The Tipping Point has Arrived: Trust and Provenance in Web Communications

By Steve Holcombe (@steve_holcombe) and Clive Boulton (@iC)

"The Web was originally conceived as a tool for researchers who trusted one another implicitly. We have been living with the consequences ever since." Sir Tim Berners-Lee

"One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't … There are no programmes that I can run on my computer which allow me to use all the data in each of the social networking systems that I use plus all the data in my calendar plus in my running map site, plus the data in my little fitness gadget and so on to really provide an excellent support to me." Sir Tim Berners-Lee

The tipping point has arrived for trust and provenance in web communications. And it is not just because Tim Berners-Lee thinks it is a good idea. The control of immutable data in the Cloud by content providers is on the verge of moving out of research projects and into commercial platforms. The most visible, first-mover example known to us is provided by the Wikidata Project.

The rapidly emerging Wikidata Project, the next iteration of Wikipedia, will in its first phase (to be finished within the next 6 months) implement the deposit by content providers of data elements (e.g., someone's birth date) at a single, fixed location for supporting in Phase 2 (targeted to be completed by the end of 2012) the semantic relationships (i.e., ontologies) that Wikipedia users are seeking. Paul Allen's Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Google are two of the three primary benefactors of the Wikidata Project. And it is no surprise that the base of operations for this ground-breaking work is in Germany. The European Commission proposed in January, 2012 a comprehensive reform of data protection rules to strengthen online privacy rights and boost Europe's digital economy.

This blog site exists to discuss whole chain communications between enterprises and consumers. Along that line the Wikipedia folks aren't really thinking about the Wikidata Project in terms of supply chains. But that is what they are backing into. Daniel Matuschek (@matuschd) would seem to agree in his blog post, Wikidata - some expectations. Here's an excerpt:

"Some ideas for open databases that could make our live easier or better [include] Product data: Almost every product has an EAN code. There are some companies building and selling databases for specific products (e.g. food, DVDs), sometimes generated with community support .... The Wikidata project is currently not addressing [this kind of database], but if a platform is available, there’s a good chance that users start creating databases like this."

And granular permissions (in the hands of content providers) over individual data elements are on Wikipedia's wish list to be introduced later this year during Phase 2:

• O2.5. Add a more fine granular approach towards protecting single facts instead of merely the whole entity.
• O2.6. Export trust and provenance information about the facts in Wikidata. Since the relevant standards are not defined yet, this should be done by closely monitoring the W3C Provenance WG.

We suspect that as the Wikidata Project begins to provide "trust and provenance" in its form of web communications, they will not just be granularizing single facts but also immutabilizing the data elements to which those facts are linked so that even the content providers of those data elements cannot change them. This is critical for trust and provenance in whole chain communications between supply chain participants who have never directly interacted.

What are the other signs of the "tipping point"?

Another sign is the shift to forecasting demand certainty directly from a consumer interest graph. Walmart purchased Kosmix in 2011 to push into social commerce and to integrate products with social identity. This ia an important new way to give shoppers information, and get information from them. Analysts at the research firm Booz and Company said in a 2010 report.

“Social media, or places where people congregate to share information and mutual understanding, are replacing broadcast media as the primary way many people learn about products and services.”

"Doc" Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and a former Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, calls this a shift to the Intention Economy, Where Consumers Take Charge. Here is an excerpt from his May, 2012 publication:

Today, Walmart and Tesco and other global grocers have to wait for the checkout register to record a sale and pass the product sale information through a network of EDI processing to reforecast demand. Imagine the improvements when Walmart can see supply chain intent before the sale. Unlike Walmart, the FT calls Tesco tired.   

Indeed, Keith Teare on Tech Crunch posits Facebook's purchase of Instagram (and Google's falling earnings) signals the end of the Web 2.0 era. In the Web 2.0 era we consumed services on a web browser monetized by display ads. Now we are moving to a mobile app-centric world without desktop display ads. This is fertile ground for a shift into sharing at the identity and granular detail level via trust and provenance.

Does the Instagram purchase signal that Facebook will become a "trusted site" for granular information saved and shared in immutable objects? Facebook has to aggregate more and more data to build better services and makes its post IPO numbers. Will Facebook services come to provide W3C-type trust and provenance? We will see. But it is interesting to imagine that the Wikidata Project will be a "tipping point" for Facebook and other Web 2.0 providers toward granular trust and provenance in the Cloud.

What do you think? Share your conclusions and opinions by joining us at @WholeChainCom on LinkedIn at http://tinyurl.com/WholeChainCom.

Pardalis announces issuance of Canadian patent

April 20, 2012 — Pardalis, Inc. announced today the issuance of the following patent by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office:

• Informational Object Authoring and Distribution System, Patent No. CA 2457936 issued February 28, 2012.

The issuance of this patent represents another milestone in the continued, global expansion of Pardalis' same-named parent patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,671,696, and its continuation patents and applications.

The Pardalis 696 Patent was issued by the United States in 2003 and is also entitled Informational object authoring and distribution system. Pardalis' 696 patent is the parent patent for the Common Point Authoring™ system.

The critical means and functions of the Common Point Authoring™ system are directed to a system in which a creator can create data which is then fixed (immutable) and users can access that immutable data but cannot change it. They provide for user-centric authoring and registration of radically identified, immutable objects for further granular publication, by the choice of each author, among networked systems. The benefits of CPA include minimal, precise disclosures of personal and product identity data to networks fragmented by information silos and concerns over 'data ownership'.

“Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, New Zealand and, of course, the United States are the countries that have so far issued one or more patents to Pardalis,” said Steve Holcombe, Pardalis’ CEO. “We also have high expectations for similar actions on our applications pending in Brazil, Europe and Japan.”

About Pardalis, Inc.

Pardalis' Common Point Authoring™ system provides an object-oriented solution for introducing trust and provenance in web communications. For more information, see Pardalis' Global IP.

Whole Chain Traceability: A Successful Research Funding Strategy

The following work product represents a critical part of the first successful strategy for obtaining funding from the USDA relative to "whole chain" traceability. It is the work of this author as weaved into a USDA National Integrated Food Safety Initiative (NIFSI) funding submission of the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ led by Oklahoma State University and filed in June 2011. This work highlights the usefulness of Pardalis' U.S. patents and patents pending to "whole chain" traceability. It highlights the efficacy of employing granular information objects in the Cloud for providing consumer accessibility to any agricultural supply chain. In August 2011 notification was received of an award ($543,000 for 3 years) under the USDA NIFSI for a project entitled Advancement of a whole-chain, stakeholder driven traceability system for agricultural commodities: beef cattle pilot demonstration (Funding Opportunity Number: USDA-NIFSI RFA (FY 2011), Award Number: 2011-51110-31044).

With the funding of the NIFSI project, the USDA has funded a food safety project that is distinguishable from the Food Safety Modernization Act projects being funded by the FDA and conducted by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). Unlike the FDA/IFT projects, the scope of the funded NIFSI project uniquely encompasses consumer accessibility to supply chain information.

A useful explanation of the benefits of a “whole chain” traceability system may be made with critical traceability identifiers (CTIDs), critical tracking events (CTEs) and Nodes as described in the IFT/FDA Traceability in Food Systems Report. CTEs are those events that must be recorded in order to allow for effective traceability of products in the supply chain. A Node refers to a point in the supply chain when an item is produced, process, shipped or sold. CTEs may be loosely defined as a transaction. Every transaction involves a process that may be separated into a beginning, middle and end.

While important and relevant data exists in any of the phases of a CTE transaction, the entire transaction may be uniquely identified and referenced by a code referred to as a critical tracking identifier (CTID). For example, with the emergence of biosensor development for the real-time detection of foodborne contamination, one may also envision adding associated real-time environmental sampling data from each node.

What is not described or envisioned in the IFT/FDA Traceability in Food Systems Report is the challenge of using even top of the line “one up/one down” product traceability systems that, notwithstanding the use of a single CTID, are inherently limiting in the data sharing options provided to both stakeholders and government regulators. Pause for a moment and compare the foregoing drawing with the next drawing. Compare CTID2 in both drawings with CTID2A, CTID2B, etc. in the next drawing. The FDA/IFT food safety projects described above are at best implementing top of the line "one up/one down" product traceability systems with the use of a single CTID. But with “whole chain” product traceability, in which CTID2 is essentially assigned down to the datum level, transactional and environmental sampling data may in real-time be granularly placed into the hands of supply chain partners, food safety regulators, or even retail customers.

The scope of “whole chain” chain information sharing within the funded USDA NIFSI project goes well beyond the “one up/one down” information sharing of the FDA/IFT projects. The NIFSI project addresses a new way of looking at information sharing for connecting supply chains with consumers. This is essentially accomplished with a system in which a content provide creates data which is then fixed (i.e., made immutable) and users can access that immutable data but cannot change it.

The granularity of Pardalis' Common Point Authoring (CPA) system (as is necessary for a “whole chain” product traceability system) is characterized by the following patent drawing of an informational object (e.g., a document, report or XML object) whose immutable data elements are radically and uniquely identified. The similarities between the foregoing object containing CTID2A, CTID2B, etc., and the immutable data element identifiers of the following drawing, should be self-evident.

For the purposes of the NIFSI funding opportunity, the Pardalis CPA system invention was appropriately characterized as a “whole chain” product traceability system.  A further, high-altitude drawing, characterized the application of the invention to a major U.S. agricultural supply chain:

Several questions were required in the USDA's NIFSI "Review Package" to be addressed before actual funding. The responses to two of those questions were crafted by this author. They are worth inserting here ....

Question 1: A reviewer was skeptical that the system would be capable of handling different levels of data (consumer, producer, RFID, bar code) seamlessly.

There is an assumption in the reviewer’s opinion that data is different because it is consumer, producer, RFID, bar code, etc. The proposed pilot project is based on a premise that data is data. The difference in data that is perceived by the reviewer is not in its categorization per se but in its proprietary nature. That is, it is perceived to be different because it is locked up (often in categories of consumer, producer, RFID, bar code, etc.) in proprietary data silos along the supply and demand chains. It is reasonable to have this viewpoint given the prevalence of "one-up/one-down" data sharing in supply chains. As stated in the Positive Aspects of the Proposal, “[t]he use of open source software and the ability to add consumer access to the tracability (sic) system set this proposal apart from other similar proposals.” The proposed pilot project will demonstrate how an open source approach to increasing interoperability between enterprise data silos (buttressed by metadata permissions and security controls in the hands of the actual data producers) will provide new "whole chain" ways of looking at information sharing in enterprise supply and consumer demand chains. For instance, consumers could opt for retailers to automatically populate their accounts from their actual point-of-sale retail purchases. Consumers could additionally populate accounts in a multi-tenancy social network (like Facebook) using smartphone bar code image capturing applications. Supplemented by cross-reference to an industry GTIN/GLN database, the product identifiers would be associated with company names, time stamps, location and similar metadata. This could empower consumers with a one-stop shop for confidentially reporting suspicious food to FoodSafety.gov. Likewise, consumers could be provided with real-time, relevant food recall information in their multi-tenancy, social networking accounts, and their connected smartphone applications.

Question 2: A member of the panel was skeptical that the consumer accessibility would be largely attractive as this capability currently has limited appeal among consumers.

We recognize this viewpoint to be a highly prevalent opinion within an ag and food industry predominantly sharing data in a “one-up/one-down” manner. When one uses a smartphone today to scan an item in a grocery store, the probability of being able to retrieve any data from the typical ag and food supply chain is very low. However, we have been highly influenced in our thinking by the existing data showing that many consumers do not take appropriate protective actions during a foodborne illness outbreak or food recall. Furthermore, 41 percent of U.S. consumers say they have never looked for any recalled product in their home. Conversely, some consumers overreact to the announcement of a foodborne illness outbreak by not purchasing safe foods. We have been further influenced by how producers of organic and natural products are adopting rapidly evolving smartphone and mobile technologies as a way of communicating directly with consumers, and increasing their market share. We contend that by increasing supply chain transparency with real-time, whole chain technologies, “consumer accessibility” will become more and more appealing.  We contend this to be especially true when there is a product recall and the products are already in the home. And so, again, our high interest in working with FoodSafety.gov.

The foregoing strategy and comments may be freely cited with attribution to this author as CEO of Pardalis, Inc. It is offered in the spirit of the "sharing is winning" principles of the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ (now being rebranded as @WholeChainTrace™). However, no right to use Pardalis' patent or patents pending is conveyed thereby. If you wish to be a research collaborator with Pardalis, or to license or use Pardalis' patented innovations, please contact the author.

Update on Saturday, March 31, 2012 at 11:14AM by Steve Holcombe

See a citation to this research in:

Studentforce.com and Coaxing Social Enterprise Adoption by Students
http://cliveboulton.com/search/studentforce
Clive Boulton
31 Mar 2012

Update on Sunday, April 15, 2012 at 11:16PM by Steve Holcombe

All indications are that the emerging Wikidata Project, the next iteration of Wikipedia, will authorize end-users to centrally register immutable data elements (e.g., someone's birth date). It is no surprise that the primary benefactors of the Wikidata Project include Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Google because from these immutable data elements will be created trustworthy informational objects for supporting varying semantic relationships (i.e., ontologies).

"The overall project will have three phases, the first of which involves creating one Wikidata page for each Wikipedia entry across Wikipedia’s over 280 supported languages. This will provide the online encyclopedia with one common source of structured data that can be used in all articles, no matter which language they’re in. For example, the date of someone’s birth would be recorded and maintained in one place: Wikidata. Phase one will also involve centralizing the links between the different language versions of Wikipedia. This part of the work will be finished by August 2012."

See http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/30/wikipedias-next-big-thing-wikidata-a-machine-readable-user-editable-database-funded-by-google-paul-allen-and-others/

I will be speaking about the Wikidata Project in my keynote presentation "Data objects and information exchange for whole chain traceability" at the Smart AgriMatics Conference in Paris in mid-June, 2012. For more information see http://www.smartagrimatics.eu/ConferenceInformation/Program.aspx#PlenaryOpeningSession.

Clive Boulton: Whole Chain Traceability, pulling a Kobayshi Maru

Whole Chain Traceability, pulling a Kobayshi Maru.

A little background information about how this presentation came to be ....

Clive Boulton made this timely, impressive presentation at a luncheon held in Stillwater, Oklahoma on 6 January 2012. Stillwater is where Oklahoma State University - lead research institution of the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium - is located. The pathway to Stillwater from the Seattle area began with the CCNx conference held at the Palo Alto Research Center in September, 2011. I attended CCNxCon to make one or more connections relevant to the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium. Clive wasn't physically at the conference but he was looking in from north of Seattle via a live audio/video stream. Clive heard me asking a question from the audience about possibly applying CCN to supply chain traceability needs in food safety. Like me, Cliive has a passion for food traceability and so he tweeted "Who's that?" to one of the CCNxCon managers. A Twitter introduction was made.

Clive is currently a co-organizer of the Seattle Google Technology User Group at GTUG - http://www.meetup.com/seattle-gtug. He has a "finger on the pulse" of technology developments in Seattle and Silicon Valley which he commonly blogs about at http://cliveboulton.com/. And Clive has specially blogged there about Pardalis' Common Point Authoring at http://cliveboulton.com/post/12071791931/pardalis-is-banking-on-granular-information.

Clive is particularly interested in enterprise connected consumer solutions at web scale with polyglot technologies. Clive has opinions on how MSFT SQL Azure (or other "Big Data" databases) may be horizontally sharded (i.e., partitioned) with immutable informational objects for massive scalability. He is also very knowledgeable of the need to balance scalability against inherent latency issues that may result, for instance, in slow consumer access via mobile devices. And he has practical ideas about how to syngergistically leverage the resources and relationships of the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium for fostering an ecosystem of API development.

As a result of his visit to Stillwater, I am pleased announce that Clive will be serving as a consultant to the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium a/k/a @WholeChainTrace. This should make for a potent connection between the #CollabEnt (i.e., collaboration enterprise) of Clive's 20th slide and the increasingly critical need for real-time food traceability. Stay tuned.

Update on Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 10:15PM by Steve Holcombe

 New Slide 19 by @iC - #Cloud Application: Partnership model for a neutral #traceability database | http://www.slideshare.net/clibou/wctcevolution

The Whole Chain Traceability Consortium

The Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ is currently comprised at its core of researchers, educators, extension specialists and collaborators at Oklahoma State University, North Dakota State University, Michigan State University, the University of Arkansas, and Pardalis, Inc., an Oklahoma advanced  information technology company. These institutions are joined together by "sharing is winning" principles. Steve Holcombe, Pardalis' CEO, serves as a networker and coordinator among, between and beyond these institutions.

The vision of the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ is that new strategies for "whole chain" management of agricultural and food data - with a security model - are needed. We believe that these new strategies will increase the availability and quality in supply chains of transparent data. We believe that these new strategies will open up exciting sustainable business models for both large and small agricultural companies. We believe that social networking, the emergence of the "Internet of Things", and mobile technologies are dynamically driving this need. And, for instance, we believe that consumers will significantly benefit from real-time access to new data related to the safety of their food.

Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ coalesced in preparing food safety proposals for over $50M in 2010 USDA NIFA agricultural funding. In August 2011 notification was received of an award (~$550K/3 YRS) under the USDA National Integrated Food Safety Initiative. Pardalis' enterprise-class, multi-tenancy is at the heart of that project. This project begins a process for a patent-hardened open source licensing strategy for food and ag supply chains branded with Pardalis’ Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™.

The Web was originally conceived as a tool for researchers who trusted one another implicitly. Building in the missing layers of trust and provenance that make possible “whole chain” information sharing is one of the “next Big Things” for the Internet. Global patent portfolios are expensive and time-consuming to obtain and protect. Pardalis has been patiently building a formidable global patent portfolio in the U.S., China, the EU and other countries since 2001. These patents cover critical methods for introducing trust and provenance to whole chain information sharing with information-centric networking.

Other funding activities - both national and international - are in process. That includes a pre-submission seeking funding under the NSF Partnerships in International Research and Education (PIRE). On 19 October 2011 the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ - led by Oklahoma State University - filed a pre-submission entitled "Advancement of a whole-chain, stakeholder-driven traceability and supply chain management system to improve food safety and reduce food waste". As well phrased by Leo Bonanni of SourceMap, global trade in agricultural and food products is a series of discrete transactions between buyers and sellers. It is generally difficult – if not impossible – to determine a clear picture of the entire life cycle of such products.

The goals of the proposed NSF PIRE research are epitomized by a vision of consumers able to point a smartphone at a food product bar code, and retrieve a global sourcing map and reliable information about the product. This access may help save peoples lives in a food safety recall, verify sustainable agricultural practices, and learn more from consumers about their personal experiences with food products.

Domestic collaborators with the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ in the NSF PIRE pre-submission include Top 10 Produce, LLC and SourceMap. International collaborators include Dr. Sjaak Wolfert, Sr. Scientific Researcher on ICT in Agri-Food Supply Chain Networks at the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands, and Coordinator of the EU funded Smart Agri-Food Project. Also, Prof. Maohua Wang, College of Information and Electrical Engineering, Chinese Agricultural University – Beijing, China. Prof. Wang is Director of Strategic Research on Key Technology of Agricultural Information Technology funded by National Science Foundation of China.

Check out this and other funding opportunities being discussed and considered by the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ at http://pardalis.squarespace.com/funding-opportunities/.

There are three social networking sites for the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™. One is the Whole Chain Traceability Funding Opportunities networking group on LinkedIn. Another is on Facebook at the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium page. There is also a Twitter account at @WholeChainTrace. For more information, visit any of these websites or contact any of the following:

• Dr. Brian Adam, Oklahoma State University Professor of Agricultural Economics - http://agecon.okstate.edu/faculty/profile.asp?id=brian.adam&type=faculty
• Dr. Michael Buser, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering - http://bioenergycenter.okstate.edu/faculty/Buser
• Dr. Deland Myers, Professor and Director, School of Food Systems, North Dakota State University - http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/foodsystems/contactus.html
• Dr. John Stone, Co-Director and Sr. Research Scientist, at the Center for the Study of Standards in Society, Michigan State University - http://cs3.msu.edu/people/profile/stone-john/
• Dr. Jean-Francois Meullenet, Head and Professor, Department of Food Science, University of Arkansas - http://foodscience.uark.edu/2349.htm
• Steve Holcombe, Pardalis, Inc. - http://www.linkedin.com/in/steveholcombe

Update on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 10:06AM by Steve Holcombe

Beth Hoffman, Managing Editor and Partner, Food+Tech Connect, interviewed Dr. Brian Adam, Oklahoma State University Professor of Agricultural Economics, Dr. Michael Buser, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, and me.

Introductory excerpt -

"Knowing where food comes from and how it was grown is a top priority in an increasing number of American households. But aside from costly technological solutions employed by large, vertically-integrated corporations, very little exists to follow food throughout fragmented food systems from ‘farm to fork.’ The Whole Chain Traceability Consortium ... aims to change that, and make it available on smart phones."

See the full post published on 29 Nov 2011 at:

http://www.foodandtechconnect.com/site/2011/11/29/tracking-and-incentivizing-data-the-whole-chain-traceability-consortium/

Update on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 10:16PM by Steve Holcombe

Whole Chain Traceability: A Successful Research Funding Strategy
http://pardalis.squarespace.com/blog/2012/1/26/whole-chain-traceability-a-successful-research-funding-strat.html

Update on Saturday, April 28, 2012 at 8:47PM by Steve Holcombe

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Update: National Institute for Whole Chain Traceability
From: "Steve Holcombe"
Date: Thu, January 19, 2012 11:15 am
To:

Dr. Deland Myers
Professor and Director
Great Plains Institute of Food safety
School of Food Systems
North Dakota State University

Dr. Steve Pueppke
Director of Michigan State University AgBioResearch

Dr. Lawrence Busch
Founding Director
Center for the Study of Standards in Society
Michigan State University

Dr. John V. Stone
Co-Director & Senior Research Scientist
Center for the Study of Standards in Society
Michigan State University

Dr. Jean-Francois Meullenet
Head & Professor
Department of Food Science
University of Arkansas

Dr. Sjaak Wolfert
Sr. Scientific Researcher on ICT in Agri-Food Supply Chain Networks
University of Wageningen, the Netherlands

Prof. Maohua Wang
(c/o Dr. Ning Wang)
College of Information and Electrical Engineering
Chinese Agricultural University
Beijing, China

Vladimir Krasojevic
Research Director at Gartner
Zurich, Switzerland

Dr. Sam Saguy
Professor of Food Science, Technology, and Innovation
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Greetings, All,

Last fall I had the distinct privilege of personally soliciting from each of you a letter of support for the founding of a "National Institute for Whole Chain Traceability and Food Safety Research" at Oklahoma State University. Each of you submitted letters of support to Dr. Brian Adam, Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics at OSU. Your letters were received with great interest, hope and excitement. My final draft of the news release, which was personally submitted to Dr. Stephen McKeever, VP of Research and Technology Transfer at OSU, is attached. [Editors's Note: In fact, Dr. McKeever gave his own letter of support, too].

In your letters you appropriately noted that unfunded, multi-institutional activities do not commonly coalesce and stay together for as long as they had done so (over 2 long years) with the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium (WCTC). And you further noted that the initial funding and founding of the Institute was truly be a milestone achievement for the WCTC.

This last week I was informed by Drs. Buser and Adam that the National Institute will come into existence sometime later in 2012 but that neither the efforts of the "Whole Chain Traceability Consortium" nor "Pardalis Inc." will be specifically identified. At best I imagine there will be some reference to the activities of a "consortium" or something to that effect. Furthermore, I was informed that henceforth there would be no further, specific reference to the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium nor Pardalis Inc. in future, OSU-led traceability funding submissions. As to the reasons for these decisions, I would refer you to Drs. McKeever, Buser or Adam. But I will say that I was invited to continue my participation - at the same level of energy and interest - in current and future OSU-led traceability funding activities.

I regret to inform you that Pardalis will no longer be participating in the formation of the National Institute. Nor will Pardalis be participating any further in conjunction with OSU-led funding activities or funding submissions. This includes the currently funded USDA National Integrated Food Safety Initiative project, the NSF Partnerships in International Research and Education (PIRE) and the USDA Specialty Crops Research Initiative submission.

I want to again thank you for your letters of support. I was walking on “Cloud Nine”, as they say. And I want you to know that I had the very, very best of intentions in soliciting your support in a manner that was inextricably connected to the "sharing is winning" principles of the WCTC. Those principles remain unaltered and unaffected.

The WCTC will evolve. In fact, Pardalis Inc is already in the process of rebranding its trademark under the moniker of @WholeChainTrace™. Furthermore, Clive Boulton, co-organizer of the significant Seattle-area Google Technology User Group, has come on board as a technical advisor to Pardalis Inc., @WholeChainTrace™ and an even broader brand, @WholeChainCom™ (for Whole Chain Communications).

Thanks again for your support letters. I mean that. I sincerely hope that I have not lost an opportunity to again solicit your support for the future activities of @WholeChainTrace.

Cheers,

Steve

----
Steve Holcombe
CEO - Pardalis, Inc.
    
Cc:
Dr. Stephen McKeever, VP of Research and Technology Transfer
Dr. Brian Adam, Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics
Dr. Michael Buser, Assistant Professor, Department of BAE