Telecon Notes + Schedule for Steering Membership Voting

[J. Trent Adams]

Steering Group -

The notes from the 6/30/2008 teleconference are available:

http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/hYYj

An outcome of the discussion was that we need to come to closure on
who will be the initial members to seed the newly ratified Steering
Group. Here is the process we agreed to follow over the next week:

1. A wiki page was created to host the various options on the table
to be voted upon. [1]

2. The page can be modified as discussions progress, but must be
fixed (i.e. no further changes) by July 7th at 00:01 GMT so that there
is enough time for evaluation prior to voting.

3. An email will be sent to the Steering Group discussion list
(i.e. this distribution) with the subject "Call for Votes: Steering
Group Seeding" no later than 13:00 GMT on July 9th. Votes can then be
sent in reply to that message or can be counted during the scheduled
Steering Group teleconference on July 9th at 23:00 GMT.

4. All votes must be in by 24:00 GMT on July 9th at which time the
decision will be made which option is adopted.

NOTE: These options only deal with "seeding" the Steering Group
membership. Once seeded, these members will be empowered to implement
the already ratified Governance Model. This includes implementing a
mechanism for managing ongoing Steering Group membership.

Please visit the options page to review the current proposals:

[1] http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/wIYj

Any output from discussions that take place (e.g. via chat, email,
discussion list, etc.) must be reflected in this page no later than
July 7th at 00:01 GMT. After that time, no further changes to the
options can be made to provide time for everyone to see them prior to
voting.

PROGRAM NOTE: I will be away on vacation starting today (July 2nd),
back in operation the morning of July 9th. I will not be available to
manage the regularly scheduled teleconference on July 7th at 13:00
GMT. Anyone who wants to run the meeting, please feel free.
Otherwise, I'll pick back up again for the vote call on July 9th at
23:00 GMT.

Thanks and I look forward to tallying the votes (and _really_ look
forward to the new Steering Group picking up the mandate and sprinting
with it).

- Trent

------------------------
J. Trent Adams
=jtrentadams

About Me: http://xri.net/=jtrentadams/+about
Follow Me: http://twitter.com/jtrentadams

[Aaron Cheung]

Am amazed that this Jun1 after-the-fact deadline imposition option is once again
put back to live, even after it had been well discussed and understood, and even
after it was voted down just a week ago. Sigh.

Well, you guys carry on, I respectfully sign off. I really don't understand why there's
so much hung up on this procedurally very wrong proposition. So much adamancy
about it. Impressive.

> Option A: Steering Group is Seeded with Previous Teleconference Participants
>
> The initial roll of MEMBERS of the STEERING GROUP shall initially be seeded
> with everyone who attended at least two of the regularly scheduled Steering Action
> Group teleconference calls between April 1 2008 and June 1 2008 and [...]

Thank you and so long everybody; hope this list is a better place after my signing off.

All the best,
/ac.

[Drummond Reed]

Trent et al,

I know I have been largely silent in this discussion due to a hugely
overflowing work plate (that ain't getting any better). But I try to monitor
the Steering list for progress.

I read over the options and I have one piece of feedback RE option C,
Election by Plenary. Currently it calls for Plenary members to cast up to 2
votes. In most elections of this type (such as boards of directors), each
voter can vote for as many candidates as there are open seats. For example,
in the recent vote for the OASIS Board of Directors, there were 8 open
seats, and each voter could cast 8 votes.

I don't know if there was any particular reason for suggesting 2 votes, but
if the goal is to allocate seats by overall community consensus, I think
you'll end out with a much more accurate representation of that consensus if
you enable voters to vote for as many candidates as there are open seats.
(Many voters will not cast that many votes, but at least they have the
option.)

Hope this helps,

=Drummond

[Brett McDowell]

+1, I prefer Drummond's proposal.

[Jim Meyer]

It's time for me to say farewell as well.

When I joined the dataportability.org group, it seemed that it would be
working to create a reference platform with sample implementations
available; now that the mission of DP is much more clearly advocacy, my
involvement is less useful and less interesting to me personally. That,
combined with a packed schedule and the group's recent focus on evolving a
new model of distributed governance rather than on issues related to data
portability, have made it clear that I should move along.

I wish you all good luck and look forward to hearing about interesting new
developments in data portability!

--j

[Mike Smith]

I find these recent departures disturbing.  It seems evident that bringing these Governance discussions into Steering may have indicated to observers that we have lost focus on our primary objective.  I would have to agree that we have lost our focus and suggest that Governance be re-instituted as a task-force.
Mike Smith - dominoconsultant

[Chris Saad]

I agree disbanding the governance taskforce what not a great idea - but we are almost to the end of the process now. The steering group, however, will always be about process and administration.

If people would like to stick to technical issues etc its best to avoid the steering group ;)

Chris

On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 3:56 PM, Mike Smith <dominoco...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I find these recent departures disturbing.  It seems evident that bringing these Governance discussions into Steering may have indicated to observers that we have lost focus on our primary objective.  I would have to agree that we have lost our focus and suggest that Governance be re-instituted as a task-force.
Mike Smith - dominoconsultant

--
Chris Saad

FaradayMedia - For Audiences of One
Particls - Are You Paying Attention?
Engagd - The Open Attention Platform
Media 2.0 Workgroup - Social, Democratic, Distributed
APML - Your Attention Profile
DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix

[Phil Wolff]

Mike Smith +1

On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 3:56 PM, Mike Smith <dominoco...@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Brett McDowell]

Disbanding the taskforce is not the root cause of this problem.  Endless debate and lack of resolution is.  Steering needs to make a decision, it's just that simple.

-- Brett

[Jonathan Vanasco]

On Jul 3, 10:29 pm, "Chris Saad" <chris.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If people would like to stick to technical issues etc its best to avoid the
> steering group ;)

I subscribe to all the groups, which is why I see threads like this.

There's a ton of talk on the OTHER lists about technical and
philosophical issues.

Procedural stuff needs to get done, and it needs to get done
somewhere. That place is here.

As Chris said, if you want to talk about technical stuff - its
happening elsewhere within the 'community'.

No one has lost focus on anything - they're just focusing on certain
tasks in certain groups.

[Elias Bizannes]

1) Voting: I agree with Drummond, and there has been a parallel
discussion in the former governance taskforce mailing list about this
issue. [1]

2) Disbanding the governance task force: Several perspectives on the
why, but I'll save that for another time. I just want to echo Brett's
point however - "Steering needs to make a decision, it's just that
simple."

Now everyone else knows the pain the governance task force had to
endure - except we did daily conference calls, with plenty of follow
up documents. At the end of the day, this is still Steering's
responsibility, and given the issue at hand - I much prefer a broader
discussion as it has dramatic implications. There are some things that
deserve to be delegated to a special committee; but this is too
important. The details of the governance framework have been
implemented, it's now determining how we kick start it - and this is
something that needs broad consensus. I would much rather a whine
about the work to get there than a whine that people felt included
from such a big decision.

There is no point instituting the governance task force *now*. Next
week is the deadline for the means of completing the last piece of the
governance framework, which is how the seeding members are. It's
already been flagged there are areas that need revising of the
framework, but we need to start somewhere - and only then should a
governance task force be reinstated. For us to get focus, means
closing off a chapter and moving on - not rewriting the same chapter
over and over.

3) Jim Meyer: We are not just about advocacy. But something I hope you
recognise, for us an organisation to be suggesting implementations for
the industry to adopt, we need a rock solid framework on how decisions
on what those implementations look like. The fact this group can
affect the industry means this will have longer term benefits with
such a framework. I'm just glad you have respectively signed out, and
are willing to be engaged in the future - growing up takes a while,
but we'll get there and hopefully we can tap into you then.

4) Aaron Cheung: Anyone could propose a solution for next weeks
deadline. You could have proposed one as well, and still can.

5) Jonathan Vanasco: It's my weekend, so I can finally give some
feedback on your paper - but dude, you are dangerous! Looking forward
to seeing more of your involvement. Your comments above are right on,
thank you.

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/dataportabilitygovernance/browse_thread/thread/14824878c574d52

[Danny Ayers]

While I sympathise with people diving out, I would still recommend sticking around as a lurker at least. Due to a recent overload of other commitments, I'm in that situation myself. (I'm sure most in the group have similar pressures).

On the question of governance, this is clearly a major issue, but if you look at other orgs, many have taken years to reach an equilibrium that offers reasonable consensus. Rome wasn't built in a day.

On the question of getting practical work done, while I personally disagree with quite a bit of the technical direction being taken of late, at least by being around I will have opportunity to make my opinions known (time permitting).

The only real downside to all this is the perceived lack of direction/momentum in the group the developer community at large. I fear this is unavoidable, and can only be resolved by ensuring we do get things (mostly) right on issues of governance, followed up by compelling technical solutions/recommendations. (Running code in the form of demonstrators would be nice too...).

In short, for now at least, I recommend hanging on in there :-)

Cheers,
Danny.



--
http://dannyayers.com
~
http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/this_weeks_semantic_web/