RE: One Group versus Multiple and how to prioritize the work within a framework

Hello,
 
Daniel asked me to explain/expand on my doubts about whether we were all on
the same page.
 
Ancient history (just for context): 
For at least a year before the W3C workshop in Barcelona, there had been
discussions among some of the W3C members (led by Dan Bri, Renato and Harry
Halpin, among others I believe) about starting an incubator group to focus
on (as I understand it) how to harmonize a number of on-going activities in
the area of social media data portability and interoperability between
social networks. There had been a proposal to establish/form an Incubator
Group. The charter for this was published and experienced a relatively low
activity level. 
 
Separately, beginning in late fall 2007 and completely independent of the
W3C, I had been thinking that there needed to be a forum in which social
networking architects and experts in many other disciplines, would be able
to describe the state of social networking, anticipate the barriers to
smooth and continued growth of this industry and to work on different
approaches to address the challenges. In mid-Feb 2008, I met Dominique and
over the course of the following 6 months we cooked up interest in/support
for the workshop. 
 
Recent history: The Call for Participation for a new workshop hosted by the
W3C Mobile Web Initiative was issued in early October and, with the
participation of over 100 authors/co-authors by way of their 72 position
papers, and the 57 different organizations which joined in Barcelona, a
first step was taken towards the goal of seriously studying and addressing
the future of social networking.   
 
We are not acting or thinking alone! There are, I believe, other groups who
share our goals (see the workshop Call for Participation for more on all of
that detail).
 
During the workshop, enthusiasm for taking on a few of the large issues was
high. Other topics which we could have fleshed out were "postponed" due to
lack of expertise among the workshop participants or other reasons.
 
Currently, we have the task of organizing ourselves/our investments into
coherent work within or outside of W3C. Without a good framework, a lot of
the specialists on this list are unlikely to be able to contribute. 
 
On Friday Jan 23, in response to Alexandre Passant's comment about the
nomenclature of multiple groups [see thread in the archive entitled "Wiki
Page on Best Practices"] and around the same time as the question/poll was
put forth by Harry regarding whether there should be one or more groups, I
suggested a two-dimensional framework for handling/organizing our
discussion. 
 
In one direction we have the subjects ("themes" or "challenges" is what we
called them in the workshop) and, in the other direction, the type of
activity/deliverable which is envisioned or needed. 
 
This matrix or map describes the subjects with which we are grappling and
trying to come to some consensus to in terms of priorities without losing
sight of the big picture. 
 
In order to illustrate my suggestion (matrix) and to make our potential
discussion about the discussion map and "zones of interest" easier, I
prepared this page: http://www.perey.com/W3C_Activity_by_Topic_Matrix.html
 
Not all the fields/cells in the framework are necessarily active or even
desirable. 
 
If anyone wants to take this JPEG and move it into "W3C space," that's fine
with me. I only have limited mastery of a limited number of tools with which
to express myself. The page I propose is the best I can do!
 

Christine 

 

Christine Perey   

PEREY Research & Consulting

 

 <mailto:cperey@perey.com> cperey@perey.com 

mobile (Swiss): +41 79 436 68 69

from US: +1 617 848 8159

from anywhere (Skype): Christine_perey