How important is POCO?

[Mark W.]

Quick question for everyone.... How important is portable contacts to everyone? I'm asking for a couple of reasons....

First, we are looking at some of the REST endpoints and believe we can simplify the format. Second, in our scenarios we don't need most of the fields. Even though they are optional it would be beneficial to have a "named" set of fields. For example, when we talked with the team at UCSF, they wanted to easily add "medical research" type of fields to the profile. These are well defined fields from ODF. So, it would be nice to say "we support the scientific profile." We probably won't need to change the JavaScript APIs, but we would like to rethink the REST api.

What does everyone think?

[Joseph Smarr]

This is compatible with PoCo, which is still important and increasingly widely supported. You don't need to use all of the fields, they're just there to foster consensus for the people that want them. And it's extensible by design, so by all means add additional custom tags that work well for specific verticals (as long as they follow the basic poco conventions and don't conflict with the existing field names). Happy to help take a look if/when you've got some specific proposals for adding additional fields.

Thanks, js

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[Mark W.]

Hi Joseph,

Do we have a list of folks, outside of OpenSocial containers, that have adopted PoCo? Also, will the new Google+ APIs be based on PoCo?

[James Snell]

Quite honestly, Poco itself is out of date and has not really evolved.
I'd much rather we move forward with closer alignment between the
OpenSocial and Activity Streams data models (e.g. define the OS social
data objects in terms of Activity Streams objects with formal
objectTypes...) and focus on creating a baseline "Profile" model
within OpenSocial. If done properly, we can still maintain
close-enough alignment with the basic ideas of PoCo without feeling
like we have to be tied to that "spec".

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[Joseph Smarr]

http://wiki.portablecontacts.net/w/page/17776143/Software%20and%20Services%20using%20Portable%20Contacts is a pretty good list of PoCo implementations in the wild.

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Mark W. <weitze...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Mark W.]

Joseph,

Is Google+ going to adopt or support PoCo? Without Google, that list seems rather limited. Also, it does not look as though there's been much activity (no pun intended) on these for some time. 

Perhaps what we should do is try to revive the PoCo community, and the Google+ team, and the OpenSocial folks and all try to align on one, updated spec. There are a lot of really exciting ideas in this space that are being proposed.

Who is driving the PoCo community? I'm more than happy to reach out to them and see if they've got any ideas.

Also, is Google willing to participate or would they prefer to go it alone?

-Mark W.

On Thursday, February 23, 2012 6:06:48 PM UTC, Joseph Smarr wrote:

http://wiki.portablecontacts.net/w/page/17776143/Software%20and%20Services%20using%20Portable%20Contacts is a pretty good list of PoCo implementations in the wild.

[Bess Ho]

Hi Mark,
It seems like a good idea in exploring and unify PoCo.

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[Laurent-Walter Goix]

afaik PoCo is still referenced by OStatus to represent user/contact
information and access it from a remote social network so it would be
good to have feedback from that community about their thoughts.

walter

On Mar 4, 10:14 am, Bess Ho <bess...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
> It seems like a good idea in exploring and unify PoCo.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 9:17 PM, Mark W. <weitzelm.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Joseph,
> > Is Google+ going to adopt or support PoCo? Without Google, that list seems
> > rather limited. Also, it does not look as though there's been much activity
> > (no pun intended) on these for some time.
>
> > Perhaps what we should do is try to revive the PoCo community, and the
> > Google+ team, and the OpenSocial folks and all try to align on one, updated
> > spec. There are a lot of really exciting ideas in this space that are being
> > proposed.
>
> > Who is driving the PoCo community? I'm more than happy to reach out to
> > them and see if they've got any ideas.
>
> > Also, is Google willing to participate or would they prefer to go it alone?
>
> > -Mark W.
>
> > On Thursday, February 23, 2012 6:06:48 PM UTC, Joseph Smarr wrote:
>

> >>http://wiki.portablecontacts.**net/w/page/17776143/Software%**
> >> 20and%20Services%20using%**20Portable%20Contacts<http://wiki.portablecontacts.net/w/page/17776143/Software%20and%20Ser...> is

> >> a pretty good list of PoCo implementations in the wild.
>
> >> On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Mark W.  wrote:
>
> >>> Hi Joseph,
>
> >>> Do we have a list of folks, outside of OpenSocial containers, that have
> >>> adopted PoCo? Also, will the new Google+ APIs be based on PoCo?
>
> >>  --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "OpenSocial and Gadgets Specification Discussion" group.
> > To view this discussion on the web visit

> >https://groups.google.com/d/msg/opensocial-and-gadgets-spec/-/MKJAE0Q...
> > .

[Paul Lindner]

Also Backplane is using Poco too.

It's a good base-standard since it gives you a good json-based vcard like vocabulary.

If you want an alternate representation you might consider using schema.org's Person type.

http://schema.org/Person

Paul Lindner -- lin...@inuus.com -- profiles.google.com/pmlindner

[James M Snell]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Paul Lindner <lin...@inuus.com> wrote:
> Also Backplane is using Poco too.
>
> It's a good base-standard since it gives you a good json-based vcard like
> vocabulary.
>

Hmm... not to be pedantic, but "standard" is being used quite loosely
here. It's a fairly decent starting point yes, but it's certainly no
standard.

[Paul Lindner]

True.  Let's call it a stable reference design that is used by a number of implementations then.

[Joseph Smarr]

Google+ already does support PoCo as the schema of our people endpoints (see e.g. https://developers.google.com/+/api/latest/people), as well as full PoCo for the Google Contacts API. The full PoCo spec definitely needs to be freshened up to deal with things like OAuth 2 that happened since we wrote it, and many people are using the schema without adopting the full protocol (e.g. W3C Contacts API), which is fine since it still achieves a lot of the portability goals of common data representations.

[James M Snell]

Here's a proposal: let's move the poco spec into open social, remove the parts that have anything to do with protocol and define poco solely in terms of data model, and call it, The OpenSocial Person Model.

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[Joseph Smarr]

Historically, we intentionally kept PoCo separate but "wire-aligned" so that people who (for whatever reason) didn't want to buy into OpenSocial could still use PoCo (and many did this, e.g. MSFT), but those who did use OpenSocial would be PoCo-compliant vs. fragmented. I think this is still the right balancing act going forward.

[James M Snell]

Ok... There's nothing that says an implementor that adopts the basic OS data model has to adopt everything else too. How about this alternative: let's do what I suggested but publish it to IETF instead.

[Mark Weitzel]

This is great news. 

One of the topics we touched on at the 3.0 kickoff was refactoring the person model. For some of the new use cases that we have from Jive, IBM, and others, what's there now is very limiting. Also, we'd like to reshape REST APIs a bit to make them easier to use in practice. 

Is this something the google+ team and the poco community would like to work on together with the OpenSocial community? If so, maybe we could get something lined up a mid-summer F2F.

What do you think?

-Mark W.

[Mark W.]

James is correct. In OpenSocial 1.0 we specifically layered the spec to allow implementors to take only what they wanted/needed. If you look at spec page, you'll see this. What's nice about the data model is that it starts to tie in other pieces, e.g. activity streams as well. It's very possible (and pretty cool actually) that an implementor could use ONLY the data models (and only just the person) and nothing else.  

But to the larger point.... Regardless of where it lives now, there's interest in the community about taking another pass at this to update it with learned experiences from different domains. I think it would be good to have the schema.org folks there, as well as MS and anyone else that wants to participate. The things on the table for discussion might be both the technical aspects of this work, e.g. updates to the data model, REST access, etc. as well as where to have the spec become a standard, e.g. OpenSocial Foundation, IETF, etc.

Thoughts?

On Tuesday, March 6, 2012 3:48:16 PM UTC-5, James M Snell wrote:

Ok... There's nothing that says an implementor that adopts the basic OS data model has to adopt everything else too. How about this alternative: let's do what I suggested but publish it to IETF instead.

On Mar 6, 2012 12:40 PM, "Joseph Smarr" <jsm...@gmail.com> wrote:

Historically, we intentionally kept PoCo separate but "wire-aligned" so that people who (for whatever reason) didn't want to buy into OpenSocial could still use PoCo (and many did this, e.g. MSFT), but those who did use OpenSocial would be PoCo-compliant vs. fragmented. I think this is still the right balancing act going forward.

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 2:48 PM, James M Snell <jas...@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's a proposal: let's move the poco spec into open social, remove the parts that have anything to do with protocol and define poco solely in terms of data model, and call it, The OpenSocial Person Model.

On Mar 5, 2012 2:44 PM, "Joseph Smarr" <jsm...@gmail.com> wrote:

Google+ already does support PoCo as the schema of our people endpoints (see e.g. https://developers.google.com/+/api/latest/people), as well as full PoCo for the Google Contacts API. The full PoCo spec definitely needs to be freshened up to deal with things like OAuth 2 that happened since we wrote it, and many people are using the schema without adopting the full protocol (e.g. W3C Contacts API), which is fine since it still achieves a lot of the portability goals of common data representations.

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 9:17 PM, Mark W. <weitzelm.work> wrote:

Joseph,

Is Google+ going to adopt or support PoCo? Without Google, that list seems rather limited. Also, it does not look as though there's been much activity (no pun intended) on these for some time. 

Perhaps what we should do is try to revive the PoCo community, and the Google+ team, and the OpenSocial folks and all try to align on one, updated spec. There are a lot of really exciting ideas in this space that are being proposed.

Who is driving the PoCo community? I'm more than happy to reach out to them and see if they've got any ideas.

Also, is Google willing to participate or would they prefer to go it alone?

-Mark W.

On Thursday, February 23, 2012 6:06:48 PM UTC, Joseph Smarr wrote:

http://wiki.portablecontacts.net/w/page/17776143/Software%20and%20Services%20using%20Portable%20Contacts is a pretty good list of PoCo implementations in the wild.

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Mark W.  wrote:

Hi Joseph,

Do we have a list of folks, outside of OpenSocial containers, that have adopted PoCo? Also, will the new Google+ APIs be based on PoCo?

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[Matthew Marum]

Have we settled on if there's going to be OpenSocial spec changes related to PoCo in OpenSocial 2.5?

[Mark W.]

Matt,

I cross posted a question on the poco list:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/portablecontacts