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Fronteers considers applying for W3C membership

Months of planning come to a head, and the cat is out of the bag. Fronteers, the Dutch professional association of front-end developers, is planning to apply for W3C membership and appoint Rachel Andrew as our paid representative. This would solve the problem of front-end developer representation in W3C.

Note that this plan will be submitted to the Fronteers members on 19th of October, and that they can vote it down.

Below is the press release, in case you’re interested.

Also, I wrote an A List Apart article, Rachel wrote a Smashing Magazine article, and if you read Dutch you should read the Fronteers blog post that contains the complete proposal.

Press release

On its annual general member meeting on 19th of October, the Fronteers board will propose to become a member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and to hire Rachel Andrew as our representative in that standards body. By becoming a W3C member, Fronteers aims to be the first membership organisation to give front-end developers a voice (and vote) in web standards.

While W3C has always desired input from front-end developers, and some of them became Invited Experts and contributed to the discussions, these experts had to do so in their own spare time and at their own expense. Fronteers aims to change that.

Our W3C membership is not yet set in stone: the Fronteers general member meeting will have to approve of this plan (and its financial consequences), which will be laid before it on 19th of October. Rachel Andrew will be present to explain the consequences to the Fronteers members.

Founded in 2007, Fronteers is the professional association of Dutch front-end developers. It is best known for its annual Fronteers conference in October, but it has been locally active with workshops, meet-ups, a job board, and other activities for Dutch front-enders.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the international organisation whose members and full-time staff, helped by specialised members of the public, develop the web standards used in all of today's browsers.

Rachel Andrew is a British front-end and back-end developer, speaker, author, and the editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine. As an Invited Expert to W3C, especially for CSS layout matters such as flexbox and grid, she has ample experience in the standardisation process.