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Policies
Meeting registrants (e.g., TPAC registrants) can propose breakout sessions. It is ok for people who plan to register (but have not yet done so) to propose a session.
Sessions do not require formal approval; W3C breakout planners endeavor to schedule all proposed sessions. W3C breakout planners reserve the right to not accept a proposed session that may cause offense or confusion, or is frivolous.
See more below on scheduling and room assignments.
- Sessions are intended to be for community discussion of topics related to Web technology or W3C, whether existing or new.
- Sessions should not be used for group meetings. For example, a Working Group should not use a breakout session to have another hour for group discussion. Similarly, a Community Group should not use a breakout session for a Community Group meeting.
- Sessions should not be commercial or promote products.
Each event Web site has pages devoted to breakout session participation policies; please consult that page first.
Note also:
- By default, sessions are open to non-registrants (but all participants must have a W3C account).
- It is preferable but not required that the session chair participate in person (when a session is hybrid).
- There is no requirement that W3C staff participate in a breakout session.
- Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
- Antitrust and Competition Guidance
- For TPAC, see also the health rules specific to that year's meeting.
W3C breakout planners observe this order of preference when scheduling:
- Any reserved tracks (e.g., governance for TPAC 2023 starting with AC open sessions)
- Meeting sponsor proposals received before the proposal deadline.
- Proposals received before the proposal deadline and indicated timing constraints.
- Proposals received before the proposal deadline without timing constraints.
- Other proposals. These are considered when there are remaining slots, and we will do our best to schedule them based on the remaining slots.
- Avoid too many sessions in parallel; instead create more slots.
- Seek a "best fit" between sessions and rooms given constraints expressed by the people who proposed the session.
- Avoid scheduling conflicts between related sessions (e.g., by requesting two very similar sessions to consider merging into a single session).
- Identify and communicate thematically related sessions (e.g., as "tracks") to make it easier for attendees to choose which sessions to join. Endeavor to schedule these in the same meeting space.
Please note that, especially for large meetings, we cannot readily resolve all the conflicts that the attendees might experience. We acknowledge that many parallel sessions can lead to difficult choices for attendees.
- Each session chair is responsible for ensuring that session highlights (at least) are captured in (at least) text.
- Each session chair is responsible for ensuring there are minutes. The W3C breakout planners will work with session chairs to ensure that the session descriptions include a link to the minutes.
- When a meeting record is not available on w3.org, W3C may create a copy on w3.org for persistence.
Some participants cannot participate in sessions that are recorded, or prefer not to. Out of respect to those participants, we have the following policies regarding video or audio recording of sessions.
In general:
- It is a goal that only presentations be recorded, not discussion.
- Session Chairs should therefore only record presenters, and only with their permission.
- Session Chairs should not record presenters if people at the meeting who wish to participate (either in person or remotely) express concerns.
- W3C meeting planners may choose to truncate or to not publish a recording that includes discussion.
When a session is organized as a presentation followed by discussion:
- Only the presentation should be recorded.
- Session chairs should request that questions be held until after the presentation.
- Session chairs should make it clear that clarifying questions during the presentation will be recorded and recommend that people who do not wish to be recorded refrain from asking clarifying questions until the recording has stopped.
When a session is intended to be more interactive, with presentation and discussion simultaneously:
- The session should not be recorded.
Regarding the accessibility of all recordings:
- To make video and audio recordings accessible (see Making Audio and Video Media Accessible), session Chairs should use recording facilities provided by Zoom, which include automatic generation of captions. After the event, W3C breakout planners will publish video and audio recordings on w3.org (essentially "as-is") with captions and a transcript. W3C breakout planners may reach out to Session Chairs to help improve the quality of the captions. If Chairs decide to use another recording mechanism, they must provide the video and audio recordings, with captions, to W3C breakout planners.