Consolidation of Task-forces

    Looking at the Unified Charter and then activity on this list, it's
pretty obvious we have too many task forces and not enough people to
commit [1]. I see no reason why we should not consolidate the task
forces. I'd rather aim for a smaller amount of quality deliverables that
include running code than innumerable reports on the current state of
play in social networking. Remember - the point of an W3C XG is to
figure out what needs to be *standardized* Therefore, I suggest:

1) That the Landscape and Business Task force merge and produce a single
report, talking about the current landscape, business potentials, and
future for W3C standardization in the area of social networking. It
appears that Tim Anglade and Christine Perey would appear to be willing
to edit this document. This report will be the main proposal put forward
for future work to the rest of the W3C once the XG ends.

Also, note that internationalization and access for people of all levels
of abilities has been a strong point for the W3C, and this should
clearly be part of the final report.

2) That the Privacy and Trust Group Task Force merge with the Contextual
Data Task force. It seems contextual data is also code for mobile
phones, so obviously Distributed Architecture should take this into
account. It appears Krisha Sankar has an interest in editing this. A
single deliverable that inspects current solutions would be good.

3) That the Distributed Architectures and Interoperability task forces
merge, and produce a single document that maps data-formats from
differing networks and makes a case for distributed social networking.
Fabien Gandon, Joaquin Salvachua and Krishna Sankar have all expressed
interest in editing here.

First thing we do as an XG is we jointly produce a use-case document
that shows how business practices, best practices, privacy and trust,
and distributed architectures can work together. 

Finally, we see if we can find or help produce three interoperable
implementations (ideally building off of and working with existing
code-bases, such as that put forward by Henry Story) that demonstrate
running code that fulfills these ideas. Ideally, at least one of these
code-bases would be mobile-phone based.

Instead of 7 task forces with lots of report-based deliverables, we get
three reports, the first 2 high-level, the latter 2 technical, and some
demo code.

1) Final Report to W3C
2) Use-Cases
3) Distributed Architecture and Interoperability Report and Mapping
4) Privacy and Trust Report
5) Code

We do a single telecon and mailing list at first, with option of
bifurcating into more as needed based on task-forces once task-forces
get going.

Also, we call it "Social Web" XG, as that name seems most popular [2].
Lastly, I'm happy to help chair, but I want a co-chair. Dan Brickley,
Renato Ianella, and Fabien Gandon have also said they would be up for
chairing, and Christine has done a good job de-factor chairing. Perhaps
people should choose between chairing and editing?

If there are not objections, I'll refactor the charter this coming
weekend. We can also make another Doodle talking about who would want to
join which of the consolidated task-forces, edit which documents, and
chair.

 I'd like to see the charter go to AC membership for voting fairly
shortly, say be Feb 23rd.

       thanks,
          harry

[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/UnifiedSocialXG
[2] http://www.doodle.com/4zdqm65sa8qmey8w

Received on Tuesday, 10 February 2009 19:34:47 UTC