Policies

Session scope

• Sessions are intended to be for community discussion of topics, whether existing or new.
• Sessions should not be used for group meetings. For example, a Working Group should not use a TPAC breakout session to have another hour for group discussion. Similarly, a Community Group should not use a TPAC breakout session for a Community Group meeting.

Participation

Each TPAC has a page devoted to breakout session participation policies; please consult that page first.

Note also:

• By default, sessions are open to non-TPAC participants.
• 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.

W3C participation policies

• Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
• Antitrust and Competition Guidance
• Health rules

Scheduling and Room Assignments

Scheduling order of preference

TPAC breakout organizers observe this order of preference when scheduling:

• Any reserved tracks (e.g., governance for TPAC 2023 starting with AC open sessions)
• TPAC sponsor proposals received before the proposal deadline.
• Proposals received before the proposal deadline and indicated timing constraints.
• Proposals received before the 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.

Other scheduling considerations for TPAC organizers

• Avoid too many sessions in parallel; instead create more slots (e.g., 60- and 30-minute slots).
• Seek a "best fit" between sessions and room, given session description attendance estimates and other information.
• Avoid scheduling conflicts between related sessions (e.g., by requesting two very similar sessions to consider merging into a single session).
• Endeavor to schedule related sessions in the same meeting space.
• Identify and communicate thematically related sessions (e.g., as "tracks") to make it easier for attendees to choose which sessions to join.

Session deliverables

• Each session chair is responsible for ensuring that session highlights (at least) are captured in (at least) text.
• Each session chair is responsible for providing a link to the meeting record via the session description.
• When a meeting record is not available on w3.org, W3C may create a copy on w3.org for persistence.