Re: task forces -- Re: first rough draft of 2nd charter

Hello Group,

More Catching up:

> We need to seriously think about the connector and comm/outreach  
> piece and if we should spend most/all of the time at this. Example:  
> should "OGD patterns" happen within the IG as a TF or should the IG  
> act as connector to a CG with mixed Membership that would develop  
> the most technical stuff?

A CG makes the most sense to me. Collaborating with another group(s)  
will automatically expand the network we have for outreach and add a  
few more voices into the mix to help us target specific audiences.  
We'll also have the added benefit of additional expertise in other  
areas.

> The second focus area or task force also concerns me. "Web  
> Development" is to broad. I think that OGD is fine but I asked this  
> question before: where's the citizen in this citizen-centric  
> government? Data.gov is not for citizens. They need some other way  
> to access information.

Jeff Veen[1] has lots of great ideas and experience developing UIs  
that help users effectively understand data. He redesigned the way  
Google Analytics works so the raw data of webstats creates its own  
meaning. Shaun Inman [2] has experience with this as well. He also  
just released a very slick RSS reader [3]. The point of all of that  
name dropping is that those guys don't see what they're doing as "Web  
Development" so much as "User Experience" and "User Interface" design.  
Perhaps that's what we should call it, and perhaps that's how we  
should frame the recommendations and discussions about the citizen  
aspect of OGD.

> We might want to focus on front end and visualization stuff on TF2  
> but if so, we should be very careful how we frame this to do it more  
> closely and narrowly.

I guess what I wrote above also responds to this thought.

> John and I discussed at our meeting on Wed that one option might be  
> to take the "interoperability" aspects and associate them with OGD;  
> leaving something focussed on "providing public services
> using the web" (i.e. we have an "enable" taskforce based on OGD, and a
> "provide" taskforce looking at the practical aspects of using the  
> web to
> deliver online services and information from government.

This sounds like a good plan.

> I've been recently reminded that W3C only covers a small piece of  
> the visualization space and that much in this area is still R&D and  
> outside W3C scope. We might want to catalog the applicable W3C  
> technologies and just work on those (eg. (X)HTML, CSS, Webapps,  
> Mobile, Usability, SVG...) and add very closely related bits (eg:  
> usability), maybe this guide, recently released by UK COI could help  
> frame discussion? -- http://www.coi.gov.uk/improvingwebsites/
> I'm also sure Rachel and the US Federal Web Managers Coucil could  
> help us with the requirements for this.

I'm not too familiar with other W3C techs other than (X)HTML and CSS,  
but HTML5 has Google & Co excited for some good reasons. Apple's  
Safari and Google's Chrome are both browsers that are moving toward  
cloud-hosted application workflows, which ties in nicely with the  
Mobile web. I think this might be an area where we could reap a good  
harvest, but I'm not sure how much tilling and weeding we'd have to do  
first.

[1] http://www.veen.com/jeff/index.html
[2] http://www.shauninman.com/
[3] http://feedafever.com/

See y'all Wednesday.

Adam