February 2008 Report

The DataPortability Project

February 2008 Report

DataPortability February Summary

Since the emergence of the data portability movement in November 2007, a significant amount of attention continues to surround the resulting DataPortability Project.  In every month since, the Project has continued to grow, while concrete outputs are developed and delivered. This report highlights some of the things that the individuals and organizations involved in the DataPortability Project have accomplished each month and what is coming in the future.  You can find more information about the Project by navigating to the multiple resources on the main site: http://dataportability.org

February 2008 highlights

1. Action Group agendas defined further: Highlighted in greater detail in the individual group reports, the Action Groups continue to clarify their scope and participation guidelines and establish short- and long-term goals. The agenda of some groups -- for example, the Policy Action Group -- will become more specific as we work through general portability issues and other groups' outcome is ready for Policy.
2. New Logo design competition initiated:  Due to Red Hat's concerns over logo similarity to the existing DataPortability Logo,  the group announced a competition to select a new logo for the organization.  To date, more than 150 people have submitted entries.  TechCrunch is supplying and hosting the voting system.  Submissions are due 12 March 2008, and an announcement of the voting period will follow shortly after that.
3. What DataPortability Means to me Video Project: Submissions continue to come in from the global community and a partial list of video submitted are outlined in the original project thread.
4. Data Portability Project Investigation phases outlined:  In an effort to provide structure around next-step deliverables, the DataPortability Project Roadmap has outlined the Investigation phase to include:
   1. Research and outreach, which includes a multiple month research project lead by J. Trent Adams.  There's much opportunity here to participate -- Trent is looking for  more bodies here.
   2. Best practices documentation
   3. First-mover implementations

Update: Action Groups

The DataPortability Action Groups own a part of the DataPortability story. They are the lifeblood of the initiative. They make things happen. As the months progress, each Action Group continues to self-organize around emerging issues and the arrival of new volunteer talent, at the same time developing road maps and action plans for their specific topics.  You can find the results on the various Action Groups pages. This month's highlights are presented below.

The Steering Action Group

Group Definition: The Steering Action Group helps set the direction and sustain the DataPortability Project as a cohesive whole. It consists of representatives from the other action groups and individuals who wish to help set the direction of the project.

February Highlights

• Documentation Platform: A key aspect of DataPortability's work style is to document perspectives and work product via a digital participatory method.  Google Pages, the initial platform, could not serve the expanding needs of the Project.  After multiple tool evaluations, the Steering and Evangelism Groups led the decision making process.  The resulting choice is Confluence.  Migration of content is complete, and a full move to the platform will occur in early March. The site is now live at: http://wiki.dataportability.org. Many thanks to Atlassian, who have kindly given the DataPortability Project this hosted solution on a complimentary basis.
• Group Outreach: In an effort to consult with and involve existing tech community standards efforts, DataPortability volunteers met with individuals expert in identity, OpenID, technology platforms, social networks and corporations, including Microsoft and Facebook, all of which resulted in their confirmed commitments to data portability standards.
• DataPortability Project Principles: As we continue to define what data portability "is" and how DataPortability can contribute, we have also begun to articulate principles for participation in dataportability.org. The DataPortability Project Charter page is the main source for information about our Principles, Practices and Goals.
• Steering Group Podcast Recordings: DataPortability is dedicated to open dialog and transparency in decision-making, so all Steering Group conference call meetings are available via the DataPortability Podcast Feed.

The Technical Action Group

Group Definition: The Technical Group is in charge of curating the Design goals, Use Cases and Technical Blueprint development. In all aspects, the goal is to find and contextualize existing work from other groups to weave them into a story - not to invent or discuss the problems/solutions from scratch.

February Highlights

• Documentation: The Technical page on Confluence now provides an overview of the group's initiatives, thanks to the significant efforts of many volunteers.  Results include the following.
  • As a followup to the San Francisco and London DataPortability meetings in February, contributed to the What is The DataPortability Project? documentation
  • Created and began populating a reference library: Reference Library (Links)
  • [Updating Use Cases] page
• Google Group Discussion: The Technical Action Group continues to hold many conversations within the Group discussion boards around issues of Identity, existing standards and the technical blueprint.

The Policy Action Group

Group Definition: Tasked with creating a Policy Blueprint. This group will largely feed off of issues identified by the Technical Action Group as well as other discussions about broader issues such as privacy, user rights, and law, and more.

February Highlights

As highlighted in the summary, the Policy Action Group has not produced any reportable results and members of the Steering Action Group will address more attention to the actions assigned to this Group. Participation is greatly appreciated by all.

The Evangelism Action Group

Group Definition: Tasked with managing all internal and external content, collaboration, and communications, this group maintains documentation, manages media relations, and develops information products that ensure consistent message and effective collaboration between the Action Groups.

February Highlights

• The porting of documentation from Google Pages platform and implementation of Confluence Wiki: After a lot of discussion and evaluation within the group, the Evangelism group managed the effort to port all content from Google Pages, which included establishing the architecture of the DataPortability Wiki Home Page. The Evangelism Action Group will continue to drive the adoption of the Wiki as the main documentation area for all project related conversations and records.
• Brand: The The DataPortability Brand Usage Guide was finalized, with the intention of real-time updating and maintenance by this group.
• Media: Press Room is open, and it currently includes Press Releases for major DataPortability events.
• Outreach and Public Appearances: The group has established a Speakers Bureau. There have been multiple public appearances by co-founders in the US, UK and Australia including:
  • Paul Jones and Ian Forrester- London Geek Dinner
  • Chris Saad on Mix08 panel via Techcrunch
  • Ian Forrester- BarCamp London
  • Chris Saad & Frank Arrigo Scoble Qik Video from Mix08-
  • Loic Lemeur interview with Chris Saad
• 'What DataPortability Means to Me" Video Project: After requests from the community, the group decided to extend the "why data portability" video project, which is designed to create a digital video record of the inspiration for dataportability.org and capture the vision and goals of project participants and observers. The extensionis until Monday 12 AM PST on 31 March 2008
• The Localization Action Group is now integrated into the Evangelism Group: The purpose of the Localization teams is to coordinate the translations activities of the DataPortability website, the blueprint documents, FAQ pages and other public documents. To date, participants from France, Italy and Spain have established active teams dedicated to participation in dataportability.org and ensuring that all activities are communicated in these countries. The Localization Skype chat room will continue to be an open room for people to communicate around translation and localization issues. Please see the Multi-lingual translation of DataPortability Assets for work accomplished so far and/or to participate in these efforts

The Implementation Action Group

Group Definition: Tasked with assisting developers in implementing the given standards and blueprints that enable Data Portability.

This activity of this group has been paused, pending suggestions that it merge with the Technical action group

Additional progress this month has included the following.

Leadership by existing standards leaders
While membership in all Action Groups is open to anyone, leaders from all the existing standards groups/bodies (W3C, Higgins, Identity Commons, Microformats, OpenID, etc.) have been personally invited to the Steering Action Group to help guide and influence the direction of the project. At its core, the DataPortability Project has been designed to highlight and effect wide scale adoption of their work. The Evangelism Group will work on a two-month Research Project (March/April) to document this information.

Goals for March

• Select the new DataPortability Project logo after community voting
• Kick-start the "research" phase of the DataPortability Project
• Further define the decision making process. After a what some may call a laborious decision process around the documentation platform, it's clear that the Steering Action Group  must lead the effort to streamline decision making without sacrificing the contributions of all areas of the tech community.
• Operationalise and move to initiatives.  Now that DataPortability has a technical structure and more project members know each other, the Project can focus more on process, content and reporting findings.

About this report

• Do you have questions about the monthly reports or have content to contribute to the next report? Please contact Mary Trigiani (mtrigiani@foldier.com) or Daniela Barbosa (danielavbarbosa@gmail.com)
• DataPortability progress reports for other updates
• Contributors: Elias Bizannes, daniela barbosa, Mary Trigiani, Julian Bond, Phil Wolff, Brady Brim-DeForest