Re: selling webid protocol, the elevator pitch

On 30 January 2011 01:53, Peter Williams <home_pw@msn.com> wrote:
> Ive been selling webid protocol as a "viable" next wave on the basis that:
> you just add a paragraph to your current "home page".
>
> Then, concerning the digital certs folks have already (used for signing
> e-forms in real estate) : the digitalid you have for signing disclosures
> and forms... it can then point to your home page. Together, they fill out
> the usual stuff on website forms.
>
> I get around the "useability" of #me by: well I dont'. its not an issue, and
> should not be one. if I were to get challenged to defend "the gibberish" as
> iot would probably be called, I'll say something like: Its just a pointer to
> a particular paragraph in the text. Just like the old days, when the web
> started!

That's pretty much right, it is as simple as that.

It's a pointer to a paragraph in a page.  In fact, that paragraph in
the page is a pointer to you, your digital footprint, your reputation,
your business, or anything else you want it to! :)

I tend to tell people that WebID will be part of HTML5 rather than
using terms like RDFa etc.  That seems to get them more interested.

>
> That's it. That's the elevator pitch. I can deliver it in about 3 sentences,
> and about 10 seconds. Which is good, becuase that's about all I get - before
> eyes glaze over.
>
> So, its quite important that we tell the same core story: folks amend their
> existing home page, and get their digital ids updated so it points there.
>
> some of the younger age group people (40+) do ask so what? and why bother?
> (Its usually the partner of the person Im addressing, making small talk.)
>
> So you dont have to remember a different password at all those sites!
>
> This usually gets a nod. Chink go the wine glasses. Hopefully they go and
> talk about the techno-wizz they just met.. from X.
>
> In the US particularly, with mainstream media sites like foxnews.com doing
> **really** good SSO login and UI for the demographic I work with (who like
> the conservatism that Fox sells) they already get it that the login page
> comes from their choice of yahoo, hotmail, gmail ... login servers. Even
> "that facebook thing." Thus, I find the main message has already been sold
> (by the likes of Fox). Its in the general consciousness, in the US, already.
>
> I dont see much evidence in UK media that there is anything like as
> sophisticated an SSO uptake experience as you see in the online US media. I
> supsect it becuase the US just plays the game better, with CNN and Fox
> having equity shares in the likes of Facebook. There is a mutual interest in
> take off...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Subject: Re: WebID-ISSUE-7 (bblfish): Move esw wiki contents? [WebID wiki]
>> From: henry.story@bblfish.net
>> Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:47:17 +0100
>> CC: public-xg-webid@w3.org
>> To: home_pw@msn.com
>>
>>
>> On 29 Jan 2011, at 21:04, Peter Williams wrote:
>>
>> > Not sure I like:
>>
>> (( In the future for specific problems with the wiki, please start a new
>> e-mail thread, so
>> we can track issues one by one, and not in one large thread that is going
>> to be infinitely
>> long. That avoids discussions overlapping too. Also it is best to have one
>> issue per
>> thread as far as possible. Thanks. ))
>>
>> I'll interpret your post here as far as it is relevant to this thread, ie
>> our relation to the
>> wiki.
>>
>> > "A Web ID looks similar to a home page URL, but it specifically
>> > identifies Entity You of Type: Person. Typically, the definition of Type:
>> > Person,comes from a vocabulary or ontology or data dictionary. One such
>> > vocabulary is FOAF, which is the basis of this effort." on the webid page.
>>
>> My opinion is that this is lax writing trying to speak to a particular
>> audience. First of all
>> a WebID identifies an Agent, so it can identify people, dogs,
>> extraterrestrials,
>> robots, and companies too.
>>
>> Different audiences need different levels of introduction. This is a more
>> of an lighthearted
>> introduction, that may fail for being a bit too technical. It certainly
>> has not had a lot of
>> careful editing.
>>
>> There is a lot more one can do there to improve it.
>>
>> > What I really liked about the use of RDFa in the FOAF+SSL pre-incubator
>> > world was that the good ol' home page could easily be foaf card, and thus
>> > the home page URI is a webid stem. To the average punter (who will rarely
>> > understand the significance of #tag on the end), the home page URI is a
>> > webid.
>>
>> So your issue here is not with the wiki but with # URLs or with
>> useability, right?
>> I'll open another thread to answer that.
>>
>> > The is no way in a million years I'll get even 2 realtors to ever use
>> > the foaf-generator sites and tools listed on the wiki. Getting them to add a
>> > paragraph of special html markup interspersed with normal paragraph
>> > form...is quite feasible. Its a template, and we can give it to them.
>>
>> If I take this as a criticism of the wiki, and so on track of this thread,
>> then I'd have
>> to see this as a reference and criticism of
>> http://esw.w3.org/Foaf%2Bssl/HOWTO
>>
>> The RDFa examples on the HOWTO page are out of date and need updating. So
>> does the text need
>> improving? Certainly. The spec is already much better at that. For those
>> things it may be
>> better in fact to remove the text from the wiki, and really concentrate
>> more on improving
>> the spec.
>>
>> So my conclusion:
>>
>> Where possible if we can do something in the spec, we should concentrate
>> on that,
>> so that we can focus on quality. The wiki was a way to get to the spec.
>> Once we
>> have the spec, it may be a way to help people with other levels of issues.
>>
>>
>> Henry
>>
>> Social Web Architect
>> http://bblfish.net/
>>
>

Received on Sunday, 30 January 2011 01:07:02 UTC