You almost had me. ALMOST. Until you dissed Confluence in favor of the hot mess that is MediaWiki. And then suggested going back to IRC for group chats. Why not just do the group discussions on alt.internet.scoble-wants-his-contacts?
2008-06-08EDT03:16:21+00:00
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I'm willing to take responsibility for Confluence, as it was me pushing it. The reason? It works, I had a relationship with the company to get a freebie, and I have experience rolling it out at my firm. I also have experience with MediaWiki - it was in my opinion, that we needed something better. Not only is Confluence a market leader in collaboration tools (hint: it's not just a wiki), it also is provided to us as a hosted solution (it allows us to focus more on the work, less on the admin). And the argument about free tools - yet another misrepresentation of what "DataPortability" is which I'll save for another time.
But, where I am not so tolerant, is your "giving up". Take the Semantic web as a case in point - when did that get proposed - around 2000 right? And in 2008, would you say it's fair to claim the community is still fighting labels of being "irrelevant"? The developer community is constantly fighting over the "relevance" of RDF; and the business community doesn't even understand the value of open data. Don't get me wrong - I am a semantic web enthusiast - but why are you hoping to kill something that helps your cause?
We've hit six months with DataPortability, and have managed to raise awareness for things that have spent years in a bubble. We are in the finishing touches of a new governance model, that will allow us to be a more productive organisation. We literally are scrambing right now, to meet the expectations of the community. And it's even harder when people like you spend more time criticising, than actually offering to contribute.
If you think stabbing a baby is the best way to make it a world class athlete, then congratulations - that's what you've just done.
2008-06-08EDT04:06:34+00:00
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But, where I am not so tolerant, is your "giving up". Take the Semantic web as a case in point - when did that get proposed - around 2000 right? And in 2008, would you say it's fair to claim the community is still fighting labels of being "irrelevant"? The developer community is constantly fighting over the "relevance" of RDF; and the business community doesn't even understand the value of open data. Don't get me wrong - I am a semantic web enthusiast - but why are you hoping to kill something that helps your cause?
We've hit six months with DataPortability, and have managed to raise awareness for things that have spent years in a bubble. We are in the finishing touches of a new governance model, that will allow us to be a more productive organisation. We literally are scrambing right now, to meet the expectations of the community. And it's even harder when people like you spend more time criticising, than actually offering to contribute.
If you think stabbing a baby is the best way to make it a world class athlete, then congratulations - that's what you've just done.
This strikes me as a attack on the group rather that Data Portability. So has DP become totally irrelevant? Nope, theres tons of work to be done in this area. The group are tackling a lot of problems, maybe some of the piorities could be changed but once again this is the group not the topic.
2008-06-08EDT05:30:34+00:00
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I wrote about this recently:
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2008/...ataportability/
In any case, I support your premise. I have no problem with the DP group proving their mettle now that they have a "governance" model, but when has adding bureaucracy added to technology evangelism ever worked?
2008-06-08EDT06:32:48+00:00
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http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2008/...ataportability/
In any case, I support your premise. I have no problem with the DP group proving their mettle now that they have a "governance" model, but when has adding bureaucracy added to technology evangelism ever worked?
Elias: I'm not hoping to 'hurt' the cause. I have wanted to write this post for a long time, but held off on the basis that it may harm the groups efforts. I'm not 'stabbing the baby', I'm trying to be realistic. The fact is that I only have a limited number of hours each day that I can spend on working on community projects, and the microformats and SWIG communities seem to have more going for them.
Ian: I think data portability is a good idea. I was originally going to title the post "Can data portability become any more irrelevant?" but I didn't. I called it "Can DataPortability.org become any more irrelevant?" A more data-driven, portable-data, liked-data web is happening, but I'm just not sure that DataPortability.org has much of a role to play in that.
2008-06-08EDT13:37:06+00:00
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Ian: I think data portability is a good idea. I was originally going to title the post "Can data portability become any more irrelevant?" but I didn't. I called it "Can DataPortability.org become any more irrelevant?" A more data-driven, portable-data, liked-data web is happening, but I'm just not sure that DataPortability.org has much of a role to play in that.
