Candidate for Steering Committee Position

[wkossen]

LS.

I am interested to take a seat in the Steering Committee. I believe
that I have a broad knowledge of many subjects relating to
dataportability, interoperability and application integration. Many
years of experience as a IT consultant and architect in these areas
have been important for me to reach this level of expertise. I am a
member of the OpenID foundation and a blogger at my own weblog
http://willemkossen.nl/b. I have been involved in large scale
interoperability project for amongst others the Dutch Government and
big educational institutions in the Netherlands. Currently I work on a
European Union Cross Border Interoperability related project called
SPOCS (http://eu-spocs.eu). I also have been speaking publicly on
interoperability, Dataportability and other application integration
related subjects.

I am also a communicator and I am able to bring people with different
opinions together and help create decisions that are supported by man.
This is in my opinion important to function effectively in a committee
like this one. I'm pretty fluent in English (as it's not my mother's
tongue) so language will not be an issue in this position.

I am located in the Netherlands (Europe) and don't have the means to
travel frequently. This should not be a problem since almost all work
on this project is done remotely anyway. In fact, It's an advantage as
because of this I have special focus on things like multilangualism
and international issues like semantics. I also have in depth
knowledge about several non-US initiatives including those concerning
interoperability in E-government.

I strongly believe that physical borders are the least of our problems
when it comes to dataportability, but financial ones may well be. You
may want more information about me. I am easy to find on the Internet,
have a large webpresence in social sites, such as LinkedIN. Since I do
not have the most common name, chances are you'll find me first time!
(search for "wkossen" or "willem kossen")

Kind Regards,

Willem Kossen