AB/ABMeetCandidates2023/AB Candidate Questionnaire/Tantek Çelik
Hi, my name is Tantek Çelik, I am running for re-election in the 2023 Advisory Board election, and these are my answers to the "Meet the AB Candidates" questions that were asked & answered during three Zoom sessions on 2023-05-16 (see minutes of AB-led Member meeting: Meet the AB candidates). These answers are from those sessions, edited to incorporate multiple answers to the same question, and improve grammar, flow, with minor copy editing and some layout/formatting for more clarity. — Tantek Çelik (talk)
What priorities should the AB take on in the next year? How will you help accomplish them?
When considering priorities, there is the interesting question of trade-offs.
The two key projects (because we the AB can’t manage more than two big things at a time it seems historically) are:
In the coming year the AB should focus on Vision document, it's the most crucial project that we have, and a key to the success of our Director-free process priority. The Vision will help us stay aligned with our values in our decision-making without the Director and their trusted moral authority.
Next is the 4 I's project: defining Interoperability, Independence, Implementations, Incubation.
We must prioritize standards for interoperable independent implementations, it’s the core of what we do here.
There are also ongoing "horizontal" priorities around how we work, across all our work.
One such priority that affects all others is diversity and inclusion (D&I), inviting and getting people from more diverse demographics to participate. Both inside W3C and outside — there is a lot more diversity beyond W3C. The more we can bring those voices in through openness as much as possible, documenting clearly how to do things, the better a job we will do in all our work. The more we become welcoming to everyone, the better we can reflect broader & more diverse user needs in the technologies we create.
The AB positions are unpaid but require regular meetings at inconvenient times/locations, preparation for said meetings, and collaboration with people you might disagree with. Why do you personally wish to take this on?
I believe there is still a lot of untapped potential good in the web, and there is a strong role for standards to play in unlocking that potential.
The web has also amplified and caused some real harms, as noted in the draft W3C Vision document, so we need to look beyond ”do no harm” and see what we can empower that’s positive.
Being member-led speaks to me, and I am passionate about helping facilitate & amplify the voices of members in how W3C is run.
Getting participants to contribute to governance is key. I’ve implemented standards on browsers and beyond browsers. I still remember the joy I felt first participating in CSS and later other Working Groups, learning to chair, co-chairing the Social Web WG, and finding ways for different parties to work together and find areas of commonality. Helping make that happen, seeing implementations working and users use products that interoperate, there is nothing like that joy.
The more we (the AB) can make the work for folks that work on these things more efficient, the better.
Last week’s AC meetings reminded me that there's a deep and necessary commitment of time. As much as we try to make hybrid meetings work, there's a different level of collaboration, cooperation, and satisfaction, when we work together in person.
I am dedicated to helping us all work together better to help W3C realize more of the web’s potential to do good.
Attending meetings is not enough to be an effective member of the AB. What else do you expect to do to contribute to the AB's activities?
Attending meetings is not enough to be an effective AB member. As representatives of the Advisory Committee (AC), our job is to bring the opinions of the AC to discussions, that's more important than speaking our own opinions.
There are clear ways to contribute as an AB member beyond attending the meetings. Attending meetings, reading email, and commenting in GitHub are the bare minimum, but that's not enough. We are elected to represent the AC; one of our primary roles towards getting things done needs to be finding consensus among the opinions offered. I believe that is more important than showing up and giving our own personal opinions.
An effective AB Member needs to participate directly in triaging issues, finding consensus among various comments, helping to drive consensus, creating specific text that addresses consensus, getting agreement on what we're working on, and moving the work forward.
Synchronous meetings are helpful and productive. I expect AB members to attend.
How do you think W3C should build consensus in large groups, and can you speak to your ability & experience building consensus (at W3C or elsewhere)?
Building consensus is a core value of W3C. How can we get to something almost all of us can live with?
One of the keys to building consensus is recognizing minority opinions and views, beyond demographics. Deliberately solicit diverse input. Our technologies inevitably impact lots of people who don't have the strongest voice in the room, so we need to reach out for that input.
When there is a conflict, document differences. Try to get to the root of conflicts. Conflict management is an important skill for building consensus.
In the AB there is often more conflict in GitHub comments than when we discuss issues together in meetings. One way to bridge that gap is finding areas of agreement in GitHub comments, recognizing those explicitly, and proposing resolutions that build upon them accordingly. I've practiced that and will continue to do so.
I've witnessed discussions go in different phases. There’s an early phase, with abstract or asynchronous discussions, often both, and people talking past each other. Sometimes it’s a difference in communication styles or languages. A key part of finding consensus in this phase, especially asynchronously, is to develop a few key skills, in order:
- Listening
- Understanding what's behind the concerns & differences
- Looking for shared values behind those disagreements
- Finding & proposing that common ground, discussing it in a synchronous forum to reach agreement or to refine and iterate.
Once you grow enough consensus to make incremental progress, record it and move things forward.
There's a timeliness aspect to finding and advancing consensus. Making incremental progress is important because putting off decisions until you reach some greater level of consensus, inevitably prefers and reinforces the status quo, which may itself be actively harmful.
In this regard, working through and finding consensus on technical matters differs from policy or governance matters. There is a greater urgency for the latter, where it is more likely the status quo is harmful, than technical matters, where it is more likely that new technologies may have unintended negative impacts.
Finally, when you move forward with any rough consensus, be sure to openly welcome and strongly encourage documenting any minority (objecting) views and opinions. There are a few important reasons to document minority views:
- Acknowledging and reinforcing the value of open dissent in discussions
- Help future decision-makers better understand the context of past decisions
- Preparation for incorporating new information that could shift consensus towards (or further from) one of those minority positions
How can W3C improve its diversity and inclusion, and what is the role of the AB in improving those?
We need to create safety, the more safety we can create the more people will feel they can contribute. We need more transparency so people don't feel they need to be an insider to participate. We need to mentor new participants, and actively bring new people into conversations that don't look like you, that don't speak the same language.
There’s an expression: "be careful what you optimize for". I asked the previous CEO to report on the diversity of groups in W3C. We've seen improvement in the AB and the TAG. We need to ask "how good are we at encouraging diverse participation" not just to show the appearance of diversity.
I believe strongly in holding events where people feel safe expressing themselves, not criminalizing them for their identity, that is important to keeping W3C open for more people participating.
There is a proposal for an AC Chair. What do you think of the idea? Who should do the job (not naming individuals, describe the role, position)
"Chair" sounds a bit strong - AC forum is a forum, not a Working Group. I’m not sure about "moderator" either, I don't like the gatekeeper feeling of the word.
Note the issue discussion: https://github.com/w3c/AB-memberonly/issues/163
I would look at the problem definition more closely to come up with an appropriate and good solution. I like the idea of a facilitator, someone who can help new AC members. More like an "AC forum party host" than anything with the formality of a "chair" or "moderator".
This role can also be a potential learning opportunity. Anyone who performs that role might also eventually be good as a chair, or in an elected body. It's a core skill that can be re-used in other roles.
General Remarks
The web wasn't intended as a read-only medium, nor intended to be siloed into someone else's content. I want to see more people who work on building the web participating in this kind of governance.
I believe that you should be able to put things on an identity on the web that you control, that isn't owned by a large corporation.