Some questions

[Christian Scholz]

Hi!

Let me maybe start with some questions we might want to answer:

1. Is our focus on technology or policy or both?

2. Do we want to keep the idea of creating a trustmark for
technologies as our main goal? Or do we want to move more into a
policy direction and define a set of general guidelines of what we
want the user to be able to do?

3. How are the chances that we can get a discussion going _with_ the
main participants in the field?

4. Is our work only about social networks or data portability in every
possible field?


My answers to that:

1. For now I would focus on policy as technology needs to follow this
then. Moreover there is already much happening in the technology field
by other groups and it would make sense to have a set of guidelines to
check these technologies for compliance with our main goal.

2. I think the idea of a trustmark as hard to achieve because every
day there seems to be a new technology which gets invented for sharing
data. To define a definite set might be hard. I also think processes
will emerge more evolutionary than that we can define them and
everybody follows. In general I would think every open technology is
good and what gets used will decided by the market.

Because of this I think having some general guidelines of what a
service needs to allow a user to do is helpful. We can then look at
processes services implement and say good or bad. Moreover there seems
to be a lack of a good definition of how such guidelines might look
like and to me it seems everybody is working on solutions without
specifying the problem in detail.

3. Right now it seems not to be working that well and I guess Eran is
right when they do this more behind the scenes instead of in the
public. It's a hard business after all in which you don't want to leak
information too early. Nevertheless a discussion with the participants
would be good in order to get a different view on it. The main
question would then be how to reach it. But that's maybe not so much a
question of our vision.

4. I would see our focus for now on social networks and the
surrounding field (I personally do also focus esp. on virtual worlds
as work on the Open Grid Protocol is ongoing quite heavily and many of
these questions are raised there as well.). But in general I would
think it's about every possible field as long as people volunteer to
work on these fields.

So much for my first post here.

cheers,

Christian

[Elias Bizannes]

Thanks Christian, here are my views.

1. Is our focus on technology or policy or both?

> I believe our focus is on advancing the vision of data portability, through the recomendations, stances and activities of the DataPortability Project
> The focus will be determined once we have a clear defined vision. However, Dan has already suggested as well as the discussions in the forums the other month, that we no longer advance "the" blueprint.

2. Do we want to keep the idea of creating a trustmark for
technologies as our main goal? Or do we want to move more into a
policy direction and define a set of general guidelines of what we
want the user to be able to do?

> I believe we have core principles, and we make judgements of technologies in terms of compatibilies of those principles.
> I believe we also determine general guidelines of what a user should be able to do. This links with the above point, and perhaps is how we determine the above.
> I think this can be easily maintained as a group can apply to us for recognition, if they see value in us bestowing that recognition that they comply with our vision.

3. How are the chances that we can get a discussion going _with_ the
main participants in the field?

> Anythings possible. But for a discussion, we need a clear vision.

4. Is our work only about social networks or data portability in every
possible field?

> Every possible field, but with a 'hit list'. So social networking, 3D worlds should be at the top of the list perhaps.