Better World Microformats

Folks could identify their better world opportunities with a common format and aggregate them via RSS or ATOM

 Tom Munnecke on Omidyar Network


"

I just ran across the Microformats web site. (Those who know me will recognize my attraction to all things "micro" or better yet, "nano"). Microformats define code that can be embedded in web pages to be interpreted by applications. For example:

• hCard format for exchange of user address information

• RelPayment is meant as a general way to facilitate acts of support, and thus this specification makes no assumptions on the type of support.

It seems to me that this opens some interesting doors to a scalable model for better world activities, allowing folks to embed web pages to include Better World Opportunities and tracking information. For example, we might define a microformat to define Better World Opportunities which might include:

• tagging information to categorize it,
• a chain of trust specification to indicate who is recommending this opportunity, as well as their reputation and track record or commitments.
• links (or specifications) to the opportunity "flow," be it currency ("real" or complementary/targetted), matchings, pooling requirements, etc.
• link to a discussion thread about the opportunity
• link to the follow-up/feedback mechanism, allowing folks to understand what happened and how to do it better next time.
• link to an uplift pattern, describing the pattern(s) of uplift employed in this opportunities. This allows the pattern itself to get smarter over time, learning from its many specific instances.
• location of the opportunity (if any), allowing the opportunity to presented in a google mash-up ( for example, see the mockup of the Nano Finance Pattern map)
• Virtual world location, perhaps linking the opportunity to a place/group/activity on Better World Island in Second Life.

The cool thing is that folks could identify their better world opportunities with a common format on their own sites, emails, tags, blogs, or whatever, and then aggregate them via RSS or ATOM. The flow activities would link back to the appropriate sources, and this would also open up a mechanism for large scale feedback at a fine level of granularity."

gregoire le 22.01.06 à 23:03 dans Omidyar Network -
- Commenter -