Agenda for Mar 6, 2025

[nairnandu]

Here is the proposed agenda for the Interop team meeting on March 6th, 2025

• Interop 2025 planning and selection process retrospective

[dandclark]

If there's time we could also look at test change proposals. But the retrospective can take priority.

[foolip]

I'd like to put #888 on the agenda for retrospective discussion.

[nairnandu]

Attendees: @ChrisC, @meyerweb, @nairnandu, @foolip, @jgraham, @captainbrosset, @dandclark, @nt1m, @bkardell

Brief notes from the meeting:

• Interop 2025 process retrospective
  • Key Takeaways:
    • Call for Proposals: Received 185 proposals. Some proposals were missed because the required template was not used.
    • Champion Selection: The championing process was very good overall. The timeline could be shorter.
    • Proposal Refinement & Presentation: Shared docs/context was helpful, but the overall process had more internal iterations. There was also some minor confusion about the format.
    • Proposal Ranking & Selection: Combining proposals into focus areas was a positive but there were issues with the granularity and clarity of priorities.
    • Communication and Launch: James’ script worked well. Improvements needed in labeling, early feedback, and coordination of blog post launches.
    • Overall: The process was more collaborative, but there are suggestions for increased transparency and addressing issues like vague proposals and confusing priority signals.
  • Interop Lack of Transparency & Accountability #888
    • foolip: raising the topic of transparency for discussion again in the context of the issue. Lot of speculation still happens and don't see any benefit with the confidentiality clause
    • dandclark: as with web standards, this process should also be open
    • bkardell: not everything in web standards is public. We should talk about what transparency means. The process is too complex with a multitude of inputs.
    • foolip: start by removing member confidentiality. Treat it like a typical WG meeting with minutes.
    • bkardell: would be counterproductive to expose the complexity
    • dandclark: if we want to share our decisions publicly, we should be able to do that. Open minutes like any other WG should be a min bar
    • bkardell: making the notes public, with some flexibility, would be reasonable
    • foolip: at the moment, confidentiality limits the quality of feedback we provide to authors
    • bkardell: sharing our individual positions is something that we have discussed before
    • dandclark: we would like to be more clear on it and there was pushback
    • captainbrosset: more proposals this year is amazing, but not being able to give proposal authors visibility is not great
    • jgraham: we are getting good outcomes from the process we have. Got a better project this year. Other approaches for collaboration have been confrontational. While the process is not something everybody likes, the outcomes are good.
    • nt1m: agree that exposing ranking/prioritization details does not add value. Nothing is preventing individual orgs from presenting their perspective on issues.
    • foolip: we can't be clear about our own positions without breaking confidentiality
    • bkardell: I would look forward to some kind of better proposal that allowed more transparency
    • ChrisC: I support public meeting notes as a first pass, if not a w3c-like minuting process to be added
    • Next step: 2026 planning process should consider including provisions for improved transparency