LC telecon 2013-08-14

Date and Time

• Date: Wednesday, 14 August 2013
• Time: 13:00 PT | 16:00 ET | 20:00 UTC (time chart)
• Dial-in:  Skype:+99051000000481
  
  • US Dial-In: +1-805-309-2350 | Room Code: 402-2737
  • For more dial-in information, see: http://kantara.atlassian.net/wiki/display/GI/Telco+Bridge+Info

Agenda

1. Roll Call
2. Approve Minutes:  LC telecon Minutes 2013-07-03
3. Administration:
   
   1. Action Item Review
   2. Executive Director Report
   3. Voting and nominations
      
      1. LC leadership - call for nominations: Secretary (still no nominations)
4. Discussion
   
   1. F2F meeting report
      
      1. Discussion of proposed changes to WG/DG management
   2. Marketing and Outreach
      
      1. Event Radar 2013 and 2014
5. WG Updates
   
   1. Note: one response to new survey-style questionnaire (UMA)
6. BoT Liaison Representative Update
7. AOB
8. Adjourn

Attendees

• Allan Foster
• Pete Palmer
• Colin Wallis (eGov)
• Ingo Friese
• Myisha Frazier-McElveen (IAWG)

Quorum is 5 of 8 as of 22 May 2013.

Staff:

• Joni Brennan
• Heather Flanagan (scribe)

Apologies:

Minutes & Notes

Action Item Review

Administration

Executive Director report

• August running report to be updated shortly

Nominations & Elections

1. Call for nominations: LC Secretary
   1. Pete may be able to nominate someone in 2 weeks from MedAllies

Discussion

F2F meeting report

• This meeting really focused on Kantara itself; previous F2F meetings focused more on outputs from work groups

Hello BoT and LC, 

Last week, several people met in Vancouver, WA at the ForgeRock offices to discuss the next steps for Kantara to grow as an organization.  Many thanks go to Ken Dagg, Heather Flanagan, Allan Foster, Lucy Lynch, Eve Maler, and Pete Palmer for their thoughtful participation, and a special thanks to Colin Wallis for his remote participation on the first day.  A special thank you to Allan Foster and ForgeRock for hosting the event.

While past Kantara meetings have focused on the output of specific work groups, the purpose of this meeting was to focus on Kantara itself, its structure, ability to grow, and ability to market itself as a leader in the identity and credential assurance space.  Day one (and part of day two) examined the question of "Why does Kantara exist?"  The expectation was that if we could clearly articulate "why?", the "What does Kantara do?" and "How does Kantara do it?" would flow reasonably from that point.  This turned out to be an excellent exercise to bring us all to the same page of understanding and expectation regarding the organization.  While the conversation has not finished, our final word-smithing for the meeting settled on:

       "Kantara exists to define rules of engagement for operators of online services, enabling high-value, privacy-preserving identity and access."

Participants agreed that some more work on the Why statement is probably in order, but left that for a future discussion.

Part of our exercise in coming to "why?" focused on the "HUVE" concept: what makes us Hard to copy, Unique, Valuable, and Embedded (i.e., hard _not_ to use) ?   We also evaluated Kantara as if we were an outside group considering Kantara as a home for its work, based on Reputation, Support, Governance, IPR regime, Barriers to entry, Liaison opportunities, and Sustainability/Business viability.  In all of these evaluations, we realized that we had to look at Kantara through three very different lenses: Kantara as a whole, Kantara specifically as a service operator offering services to its clients, and Kantara as a home for innovation.  One takeaway from these examinations is that Kantara, in its openness and drive towards cohesion and interoperability, is fairly unique in the assurance and accreditation space; we are just starting to see the tip of the iceberg of organizations that want to become a Credential Service Provider.  

During the meeting, three points became clear:

1. Kantara is a very lean organization, whether we considered the Accreditation side or as the Innovation side of the Work and Discussion Groups.  While the lean structure has worked in the early market and we are not a dot com going crazy, we need to support the organization and prepare for growth by bringing in more resources (e.g., additional staff, focused group participation, more Members).

2. In order to bring in more resources, Kantara needs a clearer marketing message than what we've used with the Early Adopters.  We need a marketing message that will work with the Early Majority of organizations demanding interoperability in the credential space.

3. Work and Discussion Groups, while sponsored, formed and operated by individuals who participate in Kantara, have lacked a clear focus on delivering value, especially in their ongoing operations, to the shared mission and vision of Kantara Members and Subscribers.

Each of the above points decomposes in to specific action items.  In order to support the expected growth of the organization, we need to consider our accreditation program as a service operator, and run it accordingly.  This means leveraging a service development manager to facilitate the CSP application process and make sure the organization's needs are clearly defined.  

For a better marketing message, Kantara needs to be clear on what we offer to organizations.  This means a cleaner website with the benefits of membership and participation clearly listed and more detailed information easier to find.  This also means (and here we borrow the Creative Commons license layer description (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/)) creating a Human Readable IAF in addition to the Legal Code-style IAF that currently exists.

As for the Innovation side of the house, the Work and Discussion Groups should be focused on outputs and research that will specifically support Kantara's overall mission.  This means that each Work Group should have an active charter with clear outputs and timelines that are tracked and reported upon, each Discussion Group should have an active charter with clearly defined topics, and all Work and Discussion Groups will review and renew their charter annually with LC approval.

I look forward to advancing specific plans with the BoT and LC to put actions to this summary. If there are questions or comments in advance please do not hesitate to contact me.

Last - BUT NOT LEAST - a very special thanks to my right hand team mate, Heather Flanagan, for her vital support on-site culminating in the development of this summary report. Again, many thanks to the participants that brought us this far, and a thanks in advance to the rest of you that will help take this work even farther. 

• Kantara is seen as "a place" for high-assurance, privacy-respecting work; one of our goals is to make that "the recognized place" that people associate with this kind of work; there is no other choice for high-assurance work and we need to emphasize that

• how do we keep the momentum going?   this is in part a challenge to the Trustees and LC to make sure this moves forward.  One action is to ask each WG/DG to review their charter and take the draft value statement and review the charter, and understand how their work delivers in to that value statement, and if it doesn't, we need to discuss it; each group should have outputs
  • 60 days would be a reasonable time frame in which to do this - the second LC in October should be dedicated to discuss and review submitted charters and move to close those groups that are apparently no longer active.  Charter flag day - have drafts and comments in for consideration in by September 25, and review and voting by the LC either in late October or at the November F2F; HF to send a note to the LC, and Pete/Joni will reach out to individual chairs
  • remember we are discussing a different bar for DG; they have a more lightweight functionality and are testing concepts; WG should have clear deliverables and timelines that are directly linked to the value statement and that is a higher bar to meet

Marketing and Outreach

• Event Radar 2013 and 2014
• Reminder - need to update the Events Calendar with the F2F plenary meeting on November 10-11 after the IETF meeting in Vancouver

WG Updates

Identity of Things

• kick off call was yesterday; had 7 people join, which was not quorum; focused on introductions, and first suggestion was to collect and record use cases - this was how UMA started
• next call is in 2 weeks

BoT Liaison Report

• held to next call

AOB

Next meeting

• Date: Wednesday, 28 August 2013
• Time: 13:00 PT | 16:00 ET | 20:00 UTC (time chart)
• Dial-in:  Skype:+99051000000481
  
  • US Dial-In: +1-805-309-2350 | Room Code: 402-2737
  • For more dial-in information, see: http://kantara.atlassian.net/wiki/display/GI/Telco+Bridge+Info