Re: SocialWeb charter take 3

Hi there,

On 4/3/09 12:31, Tim Anglade wrote:
> Hi Dan, everybody,
>
> great work on the document. I'm still reading through the finer parts of
> it but I have the feeling it's a statement of purpose everybody can or
> will be able to agree on with few, if any adjustments.

Thanks. Feel free to tweak it directly in the wiki. My main concern was 
for a minimalism re chartered promises, but the text was put together 
last night quite spontaneously, and I don't feel any huge sense of 
ownership over it. Just hope the basic approach fits with expectations 
of others on this list.

> While agreeable, I'm a bit leery that this document does not go far
> enough in helping us organize ourselves. This document may be fine as a
> charter but if we agree to take it as such, what next? Where do we go
> from there?

Very good questions. I suppose I'd suggest we start by sketching 
candidate agenda topics for the first few meetings, and drafting a table 
of contents / topic areas for the final report (12 months can pass 
really fast!). The longer unified draft charter could even be considered 
(with some re-org) something approaching a skeleton structure for the 
final report.

So one approach would be to take the thematic elements of the unified 
charter, and a 2009 calendar, and try to partition discussions over eg. 
meetings 1 to meeting 6 (about 3 months worth for starters).

I think this would give a more concrete sense of the group's plans to 
outsider parties (eg. openid, dataportability, oauth, opensocial, xmpp, 
microformats, portablecontacts, w3c widgets, semweb, accessibility etc 
etc.). And hopefully also they could schedule to join some calls and 
report on their status, goals, issues. Structuring this in a productive 
way could be a lot of work...

 > Would we draft some other document to help flesh out areas
> of work and deliverables (I thought we agreed on being
> deliverable-oriented in this XG)?

Yes, I do want it to be a group where people get things done. The world 
has enough talking shops already. I hope the minimalistic charter 
doesn't give the impression that people will just talk. Rather I have a 
sense that we can't easily predict exactly which areas will flourish, so 
instead we provide an environment where chairs and peers can track 
various deliverables that people commit to producing. The good stuff 
either lives stand-alone, or is worked into the final report. The bad 
and neglected stuff, ... if it doesn't happen, that's life. We should 
try to cover all the areas already identified, but if we don't, I think 
it's OK.

>  					Would that be based on the
> UnifiedSocialXG document, with refinements as necessary from the survey
> and tonight's telecon?

Absolutely - I don't want to waste all the work that went into the 
Unified doc. I'm just wary of it all being directly in the charter. 
Quite how it gets refactored, I'm not best sure. All I know is that the 
most pressing documents on the group's agenda probably should be plans 
for meetings, and a plan for the ultimate report that will be due in a 
year's time. Beyond that, everything can be fluid and flexible, 
responsive to the time that people have available and the nature of the 
collaborations we manage to foster.

 > 		Or do you recommend we start with that charter
 > alone and let work self-organize afterwards through telecons and
 > mailing-list exchanges?
> I guess my question is (and that's a question for everybody on the list
> as well): what does the rest of the proposal entail if and once we
> accept some revision of an uncomplicated document like this one?

Does the above outline help? I realise I have been quite detached from 
these discussions over the past few months, so don't want to jump in and 
shake everything up unless the suggestions make sense to folk here...

cheers,

Dan

Received on Wednesday, 4 March 2009 12:07:23 UTC