{"id":9,"date":"2016-11-21T16:32:50","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T16:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/community\/openactive\/?p=9"},"modified":"2018-01-25T17:48:41","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T17:48:41","slug":"introducing-the-open-active-community-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/community\/openactive\/2016\/11\/21\/introducing-the-open-active-community-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing the OpenActive Community Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the OpenActive Community Group! This post provides a short introduction to the group, covering its scope, initial roadmap and some notes on how to get involved.<\/p>\n

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Supported by Sport England, the Open Data Institute is collaborating with the sports sector<\/a> to help activity providers produce openly available data on what, where and when physical activity sessions are happening. This data, which won\u2019t include any personal information, will be open for anyone to access, use and share.<\/p>\n

By making more data available, in consistent easy to use formats, we can support the creation of a new range of products and services. Ultimately we want more people to be more active.<\/p>\n

To achieve this we need to create open specifications that describe how to publish and share data for reuse in the sector.\u00a0We will be using this community group to co-ordinate that\u00a0activity.<\/p>\n

Why use a W3C\u00a0community group?<\/h2>\n

Community groups are designed to promote innovation and allow anyone to contribute to the development of community specifications.<\/p>\n

A W3C community group is the ideal place to co-ordinate this type of activity which benefits from an open, neutral environment that can bring together people from across a sector.<\/p>\n

Community groups are open to everyone<\/a>;\u00a0are easy to start; and are supported by W3c collaboration tools. The W3C also provide a contributor agreement<\/a> which is signed by all participants, ensuring that the outputs of the group remain\u00a0open.<\/p>\n

Please join the group<\/a> to share your views. You will need to create a free W3C account<\/a> in order to sign up, but you don’t need to be a member of the W3C to participate.<\/p>\n

All of the detailed discussion and decisions will take place through the OpenActive mailing list<\/a>. This gives everyone the opportunity to share their views and a public record of key decisions. This is an important aspect of building open standards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We also plan to hold regular community hangouts to facilitate discussion and feedback. These will be advertised on the list<\/a> and will also be\u00a0open to everyone.\u00a0We’ll also post status updates and news on the technical work on this blog.<\/p>\n

What is the scope of the\u00a0group’s activities?<\/h2>\n

In order to publish and share\u00a0physical activity data we need to:<\/p>\n

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  1. Specify how to describe activities<\/strong> by agreeing on a basic model for events and how to describe them<\/li>\n
  2. Define how to publish data<\/strong> for others to reuse, e.g. via APIs, standard data formats and mark-up embedded in web pages<\/li>\n
  3. And, eventually, how to book activities<\/strong> so that people can sign-up to the events they’re interested in<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The\u00a0sports activity sector is very diverse. Data is held in large scale leisure management systems and also shared via individual websites, meetup\u00a0groups, etc. We need to be working towards supporting the breadth of that community.<\/p>\n

    The specifications we create will build as far as possible on existing standards and technologies, e.g. Schema.org, etc.<\/p>\n

    What are our initial plans?<\/h2>\n

    While some work has already gone into exploring\u00a0how to publish activity data via an API<\/a>, the group will initially focus on how to describe activities.<\/p>\n

    This will involve:<\/p>\n