As you may have already heard, the Information Card Foundation has finally been made public. As a community board member, I’ve been mostly a spectator in the formation of this foundation, watching as an intense amount of legal work, diplomacy, recruitment, and PR work sped by.  It has been a real eye opener to see this entity come to exist, and to see the huge commitment that has been necessary to attain organizational escape velocity.
To me, the ICF is about enablement. We now have a place where interested parties can collaborate to create value; a place with a well-defined legal context, and the ability to allocate funds to achieve community goals.
I believe that we have a good mix of people contributing to the ICF at the governance level – we have zealots & skeptics, dreamers & realists, Enterprise representation as well as Consumer representation, protocol people & implementers, big business and grassroots organizations. I think this kind of diversity will keep us from drowning in our own self-made koolaid ;)
Actions speak louder than words, of course. I look forward to letting our actions do the speaking as soon as possible. In the meantime, I want to send many thanks and kudos to the Executive Director of the ICF, Charles Andres, for his work as orchestra conductor and primary cat-herder in getting things off the ground.
If you want to start controversy how about suggesting that there is foundation overload? How about discussing in the next blog entry that the IT industry as a whole needs to stop creating separate groups? How about “suggesting” that this could have been part of OASIS, OWASP or some other existing group…
James – I only write what I believe. Do you believe that OWASP would be as interesting community or get as much done if it was part of OASIS?
Thanks for suggesting what I should suggest though :)