DataPortability February Report - I Feel Special do You?

Lately i have been feeling that i am indeed a part of something very special, something that is proving that people with passion can work together to achieve something. It isn't the first time a bunch of very intelligent people in the tech community come together in this way to establish standards but it is the first time that i have been involved in such depth and some of it is blowing my mind. I am one of the original members of the DataPortability Group and sometimes i simply can not believe how far we have come in a short few months- we only started in mid November (check out our on-going timeline) .

The February DataPortability Project Report is now available that highlights the work that the DataPortability group has completed since our inaugural report in January. i am sure some out there might still say that we haven't produced much but we have even beyond what is highlighted- setting goals, reaching out to existing communities, indoctrinating new members and bringing up the issue of data portability across the board from main stream media to topics of conversation at every tech event over the last few weeks- that all takes work and passion and the community is giving back in full force.

On a recent Steering group conference call when discussing what a specific Action group had been working on, one of the attendees said 'well we have been doing a lot of reading'- yes we all have been doing a lot of reading and thinking and talking. I think an amazing amount of energy by certain members has been dedicated to these 'conversations', much by people who i have followed in the tech community for a while which i am very please to see participating.

I admit that this month was tough for the main group that i participate in the Evangelism Action Group- many of us have projects that are important to move forward with but where bogged down in making a decision around which platform we should use to develop and store all our documentation (and important task!). Some of the conversations in the chat rooms could have been enough to make everyone pull out their hair at times (well at least i wanted to)- but the group eventually worked it out. The final decision was to keep the Google Group for the discussions, Skype for the group chats and move all the Google Pages to the Confluence wiki platform, a decision that i think will suit us well for the next phases of our projects.