[Community] Preserving Identity Commons Purpose and Principles
Brett McDowell
brett at projectliberty.org
Mon Jun 30 07:12:46 PDT 2008
There has been a lot of traffic over the weekend which is great to
see. But for the sake of time I'm going to simply respond to the most
recent note in my inbox trying to address the key points others made
in their posts (my apologies to anyone if I've not responded to your
point, re-send/re-phrase if this response misses anything that's core
to the discussion).
RE: VISIBILITY...
I can't tell if these comments are being made in the context of
promoting public discussion (like what we are doing here now) or if
this is really about NewOrg have a strong branding strategy for itself
as part of its mission (vs. just supporting the strong branding
strategy of its community-drive projects). Could Bill, Eugene, Mary,
and/or Drummond chime in to clarify?
RE: HIERARCHY...
FWIW, I don't think "hierarchy" is a dirty word. I think the key is
how they are applied and governed, but if we are honest with ourselves
we see we are surrounded by hierarchies we would not want supplanted
by purely chaordic systems. I believe in the value of well-governed
hierarchies as much as I believe in well-governed chaordic systems.
FWIW, I personally think what we need is a hybrid of both. That said,
if folks prefer "blue, red, green" as labels between our types of
projects over "tier 1, tier 2, tier 3" I guess I have no objection
except I'm somewhat concerned we will get more easily confused if we
don't have numbers involved in the naming scheme. Because there is
something hierarchical about what I've proposed... cost. I'm looking
at creating a recognition between projects based on resource
consumption. If we ignore this distinction we are right back to where
we started in terms of lacking the resources we need to meet the needs
of the community.
RE: CONTROL/FINANCES...
Kaliya made a number of references to control. All I want to say is
that we should not be designing this to disenfranchise any one
community of stakeholders, and that includes large corporations. All
are welcome, all are empowered, and all are respected... from the
individual, to the NGO, to the Government Agency, to the Enterprise,
to the Vendor, to the Telco, to the WebCo (and anyone else I left
out). I'm sure you all agree to what I just wrote but do you agree
that financial sponsorship should be "rewarded" in any material way?
What if financial sponsorship *is* rewarded but sponsorship
opportunity is tiered to capacity to pay? Wouldn't that be inherently
fair? Something like individual sponsors pay very, very little, but
large corporate sponsors pay more, yet both are recognized and
"rewarded" equally from a governance/leadership/control perspective?
More specifically, I like what I see OIDF doing with their $ model...
there's a notion of membership but the only thing "buying" a
membership actually "buys" you is branding recognition and a vote on
the ratification of final ouput (correct me if I'm wrong!). Loosely
translated, this is a hybrid innovation between traditional "pay-to-
play" membership models and the "charitable donation" model that IC
and DP have been looking at. If you don't pay, you still play fully
with one (arguably minimal) exception... the final ratification of
output (but you do get to vote in the small groups who produce the
output). What do folks think of this model being adopted as a core
best practice for NewOrg?
RE: SCOPE...
I agree with Kaliya that NewOrg should include all relevant aspects of
network identity, including relevant social issues like privacy. That
being said, I think a best practice is for NewOrg to liaise/network
with pre-existing communities/org's who specialize in those areas vs.
make (any) attempts to reinvent the wheel and pass of NewOrg as the
subject-matter-experts in those social areas. I think our special
sauce will be in the harmonization/interoperability/rationalization of
social issues, regulatory/legal issues, and technology issues as they
are applied to digital identity.
RE: PRIOR ART...
More than one of you have mentioned a list Paul T. put together (and I
think I was in the meeting when he put that together) so by all means
would someone please distribute that list of "organizational
requirements" to this thread?
NEXT STEPS...
So now I'd like to talk about tier 2 (T2) Projects of NewOrg (I'll
keep using the numeric system until I see resolution over the
hierarchy debate). BTW, I don't think all T1 Projects are destined to
become T2 Projects, EUCLId certainly wasn't. But planning for the
possibility is key.
T2 Projects:
These projects consume more than T1 projects. They require some level
of dedicated staffing. They may require any number of other "a la
carte" services from NewOrg as well (back to that list Paul built and
some of the brainstorming we've done on this thread so far). So
rather than try to arbitrarily decipher between T2 and T3 Projects, I
will focus on just one differentiation which I do think is fundamental
and not arbitrary; Branding & Governance.
T3 Projects:
These projects require resource investment unique from T1 or T2
projects. They require their own independent branding strategy,
trademark management, marketing campaigns, and the ability to make
quick independent decisions regarding these aspects of their project
(that's where governance comes in). I would say OpenID, Liberty, and
InfoCard are likely candidates for T3 Project status, but the devil is
in the details. It may be so advantageous to remain a T2 Project that
some folks (Liberty for instance) would prefer to operate its multiple
projects as T2 projects leaving the branding strategy and marketing
investments to NewOrg vs. taking on the cost and complexity of
managing all of that themselves. But others I'm sure will opt for T3
status and so I think it is important to allow for that in our
deliberations.
So, let's start looking at the list of requirements we have collected,
drop them under T1, T2, and T3 respectively, and shift our attention
to how to pay for all of these services (with the going-in assumption
that if you consume more form NewOrg, you somehow contribute more to
NewOrg but in a manner that reduces your cost through leveraging
shared investments and resources across the entire community).
Eventually (which might be sooner than later) we'll get to branding of
NewOrg but let's save that to last.
-- Brett
On Jun 30, 2008, at 2:58 AM, Drummond Reed wrote:
> Another +1.
>
> =Drummond
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: community-bounces at idcommons.net [mailto:community-
>> bounces at idcommons.net] On Behalf Of Mary Ruddy
>> Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 1:47 PM
>> To: 'Eugene Eric Kim'
>> Cc: community at idcommons.net
>> Subject: Re: [Community] Preserving Identity Commons Purpose and
>> Principles
>>
>> +++1 agree strongly that visibility is key to trust and at this
>> stage to
>> gaining momentum and avoiding delimitative efforts.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: community-bounces at idcommons.net
>> [mailto:community-bounces at idcommons.net] On Behalf Of Eugene Eric Kim
>> Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 2:28 AM
>> To: community at idcommons.net
>> Subject: Re: [Community] Preserving Identity Commons Purpose and
>> Principles
>>
>> On 6/28/08, Bill Washburn <billhwashburn at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> In discussing this, I believe the question of prospective
>>> organization's potential to become trustworthy fairly quickly -
>>> both
>>> operationally and perceptually - will be fundamental. It seems to
>>> me
>>> an important part of building trust and committing to trustworthy
>>> service/support for the community is prominent visibility for the
>>> new
>>> organization - should it be developed. Isn't being visible an
>>> important part of trust, just as a strong brand engenders trust as
>>> long
>> as
>> it behaves well?
>>
>> This is a really valuable point, Bill. We (or at least I) have
>> rationalized
>> away our lack of visibility, and fairly, I think.
>> However, if we view visibility as a key mechanism for trust, then
>> it's our
>> responsibility to prioritize it more.
>>
>> =Eugene
>>
>> --
>> =
>> =====================================================================
>> Eugene Eric Kim ................................ http://xri.net/
>> =eekim
>> Blue
>> Oxen Associates ........................ http://www.blueoxen.com/
>> =
>> =====================================================================
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