[ig-exploration ] Comments on draft charter

[michaelchampion]

Some comments from reviewing https://w3c.github.io/charter-drafts/2024/ig-exploration.html and the discussion in https://github.com/w3c/AB-memberonly/issues/207 that led to it:

First, the motivation section lists number of loosely related things.

• Analyzing new ideas that might impact the web
• Welcoming new members / community participants
• Proposing new workshops
• Monitoring industry trends and what other SDOs are doing about them
• Publishing reports on the results of the various discussions.
• Chartering new groups to formally address the challenges and opportunities identified

A more focused charter would be more likely to be successful. I'd suggest trimming it down to

• Analyzing new ideas and technologies that might impact the web
• Monitoring how industry, other SDOs, and relevant open source projects are responding to those ideas/tech
• Publishing reports that summarize the trending topic, outline the promise and pitfalls that are being discussed, point to relevant SDO and OSS efforts, and indicate how W3C could engage with the topic.

Many of the other tasks in the existing Motivation section seem more in the domain of the Strategy and Comms teams. I'd like to see a clearer description of the division of labor between the team and IG on such matters.

Second, all of the above seems more appropriate in the Scope section than the Motivation section. Likewise, the current Scope section, especially the first paragraph, summarizes the Motivation coming out of the AB discussion.

The goal of Exploration Interest Group provides a platform to help the W3C community explore emerging Web-related technology trends, consider how the community could collaborate to shape these trends for the benefit of the Web users, accelerate chartering investigations and endeavors, and continually strengthen the innovation of W3C.

Third, obviously the charter needs Deliverables and Success Criteria. The more focused scope proposed above suggests the Deliverables are:

1. Creation of a W3C sub-community with the contacts, forums, procedures, and skills needed to monitor and analyze industry trends and what if anything peer organizations are doing about them.
2. Setting up a process to spin up "task forces" (or whatever they might be called) to dig into specific topics as they come up and build (hopefully consensus) analyses of their implications for W3C
3. Reports summarizing the outcome of the analyses and the degree of consensus in the IG, or majority / minority positions on topics that do not get consensus.

Success criteria might be something like "the Team and membership finds the IG discussions and reports valuable in defining, prioritizing, and organizing other W3C outcomes such as workshops, charters, position papers, etc. "