Social Software Alliance CALL FOR DISCUSSION: Social Software Alliance
PURPOSE AND SCOPE
We propose a trade group of social software developers and other interested parties who work together to create and promote open standards for the social software community. Social software blends tools and modes for richer online social environments and experiences. Some examples of social software are weblogs, wikis, forums, chat environments, or instant messaging, and related tools and data structures for identity, integration, interchange and analysis.
Social software is a dynamic and constantly evolving environment, rich with possibilities to create better connections between people. With a growing number of active developers, we need a central nexus to help drive the process of coordination and interoperability between different developers' products.
The alliance will:
- aid discovery of developers working on synergistic projects and standards
- assist in shaping open standards that mesh well with other alliance and Internet standards
- help promote each standard to gain wider adoption
The fast-paced nature of the social software space now argues for developing light-weight, easy-to-implement standards, following the Internet tradition of rough consensus and running code, but perhaps moving faster than the larger standards bodies. It is expected that those standards promulgated by the alliance which become widely adopted will be proposed to the appropriate general standards body or bodies: W3C, IETF, ISO, etc.
PROPOSED SCHEDULE
- First CFD published: April 16, 2003
- SSA Happening (voice/online meeting): April 18, 2003 (time TBD based on participants' time zones)
- BoF at Etech conference: April 22-25, 2003
- SSA Happening (voice/online meeting): May 2, 2003 (time TBD based on participants' time zones)
- Alliance announced with founding members: May 15, 2003
DISCUSSION
There is an email list and a wiki set up for the purpose of discussing the formation of an alliance.
list subscribe: blank email to social-subscribe@lists.polycot.com
unsubscribe: see List-Unsubscribe header in any list email
help with list server: social-help@lists.polycot.com
digest: social-digest-subscribe@lists.polycot.com
archive: http://lists.polycot.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi/2/
wiki: http://www.socialtext.net/ssa/
registration for editing: http://www.socialtext.net/ssa-registration/
It is expected that similar and/or additional discussion and collaboration tools will be migrated to the alliance's web presence, once it is created.
FOUNDING MEMBERS
Danny Ayers
Ideagraph
Stewart Butterfield
President, Ludicorp Research & Development Ltd.
Marc Canter
Chairman, CEO Broadband Mechanics Inc.
Ward Cunningham
Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc.
Greg Elin
Noah Glass
Listenlab, LLC
Mark Graham
VP of Technology, iVillage
Meg Hourihan
Co-founder & Director, The Lafayette Project
Peter Kaminski
CTO, Socialtext Inc.
Elizabeth Lawley
Asst. Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology
Jon Lebkowsky
CEO, Polycot Consulting
Kevin Marks
Instigator, mediAgora
Ross Mayfield
CEO, Socialtext Inc.
Matt Mower
Novissio Ltd.
Mitch Ratcliffe
President, Internet/Media Strategies Inc.
Clay Shirky
Benjamin Trott
Co-Founder & CTO, Six Apart Ltd.
Mena Trott
Co-Founder & CEO, Six Apart Ltd.
Paolo Valdemarin
Evectors Software
David Weinberger
Writer
Nancy White
Online facilitator, Full Circle Associates
7:50:41 AM 
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