Product & Startup Builder

Filtering by Category: Personal

I'm nominated for the 30under30

Added on by Chris Saad.

I just got this email from Antihill Magazine:

Dear Young Entrepreneur,

A friend, colleague or fan of your work recently nominated you for Anthill Magazine's 30under30 Awards, a national awards program designed to recognise and encourage young Australian entrepreneurs.

Details of your nomination are below, including th name of the generous person who nominated you for this awards program.

Cool!

If you'd like to nominate me you can do so on the Antihill website!

Microsoft to join DataPortability - Where's the beef?

Added on by Chris Saad.

The news today is that Microsoft intends to join the DataPortability Project. So where's the beef? Why are long-time influentials from all these large vendors joining the cause? What are we offering? What are we trying to do? What's in it for them? What do they bring to the table?

Many of these questions are already answered in the Project Charter, on the FAQ page and in the excellent video by Michael Pick. but I thought that since I am getting much of the blame credit for this that I might put it all in context in my own words.

First, I'd like to clarify that DataPortability is not mine. It is an initiative that was co-founded by many people who all believed that something was missing from the existing Identity/Data/Standards landscape. Something very small, but very important.

A story...

A message. A simple rallying cry for the mainstream that would:

  1. Explain the problem in simple terms
  2. Help contextualize existing efforts to solve it
  3. Encourage inter operable adoption by users, vendors and developers

That's exactly what DataPortability brings to the community. A neutral, community driven forum in which standards groups can champion their technology in the context of a solution, vendors can raise their concerns and get answers and end-users can get a easy, safe and secure experience.

So back to the original question. Where's the value?

The value is in the exciting and critically important work that standards groups have been doing for years. It's in the new conversations being encouraged between standards groups and vendors both inside the DataPortability Project and independently 1 on 1. It's in the Action Groups that are bringing diverse people together. It's in the Action Packs we are developing to help tell the story to Executives, Developers, Designers, Bloggers and Vendors. It's in the Technical and Policy Blueprints we are designing to tell the story in a more detailed way and believe it or not, it's in the PR hype of the announcements.

Each announcement - each new member - both large and small - means another voice, and another opportunity to broaden the conversation and apply the sort of grass-roots pressure we all know already exists to create a web of data we can Connect, Control, Share and Remix.

In regard to Microsoft specifically, I welcome their voice in the conversation. Their team has been one of the most transparent and accessible of all the vendors we have spoken to and their products and services touch the lives of almost everyone both online and off.

Please join us Chris

Special thanks to Daniela Barbosa for finding the picture!

'08 - The year of DataPortability

Added on by Chris Saad.

It's been a hectic few days. Our little project to create a reference design for Data Portability has been put at the center of a storm when Robert Scoble, video blogger to the stars, experienced his very own Data Portability use case - getting his personal information out of a closed system. In this case, Facebook. The DataPortability project sort of happened by accident for me. The goal was simple. Having worked hard to create and champion the cause of APML, the FaradayMedia team and I tried to join the broader standards discussion. The problem, though, was that the same questions kept on getting asked over and over, and the answers -while slightly different each time - were always basically the same.

It usually went something like this...

"So how can we use [X format, standard, protocol, technique] to get data [Y] from silo [Z] for purpose [1, 2 and 3]."

"You could use [my personal format of choice] because [I am personally invested in community A]."

"But that only solves part of my problem, what about [B, C and D]"

"Oh we have not really solved that, probably check out community [E, F and G] for that part".

The result, was very little standards integration work actually being done because while the standard file formats exist, there is no standard way of implementing them end-to-end.

So we started the DataPortability Workgroup with some friends to try and get the story straight in our own heads and share the results with the world.

The world, though, seems to have come knocking before we were quite ready for the attention. But that's OK. It has only served to re-double our efforts and seems to prove that there was indeed a problem that needed to be solved.

I'd like to personally thank everyone involved and welcome all the new people who have come to join the conversation. It has been an adrenalin packed few days and I have enjoyed every second.

I really feel quite grateful to have connected with so many people who believe in the same things - including personal heroes who have made all this possible with their hard (and often thankless) work to create the standards that will make DataPortability possible. I'd particularly like to assure those people that DP is not about re-inventing what they have done, but rather shining a light on their work by putting it in context for those that need to see the big picture spelled out.

It seems that the web will dramaticlly evolve again this year. It used to be the Web of Pages, most recently it evolved into the Web of People... it seems in 2008 the Web of Data begins to take root.

Look forward to the fun...

Announcing Spouse 2.0 Day!

Added on by Chris Saad.

My best friend and business partner Ashley Angell has invented a new holiday in honour of all the neglected people out there who love Web 2.0 Start-up Founders. Ashley says "I love my wife, but she gets no attention from me because I am too busy building Attention technologies - so I thought we should dedicate a day to her, and everyone like her"

Brilliant idea Ash! Check it out at www.spouse2.com and join in the fun by tagging your photos and posts 'Spouse 2.0'.

Oh and I designed the site.

Me against the world

Added on by Chris Saad.

Just came across this great post on the Kiva Blog. I know the feeling of both isolation, connectedness and lack of sleep!

 To quote:

"Entrepreneurialism can be incredibly isolating. On my worst days, it is me against the world. It's Matt versus the naysayers. It's Kiva versus the competitors. It's me against anyone who doesn't see the world as I see it. It's the biggest trap."

"Your challenge as an Entrepreneur comes in tapping into that which is transcendent, that which is infinite about a particular enterprise you might be undertaking. At the end of a day, at the end of a particular lifetime, what can you take with you?"

Could being a Neilson family kill you?

Added on by Chris Saad.

Until now, Stephen Colbert's amazing and ingenious use of the net and the growing participant culture to promote his show has been a beautiful thing to watch. But it was never beyond my imagination. If I were in his place I'd be doing the same thing. But I just watched the intro to the Colbert Report episode 08.21.2006 and his intro took it over the edge for me. By itself maybe it was just another funny/clever comment, but when added to the sum total of Wikipedia jokes, Green screen antics and his other 'buzz' generating stunts, you get a very beautiful picture.

His intro comment was "Could being a Neilson family kill you? Watch the entire show to find out".

Genius. Subtle, relevant, clever and could even have a direct affect on his rating for the night.

I love that guy so much - in a straight, non-sexual way of course.

He is climbing fast to join my other masters:

  • Joss Whedon
  • Ronald D. Moore
  • Jon Stewart
  • And all the people leading the charge with Current.TV (including Al Gore)

J.J. Abrams might be on the list soon, depending on what he does with Star Trek - but right now he is a little too disconnected for my taste.

I think Colbert, however, should be the new member of the 'Oh my god, you're changing traditional media by being a legend' club.

In Episode 08.23.2006 he even goes on to talk about the fragmentation of media experiences due to the explosion of choices going so far as to bring a band on that uses YouTube as its primary promotion vehicle. I think he understands the principal of 'Audiences of One' better than most traditional media personalities.