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Recently @W3.org (@w3c@w3c.social) published the first Group Note of the Vision for W3C:

https://www.w3.org/TR/2024/NOTE-w3c-vision-20240403/

I’m the current editor of the Vision for W3C and helped get it across the line this year to reach #w3cAB (W3C Advisory Board @ab@w3c.social) consensus to publish as an official Group Note, the first official Note that the AB (Advisory Board) has ever published.

I’m very proud of this milestone, as I and a few others including many on the AB¹, have been working on it for a few years in various forms, and with the broader W3C Vision TF² (Task Force) for the past year.

W3C also recently announced the Vision for W3C in their news feed:

https://www.w3.org/news/2024/group-note-vision-for-w3c/

One of the key goals of this document was to capture the spirit of why we are at #W3C and our shared values & principles we use to guide our work & decisions at W3C.

If you work with any groups at W3C, anything from a Community Group (CG) to a Working Group (WG), I highly recommend you read this document from start to finish.

See what resonates with you, if there is anything that doesn’t sound right to you, or if you see anything missing that you feel exemplifies the best of what W3C is, please file an issue or a suggestion:

https://github.com/w3c/AB-public/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22Project+Vision%22+-label%3ADefer

Check that list to see if your concerns or suggestions are already captured, and if so, add an upvote or comment accordingly.

Our goal is to eventually publish this document as an official W3C Statement, with the consensus of the entire #w3cAC (W3C Advisory Committee).

One key aspect which the Vision touches on but perhaps too briefly is what I see as the fundamental purpose of why we do the work we do at W3C, which in my opinion is:

To create & facilitate user-first interoperable standards that improve the web for humanity

The Vision does mention “#interoperable” explicitly as part of our Vision for the Web in https://w3c.github.io/AB-public/Vision#vision-web:

”There is one interoperable world-wide Web.”

The Vision also mentions “#interoperability” explicitly in our Operational Principles https://w3c.github.io/AB-public/Vision#op-principles:

“Interoperability: We verify the fitness of our specifications through open test suites and actual implementation experience, because we believe the purpose of standards is to enable independent interoperable implementations.”

These are both excellent, and yet, I think we can do better, with adding some sort of explicit statement between those two about that “We will” create & facilitate user-first interoperable standards that improve the web for humanity.

In the coming weeks I’ll be reflecting how we (the VisionTF) can incorporate that sort of imperative “We will” statement about interoperable standards into the Vision for W3C, as well as working with the AB and W3C Team on defining a succinct updated mission & purpose for W3C based on that sort of input and more.

In a related effort, I have also been leading the AB’s “3Is Priority Project³” (Interoperability and the Role of Independent Implementations), which is a pretty big project to define and clarify what each of those three Is mean, with respect to each other and Incubation, which is its own Priority Project⁴.

As part of the 3Is project, the first “I” I’ve been focusing on has unsurprisingly been “Interoperable”. As with other #OpenAB projects, our work on understanding interoperability, its aspects, and defining what do we mean by interoperable is published and iterated on the W3C’s public wiki:

https://www.w3.org/wiki/Interoperable

This is still a work in progress, however it’s sufficiently structured to take a look if interoperability is something you care about or have opinions about.

In particular, if you know of definitions of interoperable or interoperability that resonate and make sense to you, or articles or blog posts about interoperability that explore various aspects, I am gathering such references so we can make sure the W3C’s definition of interoperable is both well-stated, and clearly reflects a broader industry understanding of interoperability.

References:

¹ https://www.w3.org/TR/w3c-vision/#acknowledgements
² https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/VisionTF
³ https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/2024_Priorities#Interoperability_and_the_Role_of_Independent_Implementations
⁴ https://www.w3.org/wiki/AB/2024_Priorities#Incubation

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