Stewards Council Telecon: 2008 January 23

= Attending =


 * Christopher Allen
 * Victor Grey
 * Kaliya Hamlin
 * Eugene Eric Kim
 * Fen Labalme
 * Mark Lizar
 * Pete Metrulas
 * Dale Olds
 * David Recordon
 * Drummond Reed
 * Paul Trevithick

= Agenda =


 * Voting on New Working Groups
 * Working Group Quarterly Reports / Newsletters
 * Steward Council Calls / Meetings
 * Infrastructure
 * Marketing / How does Identity Commons relate to other organizations?

= Summary =

New Working Groups
We have some Working Groups in the queue that should have been approved before the New Year:


 * Higgins
 * Identity Broker Commons
 * Identity Futures
 * Identity Media
 * SAML Commons
 * XDI Commons
 * VRM

as well as a proposed rename:


 * EUCLId to Identity Trust (with possible additional merger into VRM)

In addition, we have several new groups that are in the process of forming.

Eugene proposed that we do two votes: a special vote without a discussion period for those working groups already in the queue, and a normal vote for the recently formed working groups (two week discussion period + vote). Folks agreed on that, so Eugene will put out the call.

Working Group Quarterly Reports / Newsletter
Kaliya recently approached all of the Working Groups and asked for reports. Fen proposed a template for these reports, which consists of:


 * Successes
 * Breakdowns (blocks -- things keeping you from moving forward)
 * Requests
 * Announcements

Kaliya will forward these to the Working Groups. Eugene suggested that people actually blog their reports.

AI: Fen will turn on the blog on the web site, and Kaliya will encourage Working Groups to blog their reports.

Kaliya is also doing a PDF newsletter, and she'd also like to have a new mailing list for sending out announcements (like the newsletter) only.

AI: Kaliya will work with Fen to get a new mailing list.

Steward Council Calls / Meetings
Eugene proposed that we do a regular monthly phone call on the first Wednesday of every month. If there are conflicts, we'll move the call one week.

AI: Eugene will put the call schedule on the Wiki.

Infrastructure
Fen downgraded our web site from Drupal 6-beta to 5.6. People will need to recreate their accounts.

He's been having trouble getting clean URLs working on our MediaWiki installations. Eugene suggested consulting the #mediawiki IRC channel.

The OSIS Wiki (http://osis.idcommons.net/) is on its way. Dale said it was important for the OSIS WG that the tools are up and stable and that support is responsive. It begs the larger question: How much infrastructure can we depend on IC providing in a central fashion? How involved should IC be? Dale is going to put together a proposal spelling out exactly what OSIS needs (e.g. backups, three admins, some level of reliability, etc.), and he'll work with Eugene and Fen to come up with a shared solution.

AI: Dale and Eugene and Fen will work out a plan for OSIS's infrastructure.

Marketing / IC's larger role
Chris asked, what is the perception of Identity Commons, and how well does it matches our mission and goals? Chris did informal survey, and found that many still associate Identity Commons with i-names. Others only see IC as providing basic infrastructure.

David said that IC provides a framework for collaboration, and that we must evangelize this. Fen echoed the need for marketing. Eugene said that being a collaborative space is core to what we do, but the central marketing message should be around our values. Being part of IC shows a commitment to collaborate with others using our Purpose and Principles as guidelines. Drummond noted that the we need to be consistent in communicating what IC does.

AI: Chris will propose content modifications to the IC web site, with help from Kaliya and Drummond.

= Next Phone Call =

9am PT / 12pm ET, Wednesday, February 6, 2008