The W3C Credentials Community Group

Meeting Transcriptions and Audio Recordings (2014-today)

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Credentials CG Telecon

Minutes for 2021-12-07

<mprorock> /me notes that jitsi is still broken on the chome beta build and this may cause some issues when 97.0.4692.27 goes live
Charles E. Lehner is scribing.

Topic: Intros and Reintros

Heather Vescent: Would anyone like to (re)introduce themself?
Cbg: Hi, hello everyone, my name is Christian G.
... I've been making minor contributions to the did:web method
<identitywoman> I couldn't hear anything in the Jitsi
<manu_sporny> Welcome Christian! :)
... Haven't signed contribution agreement but willing to do so
Heather Vescent: You're welcome to be on this call without that, but if you make any substantive contributions you will need to so
<heather_vescent> Kaliya, which version of Chrome are you on? There are some issues with the latest build.
<kerri> I had an audio problem with jitsi yesterday in chrome. I switched to firefox.
<mprorock> no
<mprorock> broken on linux, chromebook, etc
<marty_reed> its also broken on PC
Manu Sporny: New Chrome build may be broken on some versions of Mac; recommend using other browser
<manu_sporny> kaliya -- use Firefox
<tony_sheppard> +q
<tallted> standalone jitsi meet.app will also work -- https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases
<manu_sporny> identitywoman -- use firefox -- or a non-Chrome browser (latest build breaks Jitsi)
<mprorock> with chromebook no other option unless you install FF or Brave via android assuming that your chromebook supports it
Tony_Sheppard: Hi, I'm Tony, educational expert from UK, interested in identity impact on privacy impact in UK and other places

Topic: Announcements and reminders

Kaliya: (using Safari)
Kaliya: Kim Cameron passed away last week
<manu_sporny> ;( about Kim Cameron passing away :(
... Many people are writing posts about his legacy
Heather Vescent: Thanks Kaliya. Very sad news.
<kerri> Very sad news
... He has contributed a lot (an understatement), he has inspired many of us
Mike Prorock: Thanks for lining up the schedule. Next week will be interesting, bringing in an Advisory Board member from W3C, to talk about what's going on - directorless Formal Objection handling, etc.
... and about role of Community Groups in W3C going forward
... an important meta-conversation
... As W3C goes through changes about how they handle tests in the Advisory Commitee, etc... will help us move technology forward
Kaliya: Thanks. Next week is our last call of the year.
S/Kaliya:/Heather_Vescent:/
Mike Prorock: +1 Goals and themes will be an awesome way to start the new year off in a positive way
Heather Vescent: Can talk about strategy next week

Topic: Update on Action Items: https://github.com/w3c-ccg/community/issues

Heather Vescent: First one, verifiable driver license vocab - proposed by manu last week. Can wait until new year?
Manu Sporny: It can wait until the new year.
Heather Vescent: I've moved requests on the infrastructure repo back to the community repo
... in thread 217, I will aggregate and connect the moved issues
... manu so you can address - but take time off
... Chairs can revisit
Manu Sporny: Thanks
<rgrant> hi everyone, i can't get audio from Chrome stable or Firefox stable today. both want to update. i'll have to come back later and review notes. present-
... Late December: planning to update Jitsi for the new version
... to try to resolve the Chrome build issue
Manu Sporny: If there is extra time, it would be helpful to get a prioritized list from the chairs of long-standing things to fix
Heather Vescent: Great, I didn't mean to suggest to do all of them. We as chairs should be able to collect and prioritize them. Documentation would be good.
Manu Sporny: +1 To Heather's plan.
Mike Prorock: +1 Practical sanity checking good
... Or get real if we are ever going to do them; prefer to close things if not
<heather_vescent> q
Nick_Meyne: On item about co-op credentials, will be kicking off
<mprorock> awesome to hear nick!
... Can add folks and other cooperatives to it
... We've had some good discussions with the APACs body of platform cooperatives
... Stakeholder engagement... We will get to talk into technical stuff
... Secure sharing of mailing lists
Heather Vescent: Thanks
... We got through the 7 days, I marked it as an active work item; I will try to create the repo in the next few days
<mprorock> side note re co-op creds if you ever want to chat AG and Farm Co-op implications would love to talk
Nick_Meyne: Thanks very much
Heather Vescent: Handing it over to Kerri

Topic: VC-EDU Update from Kerri

Kerri Lemoie: [Sharing screen, intro slide]
Kerri Lemoie: About Kim Cameron, I was very sad to hear this news.
... I wrote about him in my dissertation.
... He laid a lot of ground work.
... Thank you for sharing that.
... At VC Edu task force, what's going on... the hot topics.
... Please bring feedback and suggestions
Kerri Lemoie: Contact and Meeting slide - adapted from the CCG slide
... We're working on verifiable credentials aligned with education, training and achievement credentials
... Here's where you can find us, our meetings, the main repo.
... We have a new email list.
... Anyone interested in this work can join.
... We thought having a separate list would be helpful for engagement
... We're working on a use cases document and a modeling document.
... We started an analysis, that will inform the modeling doc
<heather_vescent> CONGRATS Dmitri!
... We have two new cochairs as of yesterday.
... Dmitri Z
<heather_vescent> Congrats Simone!
<heather_vescent> Very excited to see you both in these co-chair roles!
... Simone Ravaioli... chair of integrated learning working group
<phil_l_(p1)> Digitary is Now Parchment
Heather Vescent: Congrats to the new co-chairs, they are excellent choices, and excited to see them take on leadership roles
... About the election, there were 2 roles and 4 people interested. Kerri ran the election, perfectly.
Simone Ravaoli: :Beer: Thanks Heather and excited to be here !
... Using the previously-agreed CCG process. Kudos to Kerri for running that
<phil_l_(p1)> Congrats Simone and Dmitri!
... The other 2 that ran were also great, would have been excellent choices. A hard choice
Kerri Lemoie: We're grateful for the guidance
Kerri Lemoie: Revised charter this year
<manu_sporny> Happy to see we're having binding elections that people are happy with :)
... Trying to bring VC Edu work to the existing work in other spaces
... Training and achievements. and how to use with VCs
... VCs are complex
... Entrenched systems are bucking against change, but intrigued by blockchain
... We've had to evolve quickly and make changes in our task force
... We've gone beyond education, to say in charter will include training and achievement credentials
... Achievements can cover informal learning
... Bigger scope change: focus on direct alignment with verifiable credentials
... previously using envelope approach from ILR
... that conflicted with existing verification methods
... It may be useful for others, but we agreed it would benefit to align natively with VCs
... IMS global - Open Badges and CLR
... Verification method of Open Badges included an option for signing
... Members of the Open Badges committee offered to write VC examples a long time ago
<manu_sporny> So, true -- Kerri -- OB community was first to understand where VCs were going.
... Open Badges can represent many kinds of things. A good fit because already JSON-LD.
<manu_sporny> ... and were super helpful in the formative stages (and continue to be so today)
... Will link to the public proposal
... New charter at IMS, new working group working towards this
... Hoping to have something early next year to pilot with
... CLR is more complex. Has roles such as publisher and issuer
... Typically represents transcripts from K-12 and post-secondary institutions
... Opens opportunity to discuss VCs in new ways
... Topics, Questions and Issues - a list of things we've been discussing
... Some have expanded into the main CCG community
... Please queue to discuss any
Kerri Lemoie: Accessibility: very critical - we have participants in education without access to smartphones, computers, WiFi, etc.
... Need to think about QR codes for education
Manu Sporny: For accessibility and path-to-paper, that's a requirement in the SVIP as well - there have been proposals for printing QR codes on paper
... Other question about credential refresh and re-issuance
... I wrote to the mailing list about a new spec for refreshing credentials that are going to expire
... Could potentially be for e.g. educational credential that expires in 3 years but has the option to be refreshed depending on additional training
... Has it been discussed?
Kerri Lemoie: Probably exists, but can't think of it right now
... Credential status just came up - seems related
<mprorock> exists for a lot of certifications such PMP that could leverage this work
Kerri Lemoie: Thank you for bringing up the relation of QR codes to accessibility
Heather Vescent: Kerri and I have talked in the past about VC Edu and how to apply this tech for this use case.
... In their inquiry they have found topics important to the broader credentials group
... We've talked about bringing these items to the CCG, in order to have a broad discussion about that use case
... Kerri and VC Edu task force will have the education perspective, but others could flesh out other situations and use cases for collaboration
... I think this is a very useful way to use a task force
... Usually we spun out task forces and they sortof splinter off
... But here they are finding things to bring back
... Back and forth conversation interesting, to splinter off and focus, and then bring back something, new ideas and use cases, to the main group
Kerri Lemoie: Thank you. Even though we have a separate mailing list, we often write to both, to report back.
Ted Thibodeau: +1 VERY good to have things spin out for deeper dives, and spin back with results, discoveries, questions that turn out to be broader interest/scope!
Marty Reed: To comment on the willingness of the VC Edu Task Force to focus... We're really willing to work on informing how to align the ILR and Open Badges / CLR to better interop with these standards. Kerri and this group's leadership cannot be understated.
Kerri Lemoie: Thanks Marty, you're work has been great too.
KerriL: We have one issue about embedding
KerriL: Example we're looking at: with Open Badges, historically we "bake" the badge - to make the images embedded, so it can be portable
... With VCs we won't usually do that
... We've also been running into issues with large PDFs
... Later in the list, hash resources, Dmitri has brought up
... These [Files & Images slide] are topics that have come up alot right now
Manu Sporny: There are multiple ways to accomplish the task. The challenge is to figure out which of them to suggest
... You can always take a VC and embed it in a PDF [via various ways]
... Text encoding, put into image, QR-encode, etc.
... You want to reduce the amount of variability - question is how - to provide guidance, hopefully across industry
... to allow making the transition
Kerri Lemoie: Yes, that is the hard part, how to do accessibility and extensibility in an interoperable way
... Orie made some comments, about using portable image processes, probably similar to how Open Badges does it now
Marty Reed: At least in the Open Credential Publisher project, we did the base64-encoded PDF encoded inside the VC
... Which worked well for the object to be portable
... But the size constraint of the payloads came up in numerous situations
... This a pretty deep topic, of how to standardize. That size limit is very challenging
Kerri Lemoie: Thanks. ... We'll get to it.
Kerri Lemoie: I started a thread about using email addresses for identifiers. My background for last decade is in the field of educational credentials.
... In discussion, emails are well-understood, DIDs are not... Many systems will still use OIDC, even while switching to VCs
... credentialSubject id is not required; can use other info
... Seems to be the best approach so far
<tallted> email addresses can be identifiers, but they have their own challenges... e.g., role accounts and distribution addresses, and the like make many addresses non-identifiers in the common meaning
... We discussed briding systems a lot.
... The best way to do it is not always the best way to bridge to existing systems
<heather_vescent> q
... This is an example of such a compromise.
<manu_sporny> Excellent summary of the current state of things, Kerri.
<identitywoman> can you post links from slides into the chat so they are clickable
... [Compled Credentials/Nesting VCs slide]
S/Compled/Complex/
... Many questions about embedding VCs and how they are used. In CLR there is a concept of a publisher.
... Can have different issuers...
... Credential subject...
... Embedded VCs, VPs with multiple VCs
... We used to think VPs were only created by learners; we've learned otherwise
... As with the file/images, we need to come up with solutions
... More discussion will be helpful
Manu Sporny: I'm thinking of a verifiable presentation is probably not the right solution; those are meant to be fairly ephemeral
... But would need to know more to provide stronger guidance
Kerri Lemoie: One use case: publisherm school or register may want to provide a student with a transcript, that contains multiple credentials
S/publisherm/publisher,/
... The goal of the registrar is unique
<manu_sporny> The "transcript / registrar" use case is an argument for VCs embedded in other VCs... not a VP.
Marty Reed: I think there's a lot of really interesting use cases here
... across K-12, licensure systems
... Manu, I would agree 100% VPs are not the solution here
... But what is exciting is that we are tying it together
<manu_sporny> Glad to hear that from Marty...
Juan Caballero: I was wondering about Manu's comment, perhaps the solemonic solution, if presenting a bundle of credentials to some sort of notary or registrar
<manu_sporny> yes, exactly, Juan -- or embedded...
... maybe that event could be commemorated by a VC that represents the others
... rather than freezing the VP and using it as a VC
<manu_sporny> VP is ephemeral... we don't expect people to hold on to them long-term.
... to reference the contents of the presentation.... or maybe that's what you already meant
<manu_sporny> Agree with Marty and Juan.
Heather Vescent: +1 To look at this topic in the main CCG call!
Kerri Lemoie: This topic triggered me asking Heather if we could present on this call - but then realized we are due for an update anyway. Would like to talk about in the new year
Manu Sporny: +1 To "look at this topic together"
... Would be happy to bring questions. Let's see if we can come up with an understanding.
Mike Prorock: +1
<juan_caballero_(spruce)> ��
Heather Vescent: Yes, you have our support, we'll get you on the schedule
Kerri Lemoie: [Linked VCs slide]
... proposal issue #831
... T3 LER network
<manu_sporny> Really excited that this conversation is happening, with VC-EDU leading the way (once again) -- hooray!
... Recommendations and pathways of learning that could possibly work with this
... Use cases where evidence or learning artifacts can also be included
Kerri Lemoie: Lastly, we've just started discussing credential status
... Indicating credentials have been revoked - the most common use case
... But also any changes that have been made that change the achievement description
... The achievement description traditionally is in a file. Some badge-issuing platforms have allowed changes.
Kerri Lemoie: That's all for today!
Manu Sporny: Great, please follow the credential status 2021 spec. We're trying to deprecate the old revocation thing
... We've made advances in revocation/status
... To tell someone about new updates, that is an interesting new angle.
Kerri Lemoie: Yes, it could be minor changes to the description - but could also have alignment to rich skill descriptors
... Someone could add another one, that may or may not be relevant to when it was first issued
... What if everyone knew it had been added, then can discuss what to do.
Manu Sporny: One of the things we're trying to do with both the credential status 2021 and credential refresh/reissue 2021 stuff, is to make the simplist process to apply to the broadest number of use cases
<marty_reed> As a co-chair of the LERN part of T3 all are welcome to join the community and collaborate on this endorsement use case: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1P8VcHYKv-Gvo36HV6L-nNGqFLantLlbKf47AmmIUgZc/edit?usp=sharing
<mprorock> /me unfortunately has to drop for a customer call - this is awesome, thanks for the update and great work
... That use case you've outlined, I think we are trying to say, don't do that (trying to convey the small changes) - just revoke their credential or tell that their credential is going to be revoked in some weeks/months - and then give them a mechanism to automatically bring in the new changes
<mprorock> and on the way out the door, +1 to manu, revoke and re-issue
... So the general approach is to revoke and automatically request changes
... Then the new things are automatically pulled in, as long as they've consented to that.
Kerri Lemoie: Thanks. That last step is critical - the update might not be wanted by the learner.
Heather Vescent: That you for the update. We have some great direction for the new year.
S/That/Thank/
Heather Vescent: We also have the two new co-chairs here
... Would they like to say hello
<juan_caballero_(spruce)> ♥
Simone Ravaoli: It's an honor to support this work in the VC Edu, it grows naturally from my background in the higher-education space, working for credential providers for the majority of my professional life.
... Digitary is a player that was acquired by Parchment this summer
... I'd like to see Parchment take on this great work, across different standards organizations
... I look forward to maintaining tight contacts with this group as the "mother" of the VC Edu group
<kerri> Thanks, Simone!!
Heather Vescent: Thanks, congrats
Dmitri Zagidulin: Thrilled to be part of the leadership of the Education Force. You may know me from Digital Bazaar, various specs, DIDs. Recently I've been coming into more and more contact with educational space use cases
... as part of my other work and projects
<kerri> Thanks, Dmitri!
Heather Vescent: Awesome, excited to see it moving forward
... Thanks to Charles for scribing
Manu Sporny: +1 -- VC-EDU has a fantastic leadership team (and group)
<kerri> Thanks, @Manu!
... With that we'll conclude, and see you next week for our final call of the year
<simone_ravaioli> :)
... Happy holidays - past or present - whatever you are celebrating!