Self-nomination of Kim Hamilton Duffy for CCG chair seat A

(added a subject)

On Wed, May 20, 2020 at 5:21 PM Kim Hamilton <kimdhamilton@gmail.com> wrote:

> I nominate myself, Kim Hamilton Duffy, for Seat A (term 2020-2021).
>
> I'm the architect for the Digital Credentials Consortium, a university-led
> effort that promotes learner-controlled credentials and more equitable
> learning/career pathways. The Verifiable Credentials and Decentralized
> Identifier standards are core to our technical approach.
>
> I've been a CCG co-chair for nearly three years. While I'm happy with what
> we've been able to accomplish as a group, there are areas where we can do
> better, and where I would like to help in my remaining year, if elected.
>
> 1. Improving alignment among decentralized id groups
>
> We've made solid progress through efforts like secure data storage. But we
> can do a lot better. The CCG leadership should work proactively with other
> decentralized id groups to determine our strengths/interests and plan how
> best to work together. There's a massive amount of work to do, and we can
> do it together in a way that energizes and improves the overall community.
>
> 2. Strategy and planning
>
> Related to the above, I want us to create a roadmap of community goals.
> This last year has been a mad flurry of work. This includes many exciting
> developments like the DID WG and a variety of draft specifications, but I'd
> like to work with the other chairs (and the community) to create a clear
> set of goals that the chairs can more actively support, which ties to...
>
> 3. Inclusion and nurturing the next set of leadership
>
> Over the last few months, I've developed a hypothesis for why we struggle
> so much with non-technical work items, which is that our use cases are
> often not sufficiently grounded in real-world scenarios. This murkiness
> often makes it hard for non-technical participants to understand where they
> can help. Because the technical people are all off debating esoterics (no
> offense to matrix parameters intended).
>
> I've heard statements along the lines of "maybe we're only good at specs,
> code, etc" and we shouldn't try. But we would do that at our own very great
> peril, because otherwise we cannot properly evaluate the suitability of our
> solutions. I want the CCG leadership to take a more active role in
> addressing these shortcomings, and encouraging the next set of leaders.
>
> 4. Other notes
>
> A lot of my focus as a CCG co-chair so far has been process improvements.
> That includes automation around meeting coordination and minute generation
> (which was formerly quite a tax, since community groups have no w3c support
> staff), as well as simplify CCG work item processes. The end goal of all of
> that was to make our community more self-sustaining and open by reducing
> the unnecessary barriers to participation (technical or otherwise).
>
> We're in a much better state now, which does free up time for chairs to
> focus less on tedious tasks, but that's just a small start. I'm hoping to
> be part of the much more expansive (and exciting!) work remaining, and
> supporting the new CCG co-chairs in their leadership roles.
>
> I think I've spent most of this email saying why you should elect other
> leaders, because I've not done nearly enough to address the above. :) And
> that's also a reasonable outcome. Either way, it's been an honor to serve
> you as chair.
>
> Kim
>