an independent non-profit. It’s still finding its feet, but so far the indications seem positive that it’s on the right track. However the web, and society, are having some challenges. Privacy, security, authenticity, the rise of generative AI, and centralization of power are some of the issues the web is weathering right now. As the web evolves and continues to add new features, we must ensure that it keep an eye on the societal impacts, and on the potential impacts on human rights. Meanwhile, we’ve seen political attacks on the kind of diverse, inclusive and socially aware community that we’ve been trying to foster in W3C.

At the W3C’s Advisory Committee meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, last year, Mitsuo Ochi, the president of Hiroshima University, challenged W3C to “take proactive actions towards realizing a peaceful future.” Tim Engelhardt from the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, while acknowledging the reference to human rights in the Ethical Web Principles, likewise challenged W3C to put people and their rights at the center of processes, saying “standard setting organizations and their participants, should commit to the application of human rights, using human rights methodologies”.

The W3C Advisory Board manages the evolution of the W3C process. And I believe that process needs to evolve in response to these important challenges. The Vision for W3C is a step in the right direction. Now we need to put some of that thinking into practice by building human rights into the W3C process. That’s work I want to participate in.

At the same time, I think the Advisory Board is due for a reboot, similar to the velvet revolution of the TAG in 2013. Since the creation of the separate board of directors for the W3C non-profit, the AB has been struggling to find its role, however I see a clear and important area of governance where the AB needs to operate that is distinct from the TAG and the Board of Directors. I personally have been witness to infighting in the AB, between the AB and the Team, and between the AB and the Board of Directors which I think is not conducive to good work. That needs to stop. The AB needs to be a positive force in W3C, representing the needs of the W3C member organizations, yes, but also by extension the needs of the wider web community – developers, designers, open source maintainers and most importantly end users. In order do that, the AB must adopt a less combative and more collaborative culture and start figuring out what it needs to do to be responsive to the community’s needs. It needs to work hand-in-hand with the excellent W3C Team. As I wrote in my more formal candidacy statement, the AB shouldn’t seek additional formal power, but rather should be leading through its output – through soft power. I think we managed to create that kind of culture in the TAG and if elected I hope to bring that energy to the AB.

The web is a unique, global platform – a commons that only exists because organizations like W3C maintain it. W3C needs progressive governance to ensure it continues to play that role in a way that’s responsive to the evolving tech and social landscape. The W3C Advisory Board needs to be that forum – a forum where problems get solved, where people listen more than they talk, and where ideas have a chance to grow. That includes ideas about how we uphold human rights in practice, not just in principle. That’s the work I want to be part of, and that’s the kind of culture I want to help build.