Help the existing standards bodies

The standards which currently make up the proposed solutions for DataPortability will need help either ironing out problems with proposed standards, or in implementing existing standards - and with writing test suites, documentation, mailing list and community administration and so on. These bodies include:

• Microformats.org for common use HTML data patterns, including hCard, XFN, hCalendar, VoteLinks, xFolk etc.
• WHATWG for HTML 5
• OAuth.net for the OAuth authentication protocol
• OpenID.net for the OpenID single-sign on protocol
• W3C Semantic Web Interest Group for anything related to RDF, OWL, GRDDL, SPARQL and related "upper-case" Semantic Web technology
• Atom is a syndication format for blog posts and similar episodic content - see the Atom Project Wiki's How To Get Involved page
• OPML defines an outline format commonly used for sharing subscription lists between RSS readers. You can get involved with the unofficial effort to write formal schema and test cases here.
• Higgins Project is an open identity framework designed to integrate identity, profile and social relationship information across multiple sites, applications and devices.

Write prototype mashups that demonstrate possible use cases

Using existing APIs and technology, you can build online and desktop applications or scripts that show potential use cases which could be possible with more open data available.

Lobby sites you currently use to start adopting open standards and practices

If you use and value a site but they don't make data available for reuse, perhaps you could send them an e-mail, leave a note on their issue tracker, wiki or message board and explain how you would value the site more if it implemented more of the above standards. Explain why you think standards are important and what particular uses such implementations would satisfy.

You may find that showing how such an implementation would work is helpful - and if you are a programmer, you can always try and put something together in a Greasemonkey script or a script on your own site to demonstrate the possibilities.

Implement open standards within open source projects

Open source tools - both desktop and online - can be improved by adding support for open standards. Get involved with open source projects that you care about and try to add support for these features. This may be as simple as asking on a mailing list or forum for such implementation, or by providing it yourself as a patch, script or plugin.

Being Web-oriented means that the natural place for this kind of work is in the realm of blogging software, content management systems, message boards, open source social networking solutions and so on.

Help third parties implement more open solutions

Is a local group of people you know building a website? Help them implement open standards and explain to them the benefits of such standards.