Although TC39 is a flat, consensus-based group, there are some particular organizational tasks where some committee delegates take a coordinating role.
TC39 co-chairs: Chris de Almeida (@ctcpip), Rob Palmer (@robpalme), Ujjwal Sharma (@ryzokuken)
The chair group is elected by the committee delegates towards the end of each year. The process is historically by consensus, but there may be a formal vote. If you are interested in being in the chair group, propose yourself for the role by the September meeting.
See the Ecma Rules, section 6.2 for formal rules regarding the chair group.
The chair group runs the actual TC39 meetings. This involves:
- Finalizing the agenda and scheduling topics according to priority and constraints
- Rearranging topics during the meeting as needed
- Administering the TCQ queue tool and calling on the next person to speak
- Maintaining committee decorum, including starting meetings on time and adhering to timeboxes
- Calling for consensus and noting dissent
- Supervising note-taking, topic conclusions, and summaries
The chair group is joined by facilitators, elected yearly, who help run the meetings as necessary. Facilitators: Justin Ridgewell (@jridgewell), Yulia Startsev (@codehag), Brian Terlson (@bterlson)
- Make your agenda modifications, including slide links, schedule constraints, and priority ordering, ahead of agenda deadline of the TC39 meeting.
- When contributing to committee discussion, use the TCQ queue tool to get in line to speak. Interruptions should be limited strictly to points of order.
- Help with note-taking
- Help develop communication tools like TCQ -- get in contact with Brian Terlson for next steps
- If you want to get involved in meeting organization further, contact a member of the chair group.
Every year, the chair group organizes meeting locations for the following year. Meetings are organized within the following guidelines:
- Dates: Meetings are generally held Tuesday-Thursday of the last week of odd-numbered months. On top of that formula, adjustments can be made to avoid holidays and conflicting events which are important to delegates, and to accommodate the requirements of meeting hosts. It is best to publish the meeting dates internally to committee members as soon as possible, to allow delegates to plan around the dates.
- Locations: TC39 traditionally holds some meetings each year in North America, Europe, and Asia. Meeting location preferences of delegates are reassessed each year to take into account changes in committee composition.
- Hosts: TC39 meetings are often hosted at member organization offices, but there is no restriction for this. The chair group finds meeting hosts by asking around in committee for who wants to host a meeting, within date and location requirements.
The chair group would like help in all aspects of meeting planning. Contact the chair group if you're interested in getting involved.
See also: How to Host a Hybrid TC39 Meeting
- Preparing the chairs' report to Ecma
- Representing the committee at GA and ExeCom meetings
- Nominating TC39 members for Ecma Awards
Contact the chair group to suggest nominees for Ecma Awards.
Liaise with other bodies including but not limited to:
- Ecma
- TC53
- TC54
- IEEE
- IETF
- ISO
- Linux Foundation
- OpenJS Foundation
- OpenSSF
- Unicode Consortium
- W3C
- WHATWG
Respond to non-CoC concerns being raised in public spaces such as GitHub, Discourse, and Matrix
- Onboarding delegates
- Assessing proposed invited experts
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In coordination with Ecma, backup and archival of TC39 assets
The chairs are the administrators of TC39's chat rooms. They are responsible for:
- Giving delegates the appropriate permission levels when they are onboarded and offboarded.
- Moderating the rooms, for example blocking spammers and trolls when necessary.
The Code of Conduct committee (see below) also has the power to moderate the chat rooms as part of its responsibility to respond to conduct reports.
Moderation actions include muting a user, kicking them from a room, banning them permanently, and removing individual messages.
Editors: Shu-yu Guo (@syg), Michael Ficarra (@michaelficarra), Kevin Gibbons (@bakkot)
The editor group meets weekly to discuss issues. These meetings are open to any TC39 delegates who wish to participate.
The editor group is responsible for being the final decision-maker on what lands in the specification draft, based on committee consensus and the technical reviews of the editor group. The editor group runs on an internal consensus model, requiring the sign-off of each editor to merge a pull request.
Each year, a branch of the ECMA-262 specification is made, around late January/February, to be that year's ES20xx specification. The editor group produces this branch. Editorial changes or critical fixes are sometimes backported to this branch. After the IP opt-out period is complete, the specification is finalized and sent to the Ecma GA for ratification.
- Review PRs in the ecma262 repository
- Contact an editor to join in on editor group meetings if you are a TC39 delegate
- Join the editor group, which is selected by TC39 annually.
Editors: Richard Gibson (@gibson042), Ujjwal Sharma (@ryzokuken)
- Review PRs in the ecma402 repository
- Join the editor group, which is selected by TC39 annually.
See the list in the Code of Conduct.
The Code of Conduct (CoC) Committee is responsible for responding to conduct reports. See the Code of Conduct for more information.
The CoC Committee is elected by the committee delegates towards the end of each year and is always looking for help; please contact one of the members for more information.