[uf-discuss] Possible vCard Revision; CalConnect involvement

[Dave Thewlis]

Dear Folks,

I'm Dave Thewlis, the Executive Director of CalConnect - The Calendaring 
and Scheduling Consortium.

Andy Mabbott suggested that I cross-post to this list as there are 
people in the microformats world interested in vCard (and in 
calendaring, for that matter).  Unfortunately I managed to space doing 
it until just now.  Fortunately, I have something additional to add to 
the post that prompted Andy's suggestion.

The subject is a revision to the vCard specification to be undertaken by 
the IETF, and whether CalConnect will undertake a technical committee to 
do use cases, requirements, promotion, interoperability testing, and the 
likem in support of that work. 

----------------------------------------------------

(1) Here is my posting to the CalConnect lists that prompted Andy's 
suggestion, dated November 5th:


Seven weeks ago we held our vCard workshop.  Two of the outcomes were

(a) that Chris Newman from the IETF thought he saw strong enough support 
for doing a revision of vCard that he was going to start movement in the 
IETF towards a working group to this end, and

(b) CalConnect would initiate a vCard Technical Committee IF it could 
find resources to support the committee.  This essentially meant new 
people from existing members and/or people from new members, as the 
current volunteers are pretty well maxed out.

CalConnect was to post a draft charter for a  vCard TC on the 
vcard-workshop-l list (the public list we set up  to support the 
workshop).  Interested parties were encouraged to offer help, either on 
the vcard-workshop-l list, or directly to me.

If we could not find anyone to do the work (usecases, requirements, 
possibly IOP test development, and promotion) then there was no point in 
going forward.

The draft charter was posted a month ago.  There were two replies.  
Since then nobody has said anything especially about volunteering to help.

Therefore, this e-mail is a "final" call for action.  If you or your 
organization is interested in actually seeing something positive happen 
about a vCard revision, *please* speak up - on the vCard-workshop-l 
list, or to me - and let me know.  We need a few TC participants.  And 
we need some organization to step up and offer a Chair for the TC.  And 
we could use a person or two to help with writing whatever documents we 
produce.

Here is a chance for an organization with a serious interest in seeing 
something good happen with vCard and who isn't a member to step up, get 
involved, and take a leadership role.

But if you are interested, if you can help, if you can just attend the 
occasional call and read a document, let us know.  Even if you are an 
existing participant, if you think you could put a bit of effor into 
this, we wouldn't deny you the opportunity :-)

If we do NOT get any responses, then we must conclude that there is 
still not enough interest to actually do something about a vCard 
revision -- and we will table the idea.

Hoping to hear from you!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

(2) Here is a follow-on posting from yesterday, December 16, on the 
current status of vCard issues:

The IETF has approved a charter for a vCard Working Group and sent it to 
the IESG for approval, and work has begun on updating and republishing 
the existing vCard draft.  This means that there should be a vCard 
Working Group initated, or a vCard BOF, at the March IETF meeting, with 
documents to consider.

In turn, this means it is time for CalConnect to start forming its vCard 
Technical Committee to inform the IETF working group.  A proposed 
charter for this TC was circulated on the vcard-workshop-l list some 
weeks ago, and may be found at the following URL (near the bottom of the 
page:

http://www.calconnect.org/vcardworkshopreport.shtml

We have had some interest expressed in working on this issue from 
CalConnect members and from others, and it's time to decide what we are 
gong to do going forward.

*We plan a public (open to members and nonmembers) conference call for:

Friday, January 11, 2008 at 1100-1200 Eastern (0800 Pacific, 1600 U.K., 
1700 CET).

Call-in information:

Phone #:  +1 605  990 0100
Confid:     879307#*

Please join us on this call if you are interested in seeing the vCard 
specification move forward.  We'll talk about current status since the 
workshop, the charter we have proposed, and plan to identify 
participants for a CalConnect Technical Committee to work in conjunction 
with the IETF WG.

Please feel free to pass this e-mail on to others who would be 
interested in the subject, and encourage them to attend.

-------------------------------------------------

So we are going to have that call on Friday, January 11th, and anyone 
interested in vCard is welcome to attend.  Meantime, you are also 
welcome to join  the vcard-workshop list mentioned above:  see

http://www.calconnect.org/vcardworkshoplist.shtml

This list might be reincarnated with a different name but the same 
subscription list going forward; we'll see after the January 11th call.


And finally, if you are interested in calendaring, please take a look at 
the CalConnect website and what we're doing.  Right now we don't really 
have any participation from the Microformats domain, but hopefully that 
can change going forward.

Hope to hear from you!

Best Regards,

Dave Thewlis

-- 
*Dave Thewlis, Executive Director
Calconnect - The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium*
+1 707 840 9391 (voice) · +1 707 498 2238 (mobile)
http://www.calconnect.org · Dave.Thewlis at calconnect.org 
<mailto:Dave.Thewlis at calconnect.org>