Utility of Community and Business Groups and VIVO

I'm intrigued by a VIVO (1), a linked data and linked open data based
platform for research activity, and the Community and Business Groups at
the W3C. I know VIVO would be useful to a research community, but I wonder
whether the being involved in the underlying standards would be useful as
well. I noticed that Henry Story linked (2) to WebID (3) and Web Access
Control (4) that would seem to be useful in something like VIVO. My
question is are these technologies still in development to the extent that
it would be advantageous for a research community to be involved?

Is there any argument that could be made for being involved in the
community and business groups? I suspect Webpayments will be important for
open access due to comments by Eben Moglen and John Wilbanks (6). E-learning
could be something to check out since it is a greatly expanding area (7).
Big data comes to mind. My apologies to any groups not mentioned.

The other thing I've come up with is that involvement in standards allows
one to see what the state of the art is, and moreover ensure that the
standards developed meet your use case.

Brent

(1) http://vivoweb.org/
(2)  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2013May/0206.html
(3) Web ID 1.0, < http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/webid/spec/ >
<http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/webid/spec/>
(4) WebAccessControl, < http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebAccessControl >
<http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebAccessControl>
(5) Eben Moglen on Facebook, Google and Government Surveillance
      <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJCczbSF-B8#t=14m23s><http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJCczbSF-B8#t=14m23s>
(6) Second-Generation Open Access: Building an Open Content <
http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20070208_179 >