The W3C Credentials Community Group

Verifiable Claims and Digital Verification

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Credentials CG Telecon

Minutes for 2019-04-16

Manu Sporny is scribing.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We have our usual starting items... will spend most of the call doing a follow up on survey results, didn't have enough time for it... if we get through that, we should do code of conduct.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: IP Note -- anyone can participate, if you haven't agreed to groups IP policy, don't say anything important. :)
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We keep meeting minutes there ^^^
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I have the survey results links & have prepped a zoom screenshare if people want to dig into the results. There were questions about the details of the results last time we discussed. [scribe assist by Heather Vescent]
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Use IRC to queue people, take minutes, etc.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: All attendees should type: present+
Kim Hamilton Duffy: To add yourself to the queue: q+ DID spec needs better SEO

Topic: Introductions / Reintroductions

Michael Hawkins: Hi, Michael Hawkins joining for the first time -- looking to build a DID wallet, interested in that side of things.
Lucas Parker: Hi, Lucas Parker - work with Kim at Learning Machine, Senior Engineer over there.
Fwiw I'm having trouble connecting to the SIP bridge

Topic: Annoucements and Reminders

Kim Hamilton Duffy: https://zoom.us/j/7077077007
@Manu not a firewall issue on my end
Kim Hamilton Duffy: 1-2PM PT / 20:00-21:00 UTC.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: DID calls happening 1pm-2pm time on Thursdays.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: IIW is coming up soon
You say "expensive" as if long-distance phone calls are still a thing
Markus Sabadello: DID Spec and DID Resolution Spec Weekly Meeting Page: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qYBaXQMUoB86Alquu7WBtWOxsS8SMhp1fioYKEGCabE/
Kim Hamilton Duffy: There is a Decentralized Identity Hackathon happening... SSI Interop proof of concept. Kaliya, given that IIW is coming up -- anything you want to add?
Kaliya Young: We got more space at the museum, we were growing, if you want to come and you want a discount, reach out to me.

Topic: Action Items

Dmitri Zagidulin: About the DID call... for CCG Work Items, like a new DID Method, would the place to discuss it be the DID calls or here?
Kim Hamilton Duffy: It would be this call - saw your email - will talk about it next call - give 5-10 minutes to discuss it. Should have mentioned that in the thread, but would talk about it here first.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Did you open a github issue on that?
Dmitri Zagidulin: Yes, did that.
I'm on now fwiw ��‍♀️
Manu Sporny: We're working on it - tripling bandwidth...
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Sounds good.
Manu Sporny: Just wanted to draw people's attention to the issues raised on the DID specifcation.
Kimhd says something amazing (scribe missed it)
Kim Hamilton Duffy: UPort deprecated, Dominode isn't responding... we should change this to be associated with DID Method Registry.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We might only have one that is status unknown... how do we track things that are deprecated? I think I opened an issue on DID Method registry, so we should deal w/ that there. Should close this item after Chairs discuss at the end of the week. Any comments/concerns?
Manu Sporny: +1 To that approach.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: LD Key Format registry administrivia...
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Manu said We need to extend that registry to also suggest key formats, which are naturally a part of each cryptosuite specification.
Dmitri Zagidulin: No updates, manu?
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I'll move this to LD Cryptosuite Registry as an issue.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: JWK cryptosuite specifications
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We need someone from DIF to be assigned to be lead on this... dmitri included a link to JWT task force call... Oliver did some updates on Verifiable Credentials spec about this... any of this touched on in there? Anyone have any comments on this issue?
Christopher Allen: One of my main concerns here is that there is a lot of push to have this support, but I'm also not seeing a spec in the broader sense. It's being talked about in the Verifiable Claims WG, and the issues about doing this, but there isn't really the equivalent for the CCG for signing other things like DIDs, etc.
Christopher Allen: If this is something people are saying "we have to support" I'd like to see a spec for it in the CCG.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I think we need to find an owner for this.

Topic: Survey Results

Kim Hamilton Duffy: Heather and Karn are going to be leading this... perhaps we should do a quick review of what we covered. We didn't make it through entire document w/ results overview... please continue through that and perhaps go in depth for anything you felt rushed through last week.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We were interested if you were able to or give additional details around engagement, specifically. Perhaps some questions about that?
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We don't want to provide any PII as a part of the survey results... just cover anything relevant that you feel is appropriate.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: How we can go about getting suggestions from the community, that's great, but not in scope for this work item... that's why you should feel free for whatever flow you feel is appropriate.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: After you've been able to review survey results, I'd like to have a community discussion about next steps -- things we can do to improve engagement, address problems around perceptions (overly technical, etc.), anything along those lines... suggestions on how we can improve things.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Heather and Karn, over to you.
Heather Vescent: A couple of things prepared...
Heather Vescent: Let's recap the survey first that we covered last time.
Heather Vescent: I've also setup a zoom... want to be able to share my screen... after we go through survey results, we can do screen share in Zoom.
Heather Vescent: There are great charts, no PII, then address specific questions.
Heather Vescent: Survey results were synthesized, digested, then we can discuss.
Heather Vescent: Then talk about what we want to do with the info.
Heather Vescent: High points again... Karn, once we get to your sections, please jump in on some of your points.
Heather Vescent: Let us get through presenting information before you queue up, please take notes then ask questions when we open it up.
Heather Vescent: We are not looking for comments on the document... questions wrt "I want to know more information, etc."... no need to edit the document, we're not doing a revision of it, anything we do going forward will be a separate things.
Heather Vescent: Also, don't shoot the messenger, this is our analysis of survey data, if you want a PII-cleaned doc, happy to give anyone else that wants to do analysis that information, but please if you do, turn it around in a timely manner.
Heather Vescent: Key points...
Heather Vescent: Don't take these comments as good/bad - it's just information, and what we want to do with it.
Heather Vescent: This is meant to make us more conscious of how we proceed. I do have some concerns wrt. how the group runs, but it also has been successful in getting a number of important things done.
Heather Vescent: After a survey, you tend to go to some sort of strategic plan...
Heather Vescent: So, inclusion, diversity, W3C - W3C tends to focus on technical activities... use cases have been worked on...
Heather Vescent: We seem to be very focused in North America and those groups drive the standards, difficult to attend calls in non-North American locations.
Heather Vescent: That means it's difficult to influence the standards if you're not in North America.
HvescThe Core Group knows how to make things happen, but there is a larger group around that is not as clear wrt. how to make things work/go forward.
Heather Vescent: People exist that want to help w/ the work, but are unable to do so.
Heather Vescent: There is a set of people that know how the process works, but a larger group that is unsure.
Heather Vescent: This group does a lot of stuff, but the roadmap is not clear - it's not clear where consensus is in some areas... what work should be done in 2019... some stuff is clear like DID spec and DID WG... universal resolver, etc... but there is a long tail of a lot of other things, some get done, some don't... checking in w/ a lot of different things we're doing.
Heather Vescent: Because focus is unclear, difficult for volunteers to contribute... those people are not in the core group... there needs to be a place where people that want to volunteer can get involved in... that is more of a wall that needs to be overcome now than the group would like.
Heather Vescent: 2019 Priorities seemed to be DID Auth, DID spec, and DID WG as top priorities.
Heather Vescent: 4 Different categories - work being done, organization, operations, and what to do in 2019. Just because people said "X" ... it's one data point, if we wanted to have focused goals for 2019, it would be one data point entry... you don't have to take this as "this is what we have to and want to do".
Heather Vescent: The top 3 accomplishments were: Work on the DID Spec, General Technical discussions/activities moving forward DID understanding and clarification, and Community cohesion: creating the place to have the technical conversations.
Heather Vescent: There was no consensus in the replies with the exception of two comments about improving the DID spec. There was no consensus on next work items...
Heather Vescent: There is an interesting graph... alignment w/ other digital verification standards... people said important/neutral.
Heather Vescent: BTW - It's Karn.
Heather Vescent: Interesting to see what's not controversial, but not heavily supported.
Heather Vescent: No worries. :-)
Karn: I thought by participating it would help me understand how the group works.
Karn: This is about organization... wanted to get a sense about roadblocks to participating/contributing to ongoing work...
Karn: How does the group function? That's what we were interested in... roadmap of interests and roadblocks are interesting.
Karn: How CCG works: 27 out of 44 respondents did not know, weren’t sure or mostly knew how the CCG groups work was proposed and incubated. 17 respondents knew how the group functions.
Karn: Regarding the roadmap - most folks said that there is a lack of clear roadmap and achievable goals in short to medium term.
Karn: Personally, the work feels like it's slowing - either there is not clarity on objectives or there is a lack of clear objectives.
Karn: We were trying to guage the interest of participants - most of them are interested because it's an emerging technology, trend... that's why people are interested.
Karn: They might see applications in healthcare, digital advertising, etc... but more specific in Verifiable Credentials, helping w/ IPFS, helping w/ work items... working at IIW and RWoT.
Karn: Major road blocks are funding, understanding of previous work...
Karn: Roadblocks for contributing, major roadblocks listed were funding and previous current work... what and how to contribute.
Karn: There are missing constituencies... Geographical: Missing Asia-Pac, broader European, Australia, and individuals outside of North America. ... Area of expertise: Missing lawyers, VCs, government, non-coders, builders & implementers, PGP developers, cryptographic engineers, cryptographers, identity academics, and real active digital human rights activists.... Companies/Communities: Missing startups (not necessarily identity focused), Sovrin, Civic, Blockstack
& Indieweb communities. ... Gender diversity was also mentioned as lacking.
Karn: If there were clear work items, then people might be able to engage. I do have a clear idea of where the work is going ... but not clear how we move those sections forward...
Karn: What were decisions taken for previous sections, one way people can do that is go through transcripts of CCG meetings... I tried doing that... it's disorienting... documenting major decisions might be helpful.
Karn: Moving on to CCG Operations...
Karn: This section (questions 6-16) of the survey ask the participants questions regarding the efficacy of the current means of operation viz. emails and phone calls.
Karn: Mailing list seemed to be working well...
Karn: Mailing list is productive use of time - good place for discussion - good forum... some areas need improvement -- got main ones out of feedback... email is not a right forum to track discussions, we need threading.
Karn: Lack of non-technical discussions... long discussions should probably be meetings... more moderation against personal pitches.
Karn: Regarding weekly calls, the feedback was...
Karn: 27/37 attend or mostly attend the calls.... 11/35 think that the technology used for the calls could be better.... 20/36 think that the weekly calls are productive.
Karn: Things that are working well: Working well: Agenda, action items, accountability and good range of interests.
Karn: Things that need to improve -- give more time to prepare - make it once in two weeks, send agenda in advance - not night before, better interpersonal rules of engagement, speed is glacial, need better info on how to join calls, need more focus, don’t argue JSON LD vs JWT on calls, difficult to contribute, too many overlapping calls.
Heather Vescent: The last section -- 2019 Priorities
Heather Vescent: I couldn't resist asking about where people wanted to go in the future... key findings is that there are two buckets of responses.
Heather Vescent: These are top 4 technical things -- DID Auth (4), DID Spec + DID WG (3), DID Resolver (3), Verifiable Credentials (3),
Heather Vescent: There are non-technical suggestions as well -- The story of standards and how fit into the bigger picture: Marketization, More thorough use cases, Amira engagement model, Taxonomy of terms
Heather Vescent: There also seems to be a gap in communication - technologists tend to be not so great at articulating the non-technical benefits to a non-mainstream audience.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I got disconnected!
Heather Vescent: So, where do we go from here? This shows where we've come from and where we can improve... That this group supported this work is a great step in the right direction. Don't be discouraged, I think we're doing a lot of things right... now, how do we do better, this gives us some idea...
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I'm back
Heather Vescent: We specifically did not provide recommendations... we didn't have the hubris to say what needed to be done next... this is a community discussion... where do we want to go together?
Heather Vescent: Let's open up the floor for questions... we can zoom screen share w/o audio to see surveymonkey results.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I wanted to chime in w/ some take aways - subsequent conversations... one of the biggest things -- how to jump in and help.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: The only things I've done are things I'm driving... things get done if people just jump in and do it... as something I'm driving or co-driving, BUT if it is something high context, like the DID spec, there are several flavors to it... jumping into DID spec itself might cause more harm than good.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: There are other ways to get involved... not pull requests on the spec, but things like use cases, test cases, communication tools, etc. If there are these high context items, clearly people involved are overly burdened, perhaps taking the time to articulate volunteer opportunities... last section that you highlighted, have people take those on as work items...
Kim Hamilton Duffy: If people are having issues, if it's not technical, maybe it gets marginalized, which we don't want people to come away with that.
Heather Vescent: Something that could be useful, to shift leadership method - we currently have a submit and drive leadership model... whoever submits does the work, that works to a certain point... could we do collaborative? Pair programming?
Heather Vescent: I asked for help from mailing list... when you do pair programming, you're sharing doing stuff collaboratively... the lead is to step back and ensure that person can move into leadership role in safe place.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I was also thinking the mentorship/collab model would be a good way to knowledge transfer
Heather Vescent: This is something, as a woman, that I approach more readily than other personality types... collaborative approach is more effective wrt. ensuring volunteers step up and volunteers are successful... also need to create environment that volunteer is successful as well as the work.
Heather Vescent: I think if we can expand thinking, expand leadership model to include this, it would be good. If we make this technology real, that's going to happen at some point.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: +1 To time set aside for engagement
Manu Sporny: I think it's important that we set aside some time to discuss all of this.
Manu Sporny: On the weekly calls, for example.
Christopher Allen: There is a change happening soon, with luck and a lot of hard work being done, DID spec and is going to be working out of CCG.. moving to new DID WG... because of W3C rules, will only be available to W3C groups... this group will lose a lot of energy to the WG... perhaps we can use this as an opportunity to work on things.
Christopher Allen: I think there will be a big split of energy... similarly, VCWG will be shutting down soon, finished spec, and they will be bringing us a different set of problems/energy, since we're the continuity piece... I think that will give us momentum to change those sort sof things.
Moses Ma: Bye folks!
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Thanks Christopher, and with that, we're out of time for today.