Re: Hi everyone. Erik Anderson from Bloomberg LP

On 09/04/2013 07:06 PM, Erik Anderson wrote:
> My name is Erik Anderson.  I work at Bloomberg LP (Finance) in the 
> New York City area.  On behalf of Bloomberg I would like to 
> officially joining this group.

Welcome to the group, Erik. :)

For those of you that don't know much about Bloomberg LP, they are a
financial software, financial data, and media company based in New York
City. Revenues last year were close to $8 billion USD; they employ
roughly 15,000 people. Bloomberg's founder (Michael Bloomberg) is the
mayor of New York City.

The company itself controls roughly 1/3rd of the global financial data
market. I cannot underscore how important Bloomberg LP's involvement in
the Web Payments group is. It sends a clear message that the things
we're working on here are of interest and importance to the future of
the financial services industry.

> I am here to listen, learn, and contribute "what I can".  Yes, I 
> follow cryptocurrencies and their various usage potentials like web 
> payments/microtransactions, but..., truth be told, I care even more 
> the direction finance will play on the web.  This group seems the 
> right place to start.

It certainly is. We're going to have a telecon next week, you should
definitely join, introduce yourself, and get a taste for the sort of
stuff we discuss here.

> I also wanted to say hi to Jonathan Mohan.  I see he is part of this 
> group.

For those of you that don't know Jonathan Mohan, he's the founder of
BitcoinNYC, one of the largest and most active Bitcoin community groups
in the US:

http://bitcoinnyc.org/

They have meetings every Thursday at 6pm, and plan events throughout the
year in NYC:

http://www.meetup.com/BitcoinNYC/

They're having a get-together next Tuesday where Patrick Griffin of
OpenCoin Inc. will be explaining how Ripple works (and answering any
questions the participants may have):

http://www.meetup.com/BitcoinNYC/events/138769722/

> Is this still just a community group? 

Yes, this is still a Community Group, but we expect that to change next
year at some point (given enough interest in this area by companies like
Bloomberg).

I'm currently on a speaking tour to spread the word about the work we're
doing. Inside Bitcoins was one of the first conferences. I'm also going
to be at SIBOS (world's banking conference in Dubai) Sept 15-20th,
then a conference in NYC at Google (EDGE) and then the Finacial Times,
the one in Bali at the United Nations (Internet Governance Forum), and
finally Shenzen (W3Cs technical plenary). All of these are leading up to
a Web Payments workshop that we'll be doing in February in Paris to
determine if W3C will officially pick up the Web Payments work by
creating a Working Group.

It is important that we go into that Working Group with a clear idea of
the standards we're going to create. We have a list of specs that we
plan to take into the Working Group here:

https://payswarm.com/specs/

... but we need more input on the from companies like Bloomberg,
Mozilla, the Bitcoin Community, Ripple, etc.

> If so lets do what we can to 
> move this to a Working Group please.  Its alarming to think this is 
> only a community group considering the worlds current and 
> trending interests.

Agreed. In order to get a Working Group, we need a number of the W3C
members (like Bloomberg, Mozilla, etc.) to step forward and say that Web
Payments is important to them and they want there to be an official Web
Payments WG created to standardize some of the technology that would
make value-exchange on the Web faster, easier, and more secure.

You joining this group and asserting Bloomberg LP's interest in an
official WG is one of the first steps on that path.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
http://blog.meritora.com/launch/

Received on Friday, 6 September 2013 17:24:21 UTC