Data Portability: First Open Meeting
by
on February 09, 2008,
Thursday night, the first face-to-face meeting was held at the RapLeaf offices in California or those involved in the Data Portability Group, including Chris Saad (Faraday Media), Daniela Barbosa (Dow Jones), J. Sullivan (Mozilla), Mike McKenna (Yahoo), Marc Canter, Tod Sampson (MyBlogLog), Steve Williams (Digg), Ben Metcalfe, David Recordon (Six Apart), Joseph Smarr (Plaxo), J. Trent Adams (MatchMine) and Jim Meyer (LinkedIn).
Chris Saad opened the meeting with introductions and explaining the new hierarchy of the Google Groups set up for the Data Portability Workgroup(s). The momentum of the group is moving so quickly that there is a need to focus people on more specific interests, leaving the general public group as a general mailing list, and funneling people into action groups, with a steering group, technical group, policy group, evangelism group, and implementation, all of which can be found via the general group's pages.
Those of us who were attending via Ustream had a bit of trouble following the conversation; with the feed at one end of a large oval, we missed some of the conversation (and introductions) but were able to pose some questions and interact with the meeting attendees (like Metcalfe and Adams) who were logged into the chat as well.
J. Trent Adams posted a much better summation of the accomplishments of the meeting than I was able to manage, but there were additional concerns that came up in the chat that were partially addressed at the meeting.
One of the problems that comes along with the incredible amount of press that the group has gotten recently is that everyone who becomes interested has their own idea of what data portability means. Allen Stern addressed the issue with his disagreement of Smarr's interpretation, but there are at least tens, if not hundreds, of different thoughts about what it should be.
At one point, a suggestion was made to have a small subset of the group devoted to making decisions regarding the direction of data portability, which Mary Trigiani of Foldier vehemently disagreed with, citing the previous discussion of data portability at FooCamp as being “too exclusive” and leaving people feeling “disenfranchised.”
Anyone who has been involved in Open Source software development knows that you have to have a steering group, and there has to be some hierarchy. You can't get a ship moving in any direction with 50 oars in the water each rowing in their own direction. I understand that in order to have buy-in from so many different groups, no one wants to alienate anyone, but the reference made at the meeting (and I'm sorry I forgot who made it) to OpenID was a valid one. They developed the technology, then took it out to various companies and asked for buy-in. In order to “strike while the iron is hot,” the luxury of having 100 people all defining things differently and addressing different concerns before there is even a rudimentary roadmap makes the scope of the project much larger than it has to be, and slows down progress.
In all probability, some of the people currently expressing interest will drop off, and hopefully leave a core group willing to take charge and determine the most important issues, leaving the noise behind.
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The classic hype cycle will go like this:
This sounds cool (foocamp)
This is a great idea!
This is going to change everything! (this meeting)
This is going to be great, but it’s taking too long
This isn’t going anywhere
What a load of crap!
Then, if the core people have the stamina and stubbornness, they’ll have an opportunity to get some work done. It won’t happen until the hippies get weeded out of the system. Democracy doesn’t work for these things, it has to be a benevolent dictatorship, or at the very least a meritocracy where the people doing the work make the decisions and ignore the shiftless hangers-on with more opinions than ability to help.
Cyndy, your post does an excellent job of illuminating the important issues of inclusion and transparency as well as definition. Per Grendel’s comment, there has to be order and reason in every process. My concern is that we strive to invite all who do have more than opinions — experience, use cases — to the table. Whether they be the already visible players or emerging contributors. Sometimes those “new” to such groups are reticent and need encouragement to step up and play a role, so one of the responsibilities of those who have achieved known reputations is to keep the process open. Most simply, it’s mentoring. And I’m confident that the folks who are putting organization to the question of data portability will pull this off without chaos and confusion. They clearly understand that to expose ideas of merit, we must do everything we can to capture knowledge from all willing to contribute theirs and participate.
Experience and use cases don’t pay the bills, Mary.
The main responsibility of the leaders of such initiatives is to keep the number of people talking to the smallest quorum necessary. That means choosing a subset of the people who can speak to as wide a set of experience as possible and can actually contribute materially to the work being done (not by throwing out more ideas, but by actually DOING the work).
Not to be negative, but my experience actually running open volunteer-based projects is exactly counter to what you’re saying. It’s more important to edit out and limit the scope than it is to be all inclusive and open. From looking through the list of participants, I’m not encouraged that anyone has run something like this or has the requisite level of ego combined with competence to tell someone “no”. I’m worried that they’ll listen to you, which will just lead to a year of pain and no progress before it either fails or grows up.
Grendel, how’s this for an ego-laden no: BITE ME.
Just kidding. But please do read what I’m saying. We probably agree more than we disagree. Nowhere have I said that someone should not be in charge. And in no way do I advocate letting people like myself, without technology portfolio, drive this bus. Also, from my experience in business and technology for lo these many years, thinking/writing/editing/designing by committee is unproductive.
But there are many qualified, credential-ed technologists who are out there trying to address data portability — whatever its incarnation — and you/we might not even know who they are because they are not part of the current elite. You have to remember how the elite got to be elite. Somewhere along the way, someone listened and welcomed them. Are you willing to risk missing an important development just because you think everyone who has something to offer is already on the scene? That you have your quorum?
Further: sometimes you learn something from people who don’t share your point of view just by having them at the table. True leaders are able to integrate information from everywhere to come up with direction, solutions and results. They aren’t afraid of disagreement. And I smell fear of that underneath your comments. Why do you categorize dialog — managed by leaders — as not part of the work?
The startup I serve — foldier — is about giving people ownership of their content without compromising the investments of the valued, established players that give us a place to put all our content. This may not even be the focal issue for others in the data portability organization. Does that mean our scientists and I cannot find a way to work on this and be part of the community? Even just as followers and do-bees?
One note to you: benevolent dictatorship is how fascism started. I would choose my words carefully. And why don’t you come out of the shadows and identify yourself to those of us who aren’t in on your pseudonym? It’s warm and friendly out here, and we’re all just folks.
I’m not sure what my identity has to do with my points, nor what your post has to do with what I said… Nowhere did I say to choose the best known “elite” as the members to get things done.
You can compare benevolent dictatorships with facism if you like,but it’s how things actually get done.
Content != technology
Free and open content shared with the community is good. Free and open access to the process of actually getting things done is the US Congress, which is mostly non-threatening because they can’t get anything useful done. The watered down compromises that do come out end up taking 3 times as long as it should.
For some reason you admit that design by committee is unproductive, then go about the rest of the post advocating it.
Now I understand why you call yourself Grendel. Good luck to you, my friend.
Form over substance. Now I understand why you’re in marketing.