This is the prioritized list of topics we generated as a result of email participation.

1. The WBI vector
   • Jack/Adam: Experiences with WBI and Weblets

   • Jack: An architectural proposal based on experience with WBI

   • Doug: Anything to add?

2. Architecture - Building the "Narrative"

   A verbal picture that clearly presents what the system is, what it does, and gives a view of how it works.

3. Evaluations of "Starter Technologies"

   These are the early collaboration tools we may well want to employ as we go about designing the next generation system. We could build a starter system ourselves, but it might make sense to use an existing tool for that purpose.

   [Note: We need to get on to item 3 fast, for Doug's use in Washington, so we may wind up dividing up the list for evaluations in one meeting, then farming out the highly-evaluated possibilities for evaluation by someone else. So this item should be a fairly quick "report/ assign activity.]

4. Use Case Scenarios

   Still very high level. What the people using the system are going to be doing, how it is going to help them. Doug is going to Washington in a month. This exercise will help bring into focus the concrete benefits the system will provide. (Since people can readily visualize concrete benefits, this activity should help with the funding effort.)

5. Technology Roadmap

   A development plan that shows what we intend to build long term and the release stages we plan to go through to get there.

6. Licensing and Business Model

   How we are going to do things in a way that makes the results available to humanity, yet provides the income necessary to ensure continued development and concept-marketing (to achieve widespread adoption of interoperating collaboration technologies provided by a large number of vendors, with the ultimate goal of augmenting (collaborative) human intelligence on the shortest possible time scale.

7. Data Structures

   Identifying the "atomic" structure (or structures) that can be strung together to build the system.

8. Encodings & Protocols

   How the structures are stored, accessed, and moved around.

   
   

Eric Armstrong
eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com