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openid

Social Media Club: Standards update and Atlanta chapter

Well, I spent the better part of the week just submerged in work, but Aaron Strout and Chris Saad are already syncing up on data portability, Mark Resch over at Cerado is hooking me up with some creative commons folks and the 4 Missions and 4 projects are clearly underway, not just in writing, but in action as well.

So since others are working, I figure I have to continue some momentum on stuff I’ve been hoping to work. I’ve done a fair amount of outreach with limited input, but the input/questions I’ve had were mainly general questions on what some of the standards are, so I thought I would let you know a little more about them, where I actually know something or at least understand via their website.

What is Creative Commons? Well, in their own words:

Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright.

In my words, it’s a way to share content and provide the RIGHT sourcing to provide the credit where credit is due. Social media has made access to content easier and represents an opportunity for chaos and CC looks to balance access and creative rights.

What is the Data Portability Project?

The DataPortability Project is a group created to promote the idea that individuals have control over their data by determining how they can use it and who can use it. This includes access to data that is under the control of another entity. Get a creative commons widget

What the heck are microformats?

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

I suspect that explaination doesn’t really do it does it, now does it? (edit/update: that’s an awful lot of does its – clearly directionally correct, but needs a little work) I’m still not sure what microformats mean for the average person, but I know it’s important or it wouldn’t be on the list darn it. My sheer lack of understanding has made this the lowest priority. Trust me, I’ve tried to figure this out and even after going to the wiki I’m still stumped on the value prop. Since I would like to learn before I engage I’ve sent Ben Ward an email – will let you know, but basically microformats describe stuff, for humans first and machines second. I may have also found my way in another way… we’ll see.

One ID/Username might be cool – OpenID please.

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to.

Open Web Foundation

Well, this is a new one which Chris added to the list, but definitely an important one, not sure how it has been overlooked until now, but better late than never. Even tho their mission seems a little lofty, looks like good stuff. Since it is new to the list and seems like an interesting agenda, the outreach is underway. Here is the basic high level overview:

The Open Web Foundation is an attempt to create a home for community-driven specifications. Following the open source model similar to the Apache Software Foundation, the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification.

Since there are definitely no shortage of opportunities to work on standards in the space, any other ideas let me know and I can bring it back to the group, or you could leave comments over at Social Media Club.

One of the other 4 projects is to expand media literacy and part of that comes through membership I would think. So looking to roll out an event in September 4 for Atlanta to start up again. We are finalizing the location, but tentatively it is at Tony’s on Holcomb Bridge in Roswell, other ideas are welcome as Sherry and I look to re-ignite the group with just a little help from others in Atlanta. Should have it solidified in the next week or so…

Social Media Club Hits the Accelerator

With the recent press release from the Social Media Club, everyone is off and running! A new board and new opportunity. So I’ve clearly gotten myself over my head again, looking for some input…. It’s not like being over my head it’s unfamiliar space for me. After my post on the Social Media Club’s execution, I’ve had a flurry of activity around here. After the dust has settled, I have now committed to figuring some stuff out and doing a little effort. Oh what crazy stuff comes from truthiness. Great opportunity, is my take and an interesting process to boot.

After several interactions and a thoughtful discussion with Chris, I’m back to doing standards work, but in the context of Social Media. Chris and I rambled for a couple of minutes on the phone, talked around some my volunteer work in standards and industry groups (X12, VICS, NEECOM, OAGi, RosettaNet and then UCC, now GS1) and shared interest which apparently gave me some street cred. So with this somewhat trivial and completely unverified experience, I’m now able to “officially” allocate some time to the group. The trust economy is indeed a strange thing.

Kinda of refreshing – add value where you can. I guess membership wasn’t a bad idea and yes the t-shirt is great!

The evidently egalitarian approach to this club is fairly refreshing. An interim group to drive the next iteration of Social Media Club was kicked off this week. The group is 42 folks with seemingly diverse skill sets, seems a little big I know. The benefit of this approach is a highly redundant skills architecture to help scale the organization, a service oriented architecture for the organizations. The loosely couple governance model is constrained to a single rule set/theme – “do good for SMC”. In near real-time the group had a list server, press release draft, a wiki and a request for research.

Do The Work

Volunteer organizations are interesting entities – passion, skills and no shortage of things to do to be successful. Same thing at SMC. Every organization I’ve ever engaged in since I was young democrat had more work to go around than folks. So in an effort to start doing the work, I thought I would kick off my participation to better understand Identity.

Social media is a changing landscape where personality, historical actions and group membership/brand association continue to impact the individual and identity. Below is a piece that Chris did a while back to help thinking about how social media and identity are innately evolving or devolving in lock step.

Fractured identity and the limited ability to aggregate access is becoming increasingly laborious set of activities for me at least. Platform fatigue, technology emergence or context changes impact where and how an individual participates, so data portability could be considered important.. That being said, it may not be the priority to focus on which would better enable adoption.

So in the interest of loosely defined research, I am lookin for a little help from my friends. What should be highest priority area of interest in standards alignment/adoption for Social Media Club? Is there another theme or standard which would return significant value to the over all community?

Here is the shortlist:

So let’s prioritize and do the work.

Comment, post or tweet.

If you post your ideas, let me know with a comment or use SMCBOARD as a tag for your post.