I will be organising an Informal SIG at CHI 2001 in Seattle. Unfortunately
there are no facilities for arranging a date and time beforehand, so if you
are interested in attending, please watch the message boards at the
conference under the W for W3C.

Organising a Users Interest Group for W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops new standards for the World
Wide Web. Part of the process includes groups that maintain oversight
of the developments for particular groups.

The two main groups at present are the Web Accessibility Initiative, WAI,
that ensures that the Web remains accessible for the less-abled, and the
Internationisation group I18N, that ensures that all cultures remain
addressed by new developments. A current omission is an oversight group for
the User.

This SIG is to discuss

* Whether this is a good idea
* The group's mission, and name
* The scope of the group's work and criteria for success
* Initial duration of the group
* The nature of any deliverables and expected milestones
* Coordination with and dependencies on other groups
* Meeting mechanisms and expected frequency
* Communication mechanisms to be employed;
* The expected level of involvement by the W3C Team
* Expected time commitment from participants.
* Decision making processes.

The aim is to create a draft charter for the creation of the Interest Group.
See the WAI Interest Group's charter for an example:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/IG/charter2.html

It will probably be a public IG, so that there will be no membership
requirements for the group.

There will be a follow-up BoF at the WWW10 conference on Hong Kong.

Best wishes,

Steven Pemberton