Yours, Mine, Ours: Leadership Through Collaboration Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 21 September, 2010 How Do We Create and Maintain Standards? Eric Miller

Common Themes (a) Wrong place and the wrong time

Common Themes (a) Wrong place and the wrong time (b) Horrible acronyms

Common Themes (a) Wrong place and the wrong time (b) Horrible acronyms (c) Art of the Possible

Solutions Group Solutions—Common Values “Things work at scale because the community subscribes to the same values.”

Creative Tension

Diversity

Common Values?

Value continuum Move beyond self interest for the greater good What’s in it for me / my company?

Abstracted Strategies Define standards only to the point necessary under-specificity can be a good thing

Abstracted Strategies Provide as clear of scope as possible set expectations up front clear process for extending scope if needed

Abstracted Strategies Define process for governance and social engineering find the middle ground between yahoo groups to robert’s rules level the playing field - everyone gets (the option) to have a voice be clear about your participation model

Abstracted Strategies Define use cases up front use this to reflect scope use this to articulate (societal) benefit

Abstracted Strategies Reference implementation (if applicable) grounds utility of standards accelerates deployment use this to articulate (technical) benefit

Abstracted Strategies Establish a clear position on your IP up front e.g. royalty free vs RAND e.g. OSI approved Open Source License for code e.g. Creative Commons for document deliverables

Abstracted Strategies Record your decisions / preserve your discourse archive discussion referenceable meeting minutes link resolutions to discourse

Abstracted Strategies Identify the intersection of common goals representative of participants complementary commercial and societal impact coopetition provide clear benefit for participants (institutions)

Abstracted Strategies Create an environment that empowers participants / acknowledges effort high-light work share the wealth / credit / spotlight

Abstracted Strategies Benevolent dictator / chair / leader model for escalation hope to never use defined process comes in handy here

Abstracted Strategies Maintain a clear Feedback loop During the process After the standard is “complete”

Why extend beyond LAM? Data management, selection, aggregation, preservation, curation, delivery, etc. are no longer the domain of just LAM LAM has a huge opportunity to share knowledge and shape deliverables (that then benefit LAM) Trust transfers Extraordinarily effective means to move beyond self interest for the greater good

One quick example W3C Provenance Group Why not more LAM?

Creative Tension

Expand comfort zone

Thank you Eric Eric