On this page:
Announcement
WHAT: Steering Group Teleconference
WHEN: Monday, May 19, 2008 at 21:00 - 22:00 GMT
- San Francisco: 2pm
- Boston: 5pm
- London: 10pm
- Berlin: 11pm
- Hong Kong: 5am (May 20)
- Tokyo: 6am (May 20)
- Sydney: 7am (May 20)
WHO: Open to any contributors
WHERE:
PRE WORK:
PROPOSED AGENDA:
- Introductions
- Project Status Update (Chris Saad)
- Legal Project Update (Brady Brim-DeForest)
- Governance Taskforce Update (Elias Bizannes)
- Wiki weeding and design -- informal proposal (Mary Trigiani)
- Group needs to agree on a set of new categories, to re-organize the wiki, and ultimately, the other forums and Skype chats
- After testing this approach on the wiki, take it to Skype and Google Groups - shifting the organization to work-focused task forces and focusing dialog through them
- Goals
- Make it easy for volunteers to find a project they'd like
- Make it easy for stakeholders to review specific topics
- Enable readers to focus on specific subjects they want to track via email
- Focus project members on actual work and tasks
- Enable focused comments on specific projects - regarding performance, viability and user satisfaction
- PROPOSED CATEGORIES -- with project examples under each
-
-
- Research - user experience
- Research - stakeholders and their values
- Research - user values - privacy
- Research - user values - ownership
- Research - banking industry
- Solutions - Open ID
- Solutions - hCards
- Steering - governance
- Steering - communications and results documentation [includes blog, which should feature posts by designated project members about specific efforts and results, with comments enabled; opinion-oriented posts from personal and industry blogs would go on a separate blog roll]
- Standards - Terms of Service
- Standards - Shared vocabulary [technologists, users]
- Standards - User data categories [Greenberg]
- Best practices - use cases
- Best practices - user interfaces, opt-out, opt-in
- About - data portability, DataPortability.org, members, volunteers, getting involved
- add additional topics (+ your name)
MEETING GOALS:
Minutes
Attendees:
Real Name (Skype Name)
J. Trent Adams (jtrentadams)
Christian Scholz (herrtopf)
David Rudin (drudin)
Steve Greenberg (greenbes)
Mary Trigiani (mtrigiani)
Brady Brim-DeForest (bradybd)
Elias Bizannes (elias.bizannes)
Daniela Barbosa (medanielabarbosa)
unknown caller (9044938800)
Notes:
- Project Status Update (Chris Saad => Posted to Wiki, and read into call by Trent):
- The project has had a tumultuous week as our ideas of openness and transparency have collided with need to get things done. My position remains that the only way to move forward and cut through the noise is to re-commit ourselves to our goals. That is to document Technical Best Practices for the community to follow.
- The sense of urgency has never been greater. Vendors are getting out ahead of the wave we have created and we need to keep up with them to make sure we deliver results. This has been one of our key goals since day one and is now becoming a deliverable that the community can no longer afford to live without. The focus of the entire project should be to get the Technical Action Group (particularly the Tech Best Practices task force) all the resources and momentum it needs to get the job done in the shortest possible time. This might require calls every day or second day to power through the problem. Looking at Joseph Smarr's Portable Contacts work is also important since this borrows many of the suggestions and ideas from the project that I had shared with him earlier in the year - we need to ensure that this is included in the best practices in a generic way.
- Further, In the Steering Group, I look forward to the formation of the legal entity and the completion of the lightweight governance model so we can form a board and have a board vote about the new/elected Chairperson. Also look forward to the official blog and the continued (and thorough) improvements of the wiki - since this is our primary deliverable to the community (remembering that the point of the DataPortability project was not so much conversation, as the clear documentation of knowledge and best practices).
- Once the tech best practices are complete, the entire project can afford the same focus to the policy, and then the user experience best practice documents.
- o Dave: Should ensure a solid formal foundation before moving forward with potentially patentable work.
o Brady: Agrees, need to formalize the governance before any work can be expected to be adopted.
o Steve: Not sure why it's a problem that vendors are moving ahead of us.
o Elias: It's actively a good thing that the vendors are moving ahead. We can develop practices in and around these statements
o Christian: The technical groups need solid base upon which to
- Legal Project Update (Brady Brim-DeForest)
o Still working to pull together the various options.
o Working with legal advisers to understand the options
o Should have something available later this week
o David: Requests a meeting with the legal advisers to understand
- Governance Taskforce Update (Elias Bizannes)
o Outlined a rough guideline for discussion: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/l4Ej
o Overview of the guidelines, those on call can read them.
o Consensus: No concerns brought forward on the call in contradiction to the Assumptions
o Elias: There is a need for some kind of "official" status being applied to projects that reach a certain size
o Elias: Some requirement for when "official" rules are required, while enabling lesser projects to continue forward
o Steve: Robert's Rules of Order are a reasonably short set of guidelines for small groups we can adopt.
o Elias: Some possible problems are when decisions are made by smaller groups, and how do they get ratified?
o Steve: Is it really a problem we've experienced, or is this theoretical?
o Elias: There are times when it's been a problem, specifically geographically
o Brady: Case in point is the Logo Contest.
o Mary: There should be a method for making the decisions along with a logging technique as a "paper trail"
o Elias: Does that mean we need a written record?
o Steve: Minutes do not need to track the entire conversation... just the outcome.
o Steve: The point of the process is to announce that enough people were present to make a decision, then what the decision was.
o Trent: To clarify, this would require something simple, but the announced steps need to be followed.
o Elias: But the speed of the logo contest would've been hurt by slowing things down this way.
o Steve: Speed actually hurt the outcome in that case.
o Elias: A positive of that process was that two disparate time zones
o Daniela: What about the situation where things do need to happen quickly?
o Elias: Decisions that need to be made quickly simply can't wait. For example, if $200 needs to be spent at the last minute to solve a problem, a delegated Treasurer should be available to make that decision.
o Steve: Reiterates that this kind of thing is covered by Roberts Rules of Order and other groups
o Mary: Need to discuss who has the "right" to vote as well as post on the wiki and/or forums
o Steve: I believe that is taking it too far, but let's circle back and propose the decision.
o Daniela: In answer to the question of people posting incorrectly, we simply need to self-police it
o Elias: Can we at least agree on a method for decisions to be made? Are they made in decision lists, email, telecons, meetups?
o Steve: There are some decisions that can be made by the elected execs, while others simply need to be announced and then voted upon.
o Elias: Can we make sure we're including as many time zones as possible?
o Steve: It seems that waiting for 48-hours for any non-exec decisions would solve that.
o Mary: It's important to focus on the wiki as the default action, don't force people to try and understand what committee they should check on.
o Brady: Perhaps a rule that all "open decisions" need to feed to a central place for the 48-hour waiting period.
o Consensus: Governance Taskforce is on the right track, more will be fleshed out and will return for another touch point within two weeks.
- Wiki weeding and design - informal proposal (Mary Trigiani)
o notes posted to wiki agenda above, not read into call
o Mary: Basically, there would be a benefit if the tree was more shallow
o Mary: Suggest more focus around actual tasks rather than committees and action groups.
Conference call recording, back channel transcript
Next meetings
- May 26th, 2008 - 21:00 GMT
Feedback on the meeting itself
|
|
