The W3C Credentials Community Group

Verifiable Claims and Digital Verification

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Credentials CG Telecon

Minutes for 2019-10-08

Sumita Jonak: Can we get info about the DID WG call details? USAA would like to participate.
Alexander Hripak: Having issues connecting to voice, apologies for the voip messages—keeps disconnecting
Gabe Cohen: Queue+
Jeff Orgel: JeffO - unable, on job site by-standing this call...
Alexander Hripak: Thank you, manu
Ganesh Annan is scribing.

Topic: Introductions / Reintroductions

Nate Otto: @Manu howdy, will join audio in a minute. I kept popping up on weeks where the call was canceled recently and being busy on weeks where it was held. Can't wait to catch up.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Presen+ ahripak, gabec, yancy, helen, mbertazz
Alexander Hripak: Hi all, here from Credly
Manu Sporny: The DID-Spec, the CCG version was taken up by DIDWG. The CCG has to wrap up an archive of our version of the spec. There's a couple of issues and PRs that are outstanding
... we want to process them and get agreement to help chairs and editors make progress
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We may need to do that during next week's call
... we'll keep it in mind but please send an email so we can add to the agenda next week
Manu Sporny: Okay thanks
Gabe Cohen: He this is Gabe Cohen from Workday...
... presented last week at IIW
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We're glad to have you on the call

Topic: Announcements & Reminders

Gabe Cohen: I'll send a draft in
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We try to keep the link updated
Kim Hamilton Duffy: https://zoom.us/j/7077077007
... the interesting DID calls are on Thursdays at 1PM PT
... we have a DID WG launched
... must be a W3C Member or Invited Expert
... every Tuesday right before this call (usually)
... chairs is Brent and Dan
... Ivan is the staff contact
... on action items, we need to revisit them
... Helen is going to lead. Helen lead a session on this on TPAC. This was a great way to think outside of the way we already think about DIDs. This will be a good exercise for the group
... now that the DIDWG is started there's a question on how more people can get involved
... Helen brings up great ideas on how to communicate DIDs to a broader audience
... I'm happy that she was able to join
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Linked is the slides

Topic: DIDs from a non-technical perspective

Helen Garneau: This is a call with the most preeminent minds in the space...
Helen Garneau: Are there any metaphors that others use?
Manu Sporny: For VCs the example we use...
... we started with the over age credential
... moved to a University Credential
... we fall back to the Driver's License Credential
... we use the example with using that credential for a car rental
... it tends to be a long example to explain
... looking ahead at your slide 14 and our definitions for these things make me cringe
Helen Garneau: That's really helpful. Having 10mins when doing a 1hr presentation is a long time...
... trying to abbreviate this would be helpful
Dave Longley: A DID is like an SSN you create, you can prove you own, and no one can steal just by seeing it
... the college credential is tough
... using the college ID to get a discount on a pizza is one Nathan George uses
Heather Vescent: Wasn't this a comment about the spec a while back? Making it more accessible?
Kaliya Young: There is a communications and outreach working group at DIF now and it would be great to have this presentation be shared with us there too.
Manu Sporny: Heathervescent, yes, it was... and we've got a number of issues lodged against the DID WG version of the spec that effectively boils down to "make it more accessible"... working on it :) -- proposed language changes to make it better are always welcome.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: The benefits slide is fantastic
Heather Vescent: @Manu maybe having an editor that can communicate more clearly in non-technical jargon would be useful.
Manu Sporny: @Heathervescent it would be useful to have /anyone/ that can communicate in non-technical jargon :) -- https://github.com/w3c/did-spec/ is open to the world... anyone can raise issues, propose text changes, etc.
Helen Garneau: Wanted to pause for any questions?
Heather Vescent: @Manu as I've mentioned before, github is not conducive to my participation in editing/wordsmithing. The technical overhead is too high.
Dmitri Zagidulin: I wanted to add a comment about the phone home problem...
... so one of the things that I think we should emphasize
... that is missing from our conversations
... that relates the phone home problem
... is the idea of high risk vs. low risk transactions
... at a pizza parlor, there's no reason to phone home
... for a police officer checking a license they definitely would want to phone home back to the issue
... I would like to add risk as a dimension to these problems
Helen Garneau: I think this is a great idea
Manu Sporny: @Heathervescent -- yep, Github continues to be a challenge there... with no clear solution :(
... this is something to keep in my mind when conveying this technology
Kim Hamilton Duffy: One challenge we find is asking people to contribute through Github is a technological hurdle...
... we tried to make markdown to spec text easier
... how can we can get people focused on readability when we have these hurdles already in the process
... I'm glad that your topic is kicking that off
Dmitri Zagidulin: I wanted to offer a proposal to address Heather's point
... if we want more non-technical contributions to the spec
... they may bump up against the github/technical hurdle
Manu Sporny: +1 To dmitriz --- you should be able to do that w/ Editors at any time.
... have volunteers act as a translation layer
Manu Sporny: I wasn't sure if we wanted to volunteer the editors for more work like that. :) but definitely! [scribe assist by Dmitri Zagidulin]
Heather Vescent: Might I suggest that we ask any non-technical people who would contribute would *want* to interface with an editing environment. Like ask for their opinion/requirements.
Manu Sporny: Well, speaking as someone who used to work as an Editor where that used to be the normal workmode at W3C... I don't mind :)
Kim Hamilton Duffy: +1 To this Heather: "ask for their opinion/requirements"
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We should be able to come up with something mutually agreeable
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I am going to turnover to identitywoman for a report out

Topic: IIW Report out

Kaliya Young: So IIW was fantastic, there was a lot of...
... a lot of liveness and a 100 new folks and over 300 registered participants over the three days
... there was a lot of discussions for use cases around marginalized communities
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Add yourself to the queue if you have something to add re IIW
... there was a lot of progress around DID communications
... there was protocol development and where that will live in the long term
... connect with Rouven and Sam Curren
... we had a group of Product Managers
... they translate the technology to products that people buy
... ton of new companies. The Sovrin folks have an incubator
... the demo hour was full of amazing companies
... you can go to the wiki and look up who the demoers were and a link to their site
... there was also threads along the OpenID work and SSI work
... you can go into the details in the notes
... I will open it up for others to make comments
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Thank you
Dmitri Zagidulin: I wanted to highlight DID Communication...
... we standardized the VC Data Model
... but the protocol was out of scope
... now we have a situation where different dev communities invented their own which are slightly incompatible
... another important thing that happened at IIW, there were multiple sessions around Data Hubs and Data Vaults
... now that we have VCs where we going to store them
Kaliya Young: I would encourage folks to check out the demo hour - https://iiw.idcommons.net/IIW_29_Demo_Hour
Kaliya Young: Companies.
... not sure where this standardization effort is going to live
Heather Vescent: I did the SSI 101 session...
... what was different about this one, I recruited two new people
... we got through 76 slides in an hour
... this is interesting because it piggy backs off of some of the points made in Helen's great presentation
... I second everything she said in her deck
... made new slides to describe SSI
... it builds upon the work that many of us in the community did
Kaliya Young: Another thing DIF has got now is they have formed a Communications and Outreach group/committee
... it might be a good place for those interested to collaborate
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Close to time. We should cover next week about the DID Spec wrap-up that manu brought up
... we'll be sure to give you time to talk about it next week
... we'll also take time to talk about VC wrap up
... thank you everyone