Portable Data Research Project

[J. Trent Adams]

Crew -

As we all know, the DataPortability Project didn't pop into existence
in a vacuum. There is a lot of work that has already been done in an
effort to make data more portable. In order to tap the collective
base of knowledge that has paved the way, and is actively driving the
ball forward, a group of us have decided we need to do more research.

This note, then, is the first volley of that idea into the broader
community. The basic concept of this project is to identify the "who,
what, where, when" of the various communities involved in the Data
Portability space, so that we can bridge them within the context of
the DataPortability Project.

Culled from some of the chat logs on this, here're a few good
questions that should help guide us:

What are the problems being solved out there?
Who's working on solving them and how?
What can we learn from them?
How will the findings contribute to our mission?
How can be build an effective conduit of information flow?

This is by no means a comprehensive list of what we need to do, but
from the logs, it looks like they're common enough to help us move
ahead. Additional fine-tuning is, of course, welcome.

The steps as I see it are:

1. Identify who/what we should research.
2. Compile useful notes from available resources.
3. Contact the people involved to clarify/learn more.
4. Attend their meetings and conferences.
5. Offer ourselves as liaisons from/to them and the DP Project.
6. Deliver a final report and links summarizing our findings.

There's definitely a lot of information freely available online, so
we'll start there. Beyond that, though, we need to actually reach out
and touch these folks to get to know them and what they're doing (and
so they can get to know us, too).

We've provisionally given ourselves a two-month deadline to try and
get much of the background work done, culminating in a usable report.
That's definitely not much time and we need to hit the ground
running. My hope is that we can at least lay a solid foundation upon
which to develop long-range involvement across the bridges we create.

A quick note about logistics of this project. As we've seen, it's
easy for ideas to get lost in the mix of competing priorities. To
help make sure we make the most of this project, I'll take the lead of
coordinating as much as is needed. In a perfect world, that means
little more than having to pull together the final report from all the
able-bodied contributors. In a real world, it's likely I'll get
buried under the load, and will most likely reach out to folks
individually and solicit their help when needed. I will, however,
take on the burden of compiling the results into the final report at
the end of the two month window.

To start the ball rolling on Step 1, below is a list I put together of
Data Portability communities, people, technologies, and tools I'd like
to research. Note that this list is SemWeb/LinkedData heavy as I
believe these groups are currently underrepresented (and they have a
strong contingent close to me in Boston).

If anyone would like to help on this (daunting) project, please reply
to this thread or otherwise contact me directly. I'd like to at least
track as much of this work as possible to help maximize the time we
have. A Groups/Wiki page will be created to help track progress, etc.

Thanks in advance,
Trent

(PS If anyone on this distribution already has an "in" within one of
these groups/technologies... please raise your hand.)


------------------------------------------

Communities / Projects:

SIOC (Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities Project) http://sioc-project.org/
Digital Enterprise Research Institute http://www.deri.ie/
SWAML (Semantic Web Archive of Mailing Lists) http://swaml.berlios.de/
DataPortability http://dataportability.org/
WebCamp workshop on Social Network Portability / BlogTalk 2008 (March)
http://2008.blogtalk.net/
Linked Data on the Web Workshop (April) http://events.linkeddata.org/ldow2008/
Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/
Semantic Web Case Studies and Use Cases http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/
2008 Semantic Technology Conference (May) http://www.semantic-conference.com/
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/
Liberty Alliance http://www.projectliberty.org/liberty/about
Identity Schemas Working Group http://wiki.idcommons.net/index.php/Identity_Schemas
SAML-TC http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=security
Higgins Project http://www.eclipse.org/higgins/


People:

John Breslin http://www.johnbreslin.com/
Ivan Herman http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
Nova Spivack http://novaspivack.typepad.com/
Dan Brickley http://danbri.org/words/
Paul Miller http://blogs.zdnet.com/semantic-web/
Doc Searls http://www.searls.com/
John Clippinger http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/john_clippinger


Technologies / Standards:

RDF (Resource Description Framework)1999 Spec http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/
Current Spec RDF at W3C http://www.w3.org/RDF/
RDFa http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/
RDFa Distiller http://www.w3.org/2007/08/pyRdfa/
SIOC Plugins for blogging software etc. http://sioc-project.org/exporters
FOAF (Friend of a Friend) http://www.foaf-project.org/
FOAF Autodiscovery http://wiki.foaf-project.org/Autodiscovery
DOAP (Description of a Project) http://usefulinc.com/doap/
OpenID http://openid.net/


Tools / Frameworks:

Semantic Radar http://sioc-project.org/firefox
foaf:mbox_sha1sum http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_mbox_sha1sum
DOAPStore http://doapstore.org/
Tabulator http://www.w3.org/2005/ajar/tab
Google Social Graph API http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/
SIOC Browser http://sioc-project.org/browser
PingtheSemanticWeb.com http://pingthesemanticweb.com/
Semantic Web Search Engine (SWSE) http://swse.org/
Sindice semantic index http://sindice.com/query/keyword
DBpedia http://dbpedia.org
Radar Networks http://www.radarnetworks.com/
SIOC Tutorial http://www2008.org/program/program-tutorials-TP3.html
SIOC Explorer https://launchpad.net/sioc-ex

------------------------------------------

[Mike Reynolds]

Wow Trent, that's quite a list! Count me in. Some of the technical
details will be over my head, but I'll do what I can to help out.

Cheers,
Mike

[TSchultz55]

Trent, I'd like to help out as well, especially in the realm of
semantic tools and frameworks. Working on some cool things in that
space both personally, professionally, and in academia.

Regards,

Tim

> DataPortabilityhttp://dataportability.org/
> WebCamp workshop on Social Network Portability / BlogTalk 2008 (March)http://2008.blogtalk.net/
> Linked Data on the Web Workshop (April)http://events.linkeddata.org/ldow2008/
> Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Grouphttp://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/
> Semantic Web Case Studies and Use Caseshttp://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/

> 2008 Semantic Technology Conference (May)      http://www.semantic-conference.com/
> The Berkman Center for Internet & Society  http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/
> Liberty Alliance        http://www.projectliberty.org/liberty/about
> Identity Schemas Working Group  http://wiki.idcommons.net/index.php/Identity_Schemas
> SAML-TChttp://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=security

> Higgins Projecthttp://www.eclipse.org/higgins/

>
> People:
>
> John Breslin    http://www.johnbreslin.com/
> Ivan Herman    http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
> Nova Spivack    http://novaspivack.typepad.com/
> Dan Brickley    http://danbri.org/words/
> Paul Miller    http://blogs.zdnet.com/semantic-web/
> Doc Searls      http://www.searls.com/

> John Clippingerhttp://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/john_clippinger

>
> Technologies / Standards:
>
> RDF (Resource Description Framework)1999 Spec  http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/

> Current Spec RDF at W3Chttp://www.w3.org/RDF/

> RDFa    http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/
> RDFa Distiller  http://www.w3.org/2007/08/pyRdfa/

> SIOC Plugins for blogging software etc.http://sioc-project.org/exporters

> FOAF (Friend of a Friend)      http://www.foaf-project.org/
> FOAF Autodiscovery      http://wiki.foaf-project.org/Autodiscovery

> DOAP (Description of a Project)http://usefulinc.com/doap/

> OpenID  http://openid.net/
>
> Tools / Frameworks:
>
> Semantic Radar  http://sioc-project.org/firefox
> foaf:mbox_sha1sum      http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_mbox_sha1sum
> DOAPStore      http://doapstore.org/
> Tabulator      http://www.w3.org/2005/ajar/tab

> Google Social Graph APIhttp://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/

> SIOC Browser    http://sioc-project.org/browser
> PingtheSemanticWeb.com  http://pingthesemanticweb.com/
> Semantic Web Search Engine (SWSE)      http://swse.org/
> Sindice semantic index  http://sindice.com/query/keyword

> DBpediahttp://dbpedia.org

[TSchultz55]

Trent, I'd like to help out as well, especially in the realm of
semantic tools and frameworks. Working on some cool things in that
space both personally, professionally, and in academia.

Regards,

Tim

On Feb 26, 6:53 pm, "J. Trent Adams" <jtrentad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> DataPortabilityhttp://dataportability.org/
> WebCamp workshop on Social Network Portability / BlogTalk 2008 (March)http://2008.blogtalk.net/
> Linked Data on the Web Workshop (April)http://events.linkeddata.org/ldow2008/
> Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Grouphttp://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/
> Semantic Web Case Studies and Use Caseshttp://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/

> 2008 Semantic Technology Conference (May)      http://www.semantic-conference.com/
> The Berkman Center for Internet & Society  http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/
> Liberty Alliance        http://www.projectliberty.org/liberty/about
> Identity Schemas Working Group  http://wiki.idcommons.net/index.php/Identity_Schemas
> SAML-TChttp://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=security

> Higgins Projecthttp://www.eclipse.org/higgins/

>
> People:
>
> John Breslin    http://www.johnbreslin.com/
> Ivan Herman    http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
> Nova Spivack    http://novaspivack.typepad.com/
> Dan Brickley    http://danbri.org/words/
> Paul Miller    http://blogs.zdnet.com/semantic-web/
> Doc Searls      http://www.searls.com/

> John Clippingerhttp://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/john_clippinger

>
> Technologies / Standards:
>
> RDF (Resource Description Framework)1999 Spec  http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/

> Current Spec RDF at W3Chttp://www.w3.org/RDF/

> RDFa    http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/
> RDFa Distiller  http://www.w3.org/2007/08/pyRdfa/

> SIOC Plugins for blogging software etc.http://sioc-project.org/exporters

> FOAF (Friend of a Friend)      http://www.foaf-project.org/
> FOAF Autodiscovery      http://wiki.foaf-project.org/Autodiscovery

> DOAP (Description of a Project)http://usefulinc.com/doap/

> OpenID  http://openid.net/
>
> Tools / Frameworks:
>
> Semantic Radar  http://sioc-project.org/firefox
> foaf:mbox_sha1sum      http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_mbox_sha1sum
> DOAPStore      http://doapstore.org/
> Tabulator      http://www.w3.org/2005/ajar/tab

> Google Social Graph APIhttp://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/

> SIOC Browser    http://sioc-project.org/browser
> PingtheSemanticWeb.com  http://pingthesemanticweb.com/
> Semantic Web Search Engine (SWSE)      http://swse.org/
> Sindice semantic index  http://sindice.com/query/keyword

> DBpediahttp://dbpedia.org

[Peter Davis]

On Feb 26, 2008, at 6:53 PM, J. Trent Adams wrote:

>
> Culled from some of the chat logs on this, here're a few good
> questions that should help guide us:
>
> What are the problems being solved out there?
> Who's working on solving them and how?
> What can we learn from them?
> How will the findings contribute to our mission?
> How can be build an effective conduit of information flow?

there are even groups out there who have, to one degree or another,
generally in specific industry verticals, attempted this very
sequence. some have succeeded more than others. We should consider
compiling a list of these bodies of works (i know of several which i
think are public domain which i will try and get my hands on), and
see what can be gleaned from them (including why, perhaps, they
failed, where DP hopes to succeed.

> The steps as I see it are:
>
> 1. Identify who/what we should research.
> 2. Compile useful notes from available resources.
> 3. Contact the people involved to clarify/learn more.
> 4. Attend their meetings and conferences.
> 5. Offer ourselves as liaisons from/to them and the DP Project.
> 6. Deliver a final report and links summarizing our findings.
>
> There's definitely a lot of information freely available online, so
> we'll start there. Beyond that, though, we need to actually reach out
> and touch these folks to get to know them and what they're doing (and
> so they can get to know us, too).
>
> We've provisionally given ourselves a two-month deadline to try and
> get much of the background work done, culminating in a usable report.
> That's definitely not much time and we need to hit the ground
> running. My hope is that we can at least lay a solid foundation upon
> which to develop long-range involvement across the bridges we create.

I'd wish it weren't true, but I think 2 months is not realistic. Much
of that time will be consumed in the search phase, leaving
insufficient time for the consumption, distillation, and production
phases of the resultant work.

> A quick note about logistics of this project. As we've seen, it's
> easy for ideas to get lost in the mix of competing priorities. To
> help make sure we make the most of this project, I'll take the lead of
> coordinating as much as is needed. In a perfect world, that means
> little more than having to pull together the final report from all the
> able-bodied contributors. In a real world, it's likely I'll get
> buried under the load, and will most likely reach out to folks
> individually and solicit their help when needed. I will, however,
> take on the burden of compiling the results into the final report at
> the end of the two month window.

I'll toss my pen in as time allows.

> To start the ball rolling on Step 1, below is a list I put together of
> Data Portability communities, people, technologies, and tools I'd like
> to research. Note that this list is SemWeb/LinkedData heavy as I
> believe these groups are currently underrepresented (and they have a
> strong contingent close to me in Boston).
>
> If anyone would like to help on this (daunting) project, please reply
> to this thread or otherwise contact me directly. I'd like to at least
> track as much of this work as possible to help maximize the time we
> have. A Groups/Wiki page will be created to help track progress, etc.

once you've a page ahchored in place, i'll add what i'm already aware
of, and hopefully have had a chance to cull some additional sources
for material

> Thanks in advance,
> Trent

thanks for pulling this together.

>
> (PS If anyone on this distribution already has an "in" within one of
> these groups/technologies... please raise your hand.)

I can aid as a liaison with Liberty Alliance (I chair the Liaison
group there) and the various OASIS groups (SAML, XRI, XDI, XACML).

=peterd

[Mark Shiu]

Indeed, this is what we need, start from researching requirements.
However, 2 months is a short period, so I guess you need a lot of people to collaborate with.

See if there is anything I can help with.


Mark Shiu

[Victoria Gracia]

Hi,

I've recently join the list/group, and I'm still learning, but I'll be
glad if I could help.

I particularly miss one issue in all your work, the communities that are
built in eLearning environments (that used to be my work), and
communities of interest and work built on corporative environments. It's
not easy to know what's happening on the other side of a big company's
intranet, but maybe some big companies could cooperate in telling us if
such relationships are built in their intranets.

Most of those communities (learning & big companies' intranets) are
still missing most of the features from the social networks here
discussed, but both are interested in some sort of social interaction
between the members of the community and among different communities
(classrooms & schools in e-learning, departaments & locations & other
companies in corporate environment)

If this issue could be investigated, I'll be glad to volunteer.
If this issue is too huge to investigate now, I'll be glad to help
somewhere else.

Best regards,

Victoria Gracia
Barcelona (Spain)

[Phil Wolff]

Can you prioritize the list?

Putting the list on the wiki will go a long way to helping volunteers
sign up for specific relationships and share their results.

[Julian Bond]

http://dataportability.onconfluence.com/display/dpmain/Research+Project

--
Julian Bond E&MSN: julian_bond at voidstar.com M: +44 (0)77 5907 2173
Webmaster: http://www.ecademy.com/ T: +44 (0)192 0412 433
Personal WebLog: http://www.voidstar.com/ skype:julian.bond?chat
Posters Not Available

[J. Trent Adams]

Julian - Many thanks for jumping on setting up the Wiki page on
Confluence. It'll definitely help manage the project (especially as
per Phil and Peter's comments). As usual, you're ahead of the curve.

Peter and Mark - I totally agree with you that two months is too short
for the type of dive I'd really like to do. My initial estimate was
six months to allow us the time to build relationships and also at
least touch a good cycle of conferences. That being said, we should
at least have a good leg up by the end of our two month window (hoping
to see enough value to set up another deliverable as an extension).

Phil - I'll work on a priorities scheme that makes sense, along with a
couple templates to help lay a good foundation upon which our
distributed group can build. Stay tuned.

Thanks for the support so far,
Trent

[Julian Bond]

J. Trent Adams <jtren...@gmail.com> Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:20:29

>Peter and Mark - I totally agree with you that two months is too short
>for the type of dive I'd really like to do. My initial estimate was
>six months to allow us the time to build relationships and also at
>least touch a good cycle of conferences. That being said, we should
>at least have a good leg up by the end of our two month window (hoping
>to see enough value to set up another deliverable as an extension).

There's no problem with that as long as people don't see it as being on
the critical path. "Well we'll be able to do that once we've completed
the research phase". ;)

[Phil Wolff]

Are three research tracks emerging?

1. Mapping Prior Art. And explaining how each connects to dp.

2. Cultivating Relationships. Building connections with social site operators, protocol/standards communities, thought leaders. Engaging them in the dp conversations. Picking their brains to expand the DP social network and helping them move from awareness to participation.

3. Experimentation. Small development and design projects constructed to help us learn from real world experience. Julian's been chatting about this and it's got me convinced that credibility within the DP developer community and with partners depends on our building proof. Evidence to inform our design decisions.

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 8:08 AM, Julian Bond <julia...@voidstar.com> wrote:

There's no problem with that as long as people don't see it as being on
the critical path. "Well we'll be able to do that once we've completed
the research phase". ;)

--

Phil Wolff
managing editor, Skype Journal
http://SkypeJournal.com
pwo...@skypejournal.com
skype:evanwolf
+1-510-444-8234 San Francisco
+1-646-461-6123 New York
+44 020 8816 8780 London
+852 8175 8107 Hong Kong
http://www.linkedin.com/in/philwolff
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=724232370

[Mary]

I'm in.

On Feb 27, 3:18 pm, "Phil Wolff" <pwo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are three research tracks emerging?
>
> 1. Mapping Prior Art. And explaining how each connects to dp.
>
> 2. Cultivating Relationships. Building connections with social site
> operators, protocol/standards communities, thought leaders. Engaging them in
> the dp conversations. Picking their brains to expand the DP social network
> and helping them move from awareness to participation.
>
> 3. Experimentation. Small development and design projects constructed to
> help us learn from real world experience. Julian's been chatting about this
> and it's got me convinced that credibility within the DP developer community
> and with partners depends on our building proof. Evidence to inform our
> design decisions.
>

> On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 8:08 AM, Julian Bond <julian_b...@voidstar.com>

> wrote:
>
>
>
> > There's no problem with that as long as people don't see it as being on
> > the critical path. "Well we'll be able to do that once we've completed
> > the research phase". ;)
>
> --
> Phil Wolff

> managing editor, Skype Journalhttp://SkypeJournal.com

[Aerik Sylvan]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Phil Wolff <pwo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Are three research tracks emerging?

1. Mapping Prior Art. And explaining how each connects to dp.

2. Cultivating Relationships. Building connections with social site operators, protocol/standards communities, thought leaders. Engaging them in the dp conversations. Picking their brains to expand the DP social network and helping them move from awareness to participation.

3. Experimentation. Small development and design projects constructed to help us learn from real world experience. Julian's been chatting about this and it's got me convinced that credibility within the DP developer community and with partners depends on our building proof. Evidence to inform our design decisions.

Phil, I think that's an excellent perspective on how to tackle this.  In a separate thread, I was asking about lists (and matrices) of protocols and APIs, and I think that's a good first step for number 1.  Find out what's out there, what it's good for, and who's using it.  Then, 2, talk to the people using the technologoy, and the people who are candidates to use the technology.  And 3, I'm sure a lot of us are already involved with something touched by this - I'm just taken an interest in the appleseed project (applseedproject.org), an interesting and promising, but still immature, distributed social networking app.

Aerik


--
http://www.wikidweb.com - the Wiki Directory of the Web
http://tagthis.info - Hosted Tagging for your website!

[J. Trent Adams]

Phil -

Regarding:

On Feb 27, 6:18 pm, "Phil Wolff" <pwo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are three research tracks emerging?
>
> 1. Mapping Prior Art. And explaining how each connects to dp.
>
> 2. Cultivating Relationships. Building connections with social site
> operators, protocol/standards communities, thought leaders. Engaging them in
> the dp conversations. Picking their brains to expand the DP social network
> and helping them move from awareness to participation.
>
> 3. Experimentation. Small development and design projects constructed to
> help us learn from real world experience. Julian's been chatting about this
> and it's got me convinced that credibility within the DP developer community
> and with partners depends on our building proof. Evidence to inform our
> design decisions.

I'd intended your first two points to be part of the Research
Project. Perhaps it'd be more clear if it was called the "Research &
Outreach Project". I believe that to do the research, we're going to
have to cultivate the relationships.

The Experimentation aspect, though, I saw as a fall-out of the
research. My working assumption was that once we really understood
the landscape (or at least pulled together all the pieces we already
know, but in single place), it'll become more obvious what kind of
development / proof-of-concept / best practices work would be useful.
That being said, there's really nothing gating this work from
continuing in parallel to the other two points (hoping that the
developers feed back into the knowledge base what they've learned
about the foundations upon which they're building).

Aerik -

Regarding:

On Feb 28, 2:49 am, "Aerik Sylvan" <asyl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sure a lot of us are already involved with something
> touched by this - I'm just taken an interest in the appleseed project (
> applseedproject.org), an interesting and promising, but still immature,
> distributed social networking app.

It'd be totally excellent for us to research the projects / products /
companies acting as exemplars of various aspects of the DP Project
mission. Perhaps you'd have time to jump in and work on compiling a
list of these projects (perhaps polling the group for input).

Great discussion so far...

- Trent

[Chris Saad]

Agree with everything Trent said.

I do think that track 3 is not explicitly part of the Research and Outreach project, but there is nothing stopping it from continuing in parallel.

Cheers,

Chris

--
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

[Aerik Sylvan]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 6:49 AM, J. Trent Adams <jtren...@gmail.com> wrote:

Regarding:

On Feb 28, 2:49 am, "Aerik Sylvan" <asyl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sure a lot of us are already involved with something
> touched by this - I'm just taken an interest in the appleseed project (
> applseedproject.org), an interesting and promising, but still immature,
> distributed social networking app.

It'd be totally excellent for us to research the projects / products /
companies acting as exemplars of various aspects of the DP Project
mission.  Perhaps you'd have time to jump in and work on compiling a
list of these projects (perhaps polling the group for input).

Well I can certainly set up a list, but I'm focused at the moment on trying to get a reasonably comprehensive list of at least the most popular and established protocols and standards, with some categorization and descriptive text - but the next step I had in mind was starting to list who's using what, as you suggested.

Aerik