Fwd: [Community] Preserving Identity Commons Purpose and Principles

[Brett McDowell]

Forgive the cross-post but I think this is still quite relevant to DP and maybe we should add it to the agenda today.

The one thing I saw raised in DP discussions that was not raised in IC discussions was some concern around NewOrg "eating" DP, so I'll address that here in addition to the comments below which were shared on the IC list already.

RE: EATING DataPortability.org...

I don't think anyone ends up at either the top or the bottom with NewOrg.  It seems Kaliya and Aaron are engaged in a debate around IC vs. DP, but I want to clarify that I have nothing to do with that debate.  I'm proposing NewOrg not IC.  I think DP benefits from NewOrg in many of the same ways DP would benefit from IEEE-ISTO or the tentatively mentioned Berkman Center Umbrella-type-org (which are current our "best guess" for how to form the legal DP.org).  That being said, there does seem to be a debate over at IC about the branding strategy for NewOrg, so that end state is still TBD (see "VISIBILITY" below for the state of that debate).  

But either way, I hope NewOrg is being conceived as the kind of umbrella org that *can* be in the background supporting a strongly independent DP-branded T3 Project (see NEXT STEPS below for more on that concept).  I'd like the end-game to be up to the project leadership themselves, not NewOrg's Board.  Each Project should be able to decide if its a T1, T2, or T3... the NewOrg Board should be able to set the rules (for purposes of remaining financially solvent) for what is required to be a T1, T2, or T3 Project.

-- Brett

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett McDowell <br...@projectliberty.org>

Date: June 30, 2008 10:12:46 AM EDT

To: Drummond Reed <drummo...@cordance.net>

Cc: 'Mary Ruddy' <ma...@socialphysics.org>, 'Eugene Eric Kim' <ee...@blueoxen.com>, comm...@idcommons.net

Subject: Re: [Community] Preserving Identity Commons Purpose and Principles

There has been a lot of traffic over the weekend which is great to see.  But for the sake of time I'm going to simply respond to the most recent note in my inbox trying to address the key points others made in their posts (my apologies to anyone if I've not responded to your point, re-send/re-phrase if this response misses anything that's core to the discussion).

RE: VISIBILITY...
I can't tell if these comments are being made in the context of promoting public discussion (like what we are doing here now) or if this is really about NewOrg have a strong branding strategy for itself as part of its mission (vs. just supporting the strong branding strategy of its community-drive projects).  Could Bill, Eugene, Mary, and/or Drummond chime in to clarify?

RE: HIERARCHY...
FWIW, I don't think "hierarchy" is a dirty word.  I think the key is how they are applied and governed, but if we are honest with ourselves we see we are surrounded by hierarchies we would not want supplanted by purely chaordic systems.  I believe in the value of well-governed hierarchies as much as I believe in well-governed chaordic systems.  FWIW, I personally think what we need is a hybrid of both.  That said, if folks prefer "blue, red, green" as labels between our types of projects over "tier 1, tier 2, tier 3" I guess I have no objection except I'm somewhat concerned we will get more easily confused if we don't have numbers involved in the naming scheme.  Because there is something hierarchical about what I've proposed... cost.  I'm looking at creating a recognition between projects based on resource consumption.  If we ignore this distinction we are right back to where we started in terms of lacking the resources we need to meet the needs of the community.

RE: CONTROL/FINANCES...
Kaliya made a number of references to control.  All I want to say is that we should not be designing this to disenfranchise any one community of stakeholders, and that includes large corporations.  All are welcome, all are empowered, and all are respected... from the individual, to the NGO, to the Government Agency, to the Enterprise, to the Vendor, to the Telco, to the WebCo (and anyone else I left out).  I'm sure you all agree to what I just wrote but do you agree that financial sponsorship should be "rewarded" in any material way?  What if financial sponsorship *is* rewarded but sponsorship opportunity is tiered to capacity to pay?  Wouldn't that be inherently fair?  Something like individual sponsors pay very, very little, but large corporate sponsors pay more, yet both are recognized and "rewarded" equally from a governance/leadership/control perspective?

More specifically, I like what I see OIDF doing with their $ model... there's a notion of membership but the only thing "buying" a membership actually "buys" you is branding recognition and a vote on the ratification of final ouput (correct me if I'm wrong!).  Loosely translated, this is a hybrid innovation between traditional "pay-to-play" membership models and the "charitable donation" model that IC and DP have been looking at.  If you don't pay, you still play fully with one (arguably minimal) exception... the final ratification of output (but you do get to vote in the small groups who produce the output).  What do folks think of this model being adopted as a core best practice for NewOrg?

RE: SCOPE...
I agree with Kaliya that NewOrg should include all relevant aspects of network identity, including relevant social issues like privacy.  That being said, I think a best practice is for NewOrg to liaise/network with pre-existing communities/org's who specialize in those areas vs. make (any) attempts to reinvent the wheel and pass of NewOrg as the subject-matter-experts in those social areas.  I think our special sauce will be in the harmonization/interoperability/rationalization of social issues, regulatory/legal issues, and technology issues as they are applied to digital identity.

RE: PRIOR ART...
More than one of you have mentioned a list Paul T. put together (and I think I was in the meeting when he put that together) so by all means would someone please distribute that list of "organizational requirements" to this thread?

NEXT STEPS...
So now I'd like to talk about tier 2 (T2) Projects of NewOrg (I'll keep using the numeric system until I see resolution over the hierarchy debate).  BTW, I don't think all T1 Projects are destined to become T2 Projects, EUCLId certainly wasn't.  But planning for the possibility is key.

T2 Projects:
These projects consume more than T1 projects.  They require some level of dedicated staffing.  They may require any number of other "a la carte" services from NewOrg as well (back to that list Paul built and some of the brainstorming we've done on this thread so far).  So rather than try to arbitrarily decipher between T2 and T3 Projects, I will focus on just one differentiation which I do think is fundamental and not arbitrary; Branding & Governance.

T3 Projects:
These projects require resource investment unique from T1 or T2 projects.  They require their own independent branding strategy, trademark management, marketing campaigns, and the ability to make quick independent decisions regarding these aspects of their project (that's where governance comes in).  I would say OpenID, Liberty, and InfoCard are likely candidates for T3 Project status, but the devil is in the details.  It may be so advantageous to remain a T2 Project that some folks (Liberty for instance) would prefer to operate its multiple projects as T2 projects leaving the branding strategy and marketing investments to NewOrg vs. taking on the cost and complexity of managing all of that themselves.  But others I'm sure will opt for T3 status and so I think it is important to allow for that in our deliberations.

So, let's start looking at the list of requirements we have collected, drop them under T1, T2, and T3 respectively, and shift our attention to how to pay for all of these services (with the going-in assumption that if you consume more form NewOrg, you somehow contribute more to NewOrg but in a manner that reduces your cost through leveraging shared investments and resources across the entire community).

Eventually (which might be sooner than later) we'll get to branding of NewOrg but let's save that to last.

-- Brett

On Jun 30, 2008, at 2:58 AM, Drummond Reed wrote:

Another +1.

=Drummond

-----Original Message-----

From: communit...@idcommons.net [mailto:community-

bou...@idcommons.net] On Behalf Of Mary Ruddy

Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 1:47 PM

To: 'Eugene Eric Kim'

Cc: comm...@idcommons.net

Subject: Re: [Community] Preserving Identity Commons Purpose and

Principles

+++1  agree strongly that visibility is key to trust and at this stage to

gaining momentum and avoiding delimitative efforts.

-----Original Message-----

From: communit...@idcommons.net

[mailto:communit...@idcommons.net] On Behalf Of Eugene Eric Kim

Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 2:28 AM

To: comm...@idcommons.net

Subject: Re: [Community] Preserving Identity Commons Purpose and

Principles

On 6/28/08, Bill Washburn <billhw...@yahoo.com> wrote:

In discussing this, I believe the question of prospective

organization's potential to become  trustworthy fairly quickly - both

operationally and perceptually - will be fundamental.  It seems to me

an important part of building trust and committing to trustworthy

service/support for the community is prominent visibility for the new

organization - should it be developed.  Isn't being visible an

important part of trust, just as a strong brand engenders trust as long

as

it behaves well?

This is a really valuable point, Bill.  We (or at least I) have

rationalized

away our lack of visibility, and fairly, I think.

However, if we view visibility as a key mechanism for trust, then it's our

responsibility to prioritize it more.

=Eugene

--

======================================================================

Eugene Eric Kim ................................ http://xri.net/=eekim

Blue

Oxen Associates ........................ http://www.blueoxen.com/

======================================================================

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[Mike Smith]

As I write this it is 2:09 am and I'm still working with several hours ahead of me.  Unfortunately I won't be on the call.
Mike Smith - dominoconsultant

---

From: brettm...@gmail.com
To: dataportabilit...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [DP.AG.Steering] Fwd: [Community] Preserving Identity Commons Purpose and Principles
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:25:57 -0400

[Aaron Cheung]

Acknowledged that Brett was indeed proposing NewUSDUmbrellaOrg (by now aka NewOrg I believe), which was somehow confused with IC; the confusion I think was due to Kaliya's asking of why I thought it was complex followed with quite a bit of intro to IC goodies and positions, and the conversation went astray from that point on under the impression of NewOrg = IC, in which case, my bad, of admittedly not having read much about NewOrg on the IC lists, other than the cross-posted fragment.

 

So, to straighten the record, there was no issue about IC vs. DP then, but rather, NewOrg and/with/versus DP, in proper context after realignment, if my understanding is now correct, fwiw.

 

And therefore the DP-eaten-alive perception still stands -- though I'd think, it's perhaps more of a concern (if any) to the dataportability.org "stakeholders" (whoever they are, which in fact does NOT include yours truly, or most of the DP Steering members, I believe.)

 

Anyway, my assessment also still stands, that it's pretty complicated and convoluted, despite worth exploring -- at least academically.

 

Regards,

/ac.