Verifiable Claims Telecon Minutes for 2016-03-29

Thanks to Gregg Kellogg for scribing this week! The minutes
for this week's Verifiable Claims telecon are now available:

http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-03-29/

Full text of the discussion follows for W3C archival purposes.
Audio from the meeting is available as well (link provided below).

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Verifiable Claims Telecon Minutes for 2016-03-29

Agenda:
  https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments-ig/2016Mar/0059.html
Topics:
  1. Introduction to Todd Albers
  2. W3C Advisory Committee Summary
  3. Next Steps (in the next 4-6 weeks)
  4. Spec Ops
Action Items:
  1. Manu to contact interviewees and survey respondents with 
    charter and use cases and questionnaire.
  2. Shane to update use cases to make them broader than payments 
    (based on feedback at W3C AC Meeting)
  3. Matt Stone to review use cases.
  4. Richard Varn to review use cases.
  5. Eric Korb to review use cases.
  6. Carla Casilli to review use cases.
  7. Todd Albers to review use cases.
Organizer:
  Manu Sporny
Scribe:
  Gregg Kellogg
Present:
  Gregg Kellogg, Manu Sporny, Todd Albers, Shane McCarron, Carla 
  Casilli, Richard Varn, Dave Longley, Matt Stone, David I. Lehn, 
  Daniel C. Burnett, Rob Trainer, Andy Dale, Colleen Kennedy
Audio:
  http://w3c.github.io/vctf/meetings/2016-03-29/audio.ogg

Gregg Kellogg is scribing.
Manu Sporny:  Talking about W3C meeting and SpecOps.

Topic: Introduction to Todd Albers

Todd Albers:  I’m Todd Albers, work for US Federal Reserve Bank. 
  I’m interested in the different use cases as it relates to 
  credentials.
  … My background is in web apps and have worked in SaaS with 
  credit cards.

Topic: W3C Advisory Committee Summary

Manu Sporny:  We started circulating a draft charter for VCWG. We 
  tried to paint a picture of what the WG would look like based on 
  42 respnoses to survey, and the 12+ people we interviewed around 
  the charter.
Manu Sporny: 
  http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/charter/vcwg-draft.html
  … We also showed use cases.
Manu Sporny: http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/VCTF/use-cases/
  … We focused primarily around credentials uses for payments. 
  Initial feedback is that they would like to see it broader (e.g., 
  Healthcare and Education). The discussions last week at the 
  Advisory Committee reinforced that.
  … We did a number of interviews to see what they thought about 
  the work. A number of respondents were very cautious, due to 
  previous failures in the space (OpenID Connect, SAML, …).
  … There was some pushback questioning why this work was 
  different. We were able to sit down with them (Dan Applequist). 
  He’d like to see more general language at the beginning of the 
  doc to make it clear what problem we’re trying to solve.
  … We spoke with the AC Rep from Apple (David Singer) who was 
  also cautious.
  … We also spoke with Harry Halpin, who has been most strongly 
  opposed to the work. We indicated that the charter was modified 
  due to his input. He thought this was a positive step, but had 
  not reviewed the charter. He raised an issue on our claim of 
  consensus to create a charter. I went through the list of people, 
  and he had no response to that. (He’d like to see the list).
  … We brought up VC, and I didn’t hear any strong objection to 
  the work. There are upwards of 400 members, and we would need to 
  respond if we get any formal objections.
Shane McCarron:  I didn’t hear anything negative. I did hear was 
  intereset from quarters I hadn’t expected, where there are uses 
  we hadn’t expected.
Manu Sporny:  Web Annotations would like something like this to 
  not who author is, also RIAA and MPAA for noting artists and 
  royalties.
  … All in all, it was really good; it didn’t seem like anyone 
  was surprized or came out of left field. We talked with W3CM 
  (Jeff Jaffe) who wanted to see how it was going, and to see who 
  would be Staff contact for this work.
  … I mentioned that gkellogg is a front-runner as far as being a 
  staff contact, but we need to find funding, but others may come 
  up too.
Carla Casilli: Feels like a good time to say Yay!

Topic: Next Steps (in the next 4-6 weeks)

Manu Sporny:  It’s up to us now, and there doesn’t seem to be 
  anyone standing in the way. We could bring it in front of the W3C 
  Membership for a formal vote sooner or later. We need to be sure 
  it’s structured to have a very good chance of success. What comes 
  next is getting people who are going to show up every week, 
  engage, and get the hard work done over the next 2 years.
Shane McCarron: We did say we would circle back with the 
  interviewees.  Has that been done?
  … We’re going to ask people for committments, show up, join 
  W3C, etc. If we don’t get at least 20 W3C members voting for it, 
  and at least 15 people who show up regularly. Good news is that 
  we’ve had that engagement so far, but people need to commit to 
  join the W3C.
  … We need to hire a W3C Fellow, make test suites, and so forth, 
  and that takes money. We’re at the point where it needs funding 
  for us to start. If we start without that in place, the work 
  could falter.
  … We haven’t yet circled back with interviewees, and survey 
  respondents this week. There’s a question of if we should create 
  a committment questionaire.
Richard Varn: Can you summarize the to dos?
Shane McCarron:  We said we would formally circle back.
Carla Casilli: What's the minimum number of required 
  participants?
Manu Sporny:  You missed that, we haven’t yet done that and need 
  to do it this week. I’m wondering if we should have a 
  questionaire to see if people would participate, object or 
  something else.
Manu Sporny:  Richard asked about ToDo’s. The first thing is to 
  notify interviewees that we have a charter and want to forge 
  ahead. Do they see any issues. Then we need to get back with 
  Survey respondents (23 or so).
Richard Varn: Don't forget Lumina
Manu Sporny:  Then we need to push key organizations for informal 
  reviews of the charter (Bloomberg, Fed Reserve, B&M Gates 
  Foundations, EMS, Pearson, …) need to get them on the record.
  … The faster we get to 20 commitments, the better, but we 
  should shoot for 50 organizations supporting the work.
  … It takes 20-25 yes votes to start. There must be at least 10 
  participants on each call.
Carla Casilli: Great, thanks.
Manu Sporny:  Those are low bars. The Web Payments IG has 47 
  organizations and 112 participants; I’d like to do at least as 
  well.
  … Once we get to that point, the charter will go up for formal 
  review. There’s 1-2 months for review and voting. W3C will review 
  votes and handle objections, and hopefully, we’ll have a WG after 
  that. Timeline is still end of July to start the WG.
Richard Varn: Are we reasonably sure the vested interests and 
  browser makers will not object?
Manu Sporny:  We don’t see any objections on the horizon.
Richard Varn: Cool
Manu Sporny:  We’re predicting 18-24 months to do the work. We 
  could do in 12 months if everything goes according to plan (but 
  it never does).
  … We’re releasing a blog post about our experiences with the 
  Web Payments group so far: things have not gone well, at least 
  when it came to our group creating a bunch of specs and putting 
  it into a WG. We tried to get browser vendors on board, but bad 
  things happened.
Richard Varn: Understood
Dave Longley: But hopefully a lot will be mitigated by starting 
  small
  … Even though we’ve asked and giving notification, and we’re 
  not doing protocol, which they care about, there are no 
  guarantees. The WPIG is an example of how things can fall apart. 
  That’s one of the biggest concerns we have, how to mitigate risks 
  of powerful groups coming in and disrupting the process.
Dave Longley: Some of that vision will have started to actualize, 
  so it can be seen/understood by new players more easily.
Dave Longley: If we have implementations out there.
  … As dlongley says, starting small and getting deployments is 
  key. Having deployments in an industry before it comes into W3C 
  is a good thing, as it validates the vision, and shows that it 
  can’t be easily moved. Its a risk we need to understand

ACTION: Manu to contact interviewees and survey respondents with 
  charter and use cases and questionnaire.


ACTION: Shane to update use cases to make them broader than 
  payments (based on feedback at W3C AC Meeting)

Manu Sporny:  I’ll also create the survey and put it out to the 
  group.
Shane McCarron: +1 To reviewing the use case document
  … We need to take a closer look at the use cases document to 
  make sure everyone understands it. Particularly as people think 
  it’s too focused on payments.
Shane McCarron: I would also like to start (again) working on the 
  extended use cases

ACTION: Matt Stone to review use cases.


ACTION: Richard Varn to review use cases.


ACTION: Eric Korb to review use cases.

Shane McCarron:  We talked about an extended use-case document 
  (the “vision” thing). Where should it live, in CG or as adjunct 
  document within VCTF?)
Manu Sporny:  I’d suggest in CG for now. I’m concerned about 
  handing a document over to a group that won’t tend to it long 
  term.
Matt Stone:  I was going to ask where we are going to manage 
  other workspaces and have a sand-box to flesh it out. Do we have 
  a vision for how to bring in other industries? We could add 
  example uses cases for each flow in each industry.
Manu Sporny:  We don’t have anything solid in mind right now. 
  Just repeating the use case for each industry isn’t useful, but 
  spreading around the use case descriptions among 5-6 industries 
  would be useful.
Matt Stone:  Would it make sense to have a meta-use case to show 
  creating, issuing, verifying across different use cases?
Carla Casilli: What's the timeframe for review and editing?
Manu Sporny:  I think the editors have worked on some of these 
  already. You might point out flows which are missing. Adding 2-3 
  more flows would be useful.
Carla Casilli: Okay, just wanted to know if it was by 12pm ET. ;)

ACTION: Carla Casilli to review use cases.

  … Realistically, we need another month to do this work. But, 
  really ASAP. Reviews should be in by the end of this week so we 
  can review it.
Todd Albers: I can help with the review as well

ACTION: Todd Albers to review use cases.

Manu Sporny:  Shanem and other editors are in charge of getting 
  use cases cross-industrty.
  … Next week, we’ll try and see how we’re doing with 
  commitments; we’re going to need everyone’s help to get 
  commitments for this work.
  … Then we need to be sure the work is well-funded, so we don’t 
  languish.

Topic: Spec Ops

Matt Stone:  This is the first W3C I’ve participated in so 
  actively. You’ve mentioned funding; can you briefly tell us how 
  that works?
Manu Sporny:  We’re doing something a bit different than the way 
  W3C groups typically run. VC and Credentials is a “charged” 
  topic; there have been failures in the past and people are 
  nervous about it. We’ve done a good job in making something 
  achievable.
  … Typically, you create a charter, and companies join. But, 
  when the work starts, they typically send people to do the work 
  that are stretched too thin. A number of WG’s I’ve participating 
  in, the vast amount of work is done by Volunteers (Invited 
  Experts). This is a skill that people acquire over years, which 
  can slow down the work.
  … The question is, do we depend on companies to do the work, or 
  do we hire people to support us through the process, that’s what 
  Spec Ops is about (Specification Operations). It was set up to 
  accellerate the process of doing standards work, so we don’t hit 
  the typical snags.
  … We need folks like ShaneM, he’s the projects manager at 
  SpecOps; same with Gregg and Dan. It’s highly unlikelly that W3C 
  will staff the work.
  … We don’t have a good response, as no current W3C staff member 
  has jumped at it; a failed effort reflects badly on the staff, 
  and noone has an appitite for the work, and they’re swamped. 
  We’re going to have to bring in someone from the outside.
  … A company can fund a “W3C Fellow” to do such work. A number 
  of us have been through this process before, which helps us out.
Shane McCarron:  It’s also not clear to me who at W3C would staff 
  this; picking a Fellow to staff is probably the best way to make 
  it happen. I don’t want anyone to think that SpecOps is 
  strong-arming the group to go in a particular direction.
  … We’re not saying you need to buy a standard, but work like 
  this needs dedicated people doing the work. There’s a lot of 
  cross-group coordination needed, which is something the staff 
  contact makes happen. SpecOps is about finding such experts and 
  getting them into the work.
Shane McCarron: https://spec-ops.io
Matt Stone:  Is it fair to thing about SpecOps as staff 
  augmentation for W3C?
Manu Sporny:  Yes. To be clear, this is not about paying SpecOps 
  to get the standard through the door, but there is stuff that 
  needs to be done that large organizations don’t know how to do. 
  This causes the standard to slow or stop.
  … If a number of organizations join and staff with good 
  technologists, that’s great! (This rarely happens). Because of 
  the high risk of people pointing to this and saying “I told you 
  so”, I’m particularly concerned.
  … If it starts out and it turns out there’s a large number of 
  qualified people, then we won’t need SpecOps, but I’ve rarely 
  seen that happen (maybe once).
Shane McCarron:  Its my job as Projects Manager for SpecOps to 
  answer such questions, so please contact me.
Manu Sporny:  Spec editing is hard to staff, as is test-suite 
  generation. There are a number of technologies we depend on that 
  need to be created, WebDHT, RDF Normalization, … A new group 
  needs to be started to make this stuff work.
Matt Stone: +1 (Empathy) to ShaneM
  … when we start a WG we need an idea about how this work is 
  going to happen. Right now, we don’t have a solid plan for RDF 
  Normalization, LD Signatures, WebDHT or decentralized identifier 
  work. Without those technologies, we don’t have portable 
  credentials.
Shane McCarron:  For example, the Web Annotation WG asked me to 
  attend last week. They’ve done a lot of work on a JSON-LD-based 
  mechnisms for annotation, but got to the end without realizing 
  they had no testing infrastructure.
Manu Sporny:  As dlongley says, SpecOps creates technology that 
  is broadly available.
Manu Sporny:  We’ll focus on use cases, responses and survey for 
  the rest of the week.
Carla Casilli: Thanks, all! bye

Received on Tuesday, 29 March 2016 18:33:18 UTC