Hello everyone
This is the running update from the Executive Director. Have questions or comments? Suggest some added information or edits? Contact Colin at kantarainitiative dot org.
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It's Thanksgiving weekend in the US and I do hope that the Kantara family there have rested, ate eaten well, given thanks to friends, family , and loved and & worshipped ones - perhaps also done some shopping on Friday if real bargains could be found 
. Appropriately, I want to begin this month's blog by giving thanks to the dedicated band of member and non member participant volunteers who take time that they often don't have, to contribute their expertise and experience to Kantara's working groups, Boards and meetings, to present Kantara at conferences and on panels, to support Kantara in internal meetings and champion it Kantara at external meetings. Thank you all. You know who you are because there are not so many . with a great big thank you to I'm giving my thanks to an I'm typing this the day after the October time slew period has ended - the two week period where Europe's clocks go back one week before North America's. The chairs of Kantara's work groups will be happy to see the back of it because inevitably we lose valuable meeting time. It seemed that we managed pretty well this Fall, with only very minor upset. Well done the Leadership Council (and the WG Chairs that comprise it) for good management My Kantara staff too, without whom you would not have meetings and reports, analysis and recommendations, reminders and eBallots, member renewals and surveys, Tweets and newsletters, invoices and payments, updated and secure websites and wikis, and much much more. Thank you so much Ruth, Oliver, Armin and Chris. And Bella, Megan, Stephanie, Rob, Michael, Rebecca, Darya and Bob at Virtual Inc .
October was a hugely busy month of travel for me personally as your Exec Director. There’s more to come in November, tho' not quite so intense as October.
October continued the good news that September delivered to Kantara. It's more the norm in recent months. Is it that our 10th anniversary awareness galvanized longstanding intent into definitive action? Maybe. Is it that the OMB's M-19-17 circular to US federal agencies in which conformance to NIST 800-63-3 is reinforced? Quite possibly. It's well known in federal circles that self attestation is not given much credence, and that Kantara is the only third party assessor and approver of a transparent, community developed 63-3 scheme and class of approval. Whatever it is, it is seeing Kantara staff very very busy with prospective member enquiries and proposals and requests for Kantara engagement from industry - both federal and state in the public sector along with private sector too. I do hope it won't be too long before we can share those with you.
The month began with IIW 29 in Mountain View with great demos on EduGAIN, Gluu Gateway and Transmute ID with Kantara UMA and Kantara Consent Receipt from members GEANT, Gluu and Transmute Industries respectively. There were great presentations from Kantara work group participants @gffletch with his legendary UMA 101 class (so gratifying to see a full room of interested folks not seen before) and @justin_richer on OAuth xyz that takes the profiling work done to create OpenID Connect and Kantara UMA together with other learnings, to work towards an OAuth 3.0. Fincity's Erik Lamb and I attempted to a 'Consent Receipt for Financial Services' session that suffered from projector challenges. Nonetheless all IIW materials - Kantara related and others - are here.
I had to cut short my attendance at IIW 29 to attend the Board's F2F meeting in Board Member ForgeRock's offices in downtown San Francisco with a near full attendance in person and remote. It was an intense but fulfilling meeting where key decisions were taken on Kantara's 2020 strategic direction. You'll see some structural changes coming in the form of all-member ballots that will pave the way for this next exciting phase of Kantara's development as it reinforces our mantra 'nurture, develop, operate' in its open and inclusive community participation format. Thank you all for supporting our mission, ethics, ethos and values.
After a long flight via Taipei, I arrived in Singapore for the IDENTITY WEEK ASIA conference on October 8-9th 2019. As I mentioned last month, the conference organisers have made the very most of my offer to help out/fill gaps. It was very valuable with several follow ups from AsiaPac organizations interested in Kantara, one in particular looking at membership level+ engagement.
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Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:
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