Scott Kveton

One of the most lively discussions at SG FooCamp was the Data Portability talk. Chris Saad was the host and a bevy of folks (Chris Messina, daveman692, Eran Hammer-Lahav, jsmarr, Tantek, Adactio, John Panzer, Eran Sandler and many others) were there talking about how to turn all of the Data Portability energy and excitement into something tangible. One of the ideas was for Chris Saad to turn DataPortability.org into the place for the discussion about how all of these technologies can work together and hopefully relate the conversations happening in each of the communities.

I know Chris has done a few of these videos already:

• http://seesmic.com/v/Co8lFpDaMz
• http://seesmic.com/v/fN4utUYa6C
• http://seesmic.com/v/laUHx3ie9j
• http://seesmic.com/v/qcdpwCUX4l
• http://seesmic.com/v/sb8qjEF57p
• http://seesmic.com/v/Dk76sdlGMk

This is a great start and I want to do my part. I like the ideas, momentum and people that have come around the Data Portability Workgroup, so this weekend at SXSW 2008 I’m going to actually do something instead of just listening quietly on the mailing lists … :-)

Myself (look for me in some sort of Portland/Bacon themed t-shirt) and fellow Vidoop partner-in-crime Luke Sontag will be prowling walking the expo floor, taking in sessions, attending pre/post events, raiding BarCamp Austin III and everywhere in between seeking out your thoughts on Data Portability, the Open Web, portable social networking, DiSo, whatever. These topics mean a lot of things to a lot of people and most importantly to those of us in each of our communities (OpenID, OAuth, microformats, etc). The goal is to simply document thoughts from people in the space (and not just the “leaders” either) and make it accessible to everyone wanting to participate in the conversation. Hopefully this will increase awareness and help people come together more effectively on the problems at hand.

A few of the questions I’d like to pose:

• What has the impact of the Open Web been for you, your work or the applications that you use?
• What does Data Portability mean for the work that you’re doing today? For the applications that you use?
• Is portable/distributed social networking/DiSo possible and what are some steps to move it in the right direction today? Where should we be by 2009?
• Every web site seems to have a life streaming component now, does it matter? Is it relevant? What are your thoughts on life/action streaming?
• OpenID and OAuth both have the concept of an end-point that does interesting things for the user. What are some possibilities for this end-point with relation to the work you’re doing? The applications you’re using?
• Google announced the beta of Google Health and its inevitable that more and more of our data will be ending up on-line. Is this a good thing? How can you better manage and protect this data?

These will be short, bite-sized interviews (hopefully under 5 minutes or so) and we’ll get them on-line as quickly as our crack video team can get them up. I’ve already lined up a few really great people to chat with so far and am looking for more. Would you like to weigh in on the questions above? Do you have other questions you’d like to ask? Comment below and I’ll either work the question in or find you at SXSW. See you all in Austin!