Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 08:23:26 -0500 From: Robert Hettinga Subject: DCSB: Joseph Reagle; Meta-data and Negotiation in Digital Commerce The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents Joseph Reagle Jr. World Wide Web Consortium "Social Protocols": Meta-data and Negotiation in Digital Commerce Tuesday, March 3, 1997 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA On the foundations of basic network, meta-data, and negotiation protocols, a "new" set of protocols, "social protocols," are being built. They are in fact applications of meta-data and negotiation in order to mimic the social capabilities people have in the real world: capabilities to create rich content, make verifiable assertions, create agreements, and to develop and manage trust relationships. Furthermore, governments realize that a significant portion of their constituencies and markets are moving on-line. Consequently, as the sophistication of one's interactions on the Web increase through the development of social protocols, so does the regulators' interest in extending their "real world" mandates on commerce and culture to the Web. Mr. Reagle will detail the development of "social protocols" and their ability to create and maintain spontaneous, emergent, social structures versus their ability to propagate "real world" norms on the Web. Joseph Reagle Jr. joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT in October of 1996 to focus on policy issues related to the development of global technologies and their relationship to social and legal structures. Specifically, how to promote "good" engineering when applied to a multifaceted and often contentious policy environment; one result of this activity is the W3C Statement on Policy. Mr. Reagle received a Computer Science degree from University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and continued on to the S.M. Technology and Policy program at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology (MIT). While at MIT he worked with the Research Program on Communication Policy on IPR, eCommerce, security, and cryptographic policy. During the summer of '95, he worked at Open Market on electronic commerce protocols. Before joining the W3C at the Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT), Mr. Reagle consulted on Internet and interactive media for McCann-Erickson, and Internet gambling for go-Digital. This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, March 3, 1997, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $32.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, various A/V hardware, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men (and no sneakers or jeans), and "appropriate business attire" (whatever that means), for women. Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your lunch if the Club finds you in violation of the dress code. We will attempt to record this meeting for sale on CD/R, and to put it on the web in RealAudio format, at some future date. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, February 28th, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $32.50. Please include your e-mail address, so that we can send you a confirmation If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Upcoming speakers for DCSB are: April Adam Shostack Digital Commerce Security: Beyond Firewalls May Jeremey Barrett Digital Bearer Certificate Protocols We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to . We look forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston