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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Hello,</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Welcome to the Tag Commons Working Group. You
are getting this message because you have indicated to me you want to
participate in this effort. I have subscribed you to the list</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> "Tag
Commons Working Group" <<a href="mailto:wg@tagcommons.org">wg@tagcommons.org</a>></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>The next message you get from this list should be an
invitation with your password.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>It's taken me far too long to get this group together, but I
feel that we now have critical mass of people with needs, people with ideas, people
who have already done work, and people with time (just a little!) to get something
done. Our purpose is to work out an agreement on a set of conventions for
sharing tag data across independently developed applications/sites/data sources.
</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I commit to moderate this conversation and maintain a blog
of our activities <<a href="http://tagcommons.org/">http://tagcommons.org</a>>.
I welcome the posts of others who have standalone essays to post as
well, but for dialog and work in progress I would like to use this discussion list.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>This list is private to members, but I will subscribe anyone
who expresses an interest and who is not a spammer or the like. If you
think this would be of interest to someone else, please refer them to me or have
them sign up at <a
href="http://lists.tagcommons.org/listinfo.cgi/wg-tagcommons.org">http://lists.tagcommons.org/listinfo.cgi/wg-tagcommons.org</a></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>This is not a standards body, although there are people from
standards organizations participating. I would like to make this
extremely lightweight and quick to results. Despite the slow start, I now
have time to commit to make this happen.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Toward that end, in the following messages I will start
threads on the following topics:</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<ul style='margin-top:0in' type=disc>
<li class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Use cases for sharing tag data</span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Roles for standard formats, ontologies, namespaces, etc.</span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Existing proposals for formats, ontologies, namespaces,
etc.</span></font></li>
</ul>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>In other words, let's start the conversation by saying what
we need, how we might work together to achieve that need, what work we can
adopt or build on, and then plan the next steps.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Each one of you on this list have something important to say
about at least one of these topics, so please speak up so we can get the ball
rolling.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Thank you for your patience and attention.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Tom Gruber</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
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