<simone_ravaioli> we will start officially in a couple of minutes... hello folks !
Our Robot Overlords are scribing.
<simone_ravaioli> Good morning, good afternoon everyone, welcome to today's W3C Verifiable Credentials for Education task force call, on Monday, July the 1st. Let's get started with the housekeeping items. IP Note: Anyone can participate in these calls. However, all substantive contributions to any Credentials Community Group Work Items must originate from members of the CCG with full IPR agreements signed. You can find the link to this in the meeting invites. You'll need to have a W3C account, that is also something easy to do online. Moving on to call notes. Please note that these meetings are recorded. We have a robot transcriber and we also make audio and video recordings, that are archived and available online. If you want to speak, please raise your hand, or add yourself to the queue by typing “q+” in the chat. And please be brief if you have a question to ask, we want to maximise the time for conversations. Thank you. Now to Introductions & Reintroductions. If we have any new people in the call, or somebody would like to reintroduce themselves, please feel free to take the floor. If nobody wants to take the floor, we can move on to announcements and reminders. Anyone has events or things that happened that people should be aware of, again, please queue yourself up and share the news with us. Now to the main agenda topic, from Nate Otto about Open Badges 3.0.
<nate_otto> Hope to see many of your at thebadgesummit.com in Boulder (colocated with the T3 Network Mid-Year Meeting!)
<ildiko_mazar> You are also invited to propose contributions to future VC Edu Task Force calls.
Nate Otto: Great well thank you for the introduction or the invitation to join here and if you uh may allow me I'll give a brief introduction to myself first although I do know most of the folks on the call and then I'd love to dive into that. ✪
Nate Otto: Okay so uh thank you so much uh I'm Nate Otto I have been working in the open beds filled since 2012 um although my early involvement there was uh as a volunteer uh joining the community calls uh on the side of my job that had nothing to do with technology. ✪
<simone_ravaioli> If you have questions, feel free to add them here in the chat as well.
Nate Otto: Employee Summit in 2013 and then Mozilla Festival in London uh 2013 and 2014 and got my first job at Indiana University working directly with digital badges uh from a posting on the the original open badges mailing list maintained by Mozilla I worked for a year with Dr Dan hickey at Indiana University on uh the design principles documentation project where we studied 30 grant winners of um MacArthur's DML for competition as they were on their journey of implementing the the new open badges technology um I was later than asked to um become interim director of the. ✪
Nate Otto: Badge Alliance um which was the interim organization that Mozilla spun up to start bringing the open badges movement to a broader audience Beyond just those who are involved with Mozilla um. ✪
Nate Otto: In 2015 I worked um with um Carrie lamoy and others on the open badges uh 1.1 um implementation was the first time we added Json LD into the spec. ✪
Nate Otto: Then um helped Shepherd open badges specification into the um what was then the IMs Global standards body. ✪
Nate Otto: Which is the standards body for um the open badges credential type today and I've been contributing to that standard um there since then and in the meantime I was also um leading product development at uh concentric sky on the badger product um from 2014 to 2022 uh and grew that team from just myself up to 54 people before it was acquired by instructure where it now is the uh. ✪
<simone_ravaioli> I might prompt everyone on the call here to think about 1 question about OB3 you might have had on your mind. Add to chat, thanks.
Nate Otto: Canvas credentials product um at in structure so I've had some amount of experience with open badges mostly on the technical side and I'm really excited that we are now at a final release of the open badges 3.0 version um I contributed to the um proposal to launch that phase um at the 1 at Tech work group um with a long and Cary Loy and um we just got through the voting process in June and it was launched as a final version of the spec ready to use fully compatible with um verifiable credentials 1.1 and uh 2.0 so um my expertise here is mostly on the um the technical side but also with a Keen Eye toward product development and how an ecosystem of decentralized interoperable products can grow up around uh this open data standard um and to some nice question what are the most frequently questions asked questions about open badges 3.0 I'd start us off with um a couple. ✪
Nate Otto: Asked all the time how do we get started with this uh the hype is real people see a lot of really cool use cases in education particularly um for verifiable credentials open badges is a great um flexible credential type that offers support for a whole lot of different uh learning claims that you might make and so people are excited about it they want to know like how do we get started what are the products that are available on the market that can issue this uh credential type and then they are advocating on behalf of their users and wondering what can you do with badges uh with these credentials once you've got them um do they get accepted as part of job applications what do employers think of them are they integrated with uh employment uh applicant tracking systems and HR information systems for in for instance. ✪
Nate Otto: And the answer is to a lot of these questions are that it's pretty early days within this um version of the spec and even open badges 2.0 the non-verbal credentials uh compatible version that came before uh there was a lot of implementation on the issuer side but not a huge amount of implementation on the consumption side so my recent focus in open badges has really been to try and push development towards the consumption verifying side for these credentials and to put them in products where they can actually become meaningful and um start providing real value for users rather than just being a digital token that's fun to look at nice visual symbol of achievement. ✪
Nate Otto: Yeah that that's that's an interesting Dynamic uh to be in in a market where there is demand for your product and you know there's like large institutions that are seeking Solutions there's large advertising budgets uh among some of the the products that are on the market but there's not a huge um. ✪
Nate Otto: Is not super well educated as to like what are the actual capabilities are and so there is a little bit of like a hype cycle dynamic um that happens in this space people are excited about the use cases they hear some big statements saying this is really useful for hiring you can represent all kinds of things with it and they you know fit their own imagination and their own use cases into these capabilities um they see oh yeah I want to recognize skills I want to recognize competencies. ✪
Nate Otto: Um and I you know I think you can see a lot of the need for open badges in your own life and in the communities that you participate in um you can see that our communities could be better if we could better understand what the employment growth pathways are that go through them you know what are the roles here what skills are associated with those roles what learning opportunities can we access that would recognize those skills and the open badges uh credential type. ✪
Nate Otto: Into a lot of those uh those stories you can see like oh yeah if only we had some badges that were um able to recognize the skills that were aligned to the same. ✪
<naomi> That's a GREAT question... I'd like to offer some of the "why's" in a future session... we're seeing some really interesting applications and tangible benefits within Velocity Network. !!!
Nate Otto: The jobs that people are looking for then people could see what the progression was between job a and job B and they could see where they could go get um education in order to be able to qualify for those jobs and so I think the power of the use cases is what's really driving the um excitement and now it's up to us as people who are implementing this technology to bring the products and to bring the ecosystem um to the level where it's really delivering on those use cases end to end providing value um for those users in the ways that they're excited about. ✪
<simone_ravaioli> ask Sharon_Leu
Sharon Leu: Hi um I'm really excited for this AMA so I I think that like sort of bridging Bridging the old and the new is um something that I have a question about um both for not just like the like sort of like the why should we do this but the technically of the house and I'm a little bit curious like what is the plan sort of moving forward on um you know whether version 3 is compatible with um bcdm version 2 or any future versions like what is like the workflow for making sure that um the open badges um specification remains compatible with the verifiable credentials um data model as it becomes like updated in the future and then sort of like reaching to the Past I'm a little bit curious about um like you know like the badge connect API versus like BC API and like ways like if you're already issuing open batch version 2. ✪
Nate Otto: Thank you Sharon great cluster of questions there uh let me tackle the sort of future looking ones first and then I'll um switch my my focus and kind of look back at at this version transition that we've made between major version 2 and major version 3 so looking ahead open badges is now a credential type that's compatible with verifiable credentials that will continue to be the case uh the the work group has done. ✪
Nate Otto: The the work that they needed to to make it so that the open badges schema is compatible with both both VC 1.1 and VC 2.0 and if there is a a VC 3.0 the structure changes at some point in the future then um I would fully expect that the um the 1 at Tech group would make a necessary update to open badges so that you can express um the claims that you can make with open badges in whatever verifiable credential wrapper format that there is um a great example of how we're doing this recently um right before the finalization of of this new version open badges 3.0 we um. ✪
Nate Otto: The uh various different pieces of the verifiable credentials data model and how we can make sure to stay as interoperable with the different choices that different implementation communities would be making as possible so we relaxed a few of the initial drafted um schema requirements in open Mages to make sure that um organizations that were implementing with verifiable credentials in ways that we hadn't quite foreseen would still be able to use more or less the full power of the verifiable credentials data model which means flexibility for um adding additional credential schema entries different evidence types different signature types and did types and um. ✪
Nate Otto: Like layers that you can plug in um we want to make it so that there is some pretty strong compatibility across the implementers in the ecosystem. ✪
Nate Otto: Also um enable the ecosystem to grow and to continue to be able to choose open badges as a um a schema for how to make learning claims about the types of things that open badges can cover you know everything from degrees down to competency recognition to attendance Badges and and participation and and peer endorsement. ✪
Nate Otto: Um so I think these these Technologies are together now um open badges has really found its Niche within the verifiable credentials data model it's a credential type you know the open values of community is not too particular about which cryptographic signature proof types should be used um Etc other than to try and push common implementers toward um implementing common solutions for compatibility we really want to make sure the badges that are issued can flow to where they need to go um but beyond that um a lot of the other layers of the text stack are in great hands uh in the the w3c and um in the various different parts of the credentials community group that are drafting new uh cool capabilities that we might be able to um put into Market. ✪
<ildiko_mazar> @Nate, do you know how many/what proportion of OB issuers reference skills in the badge metadata from skill or competence frameworks (as opposed to using free text descriptions)?
Nate Otto: Sharon do you have any uh reaction or or anything there um before I jump to kind of look at back at the past. ✪
Sharon Leu: Um no that's cool so what I'm hearing you say is that there's actually ongoing work um at 1 and Tech on um sort of updating and refining the standards so that it always remains consistent is that right. ✪
Nate Otto: Yeah absolutely and so uh I can go into a tiny bit more kind of on that which is that there is this uh 18-month cooling cycle at 1 Ed Tech before we can produce a new version of open badges but certain changes are Exempted from that so um we want there to be some stability in the market so we're not going to do a new revision right away um but when a new did method comes along or a new um proof type that we want to take a look at um the work group can add those as an additional recommendation of something that could be used um in a fairly lightweight Manner and so the work group will continue its work meeting twice a month. ✪
Nate Otto: To discuss you know what are the use cases that are out there that we're seeing in the implementation landscape and to be able to make that type of small adjustments. ✪
Sharon Leu: Cool and is there a way that um you know other people from the outside can be observers of that process just to you know see what you all are up to other than you know sort of like inviting you for an AMA every now and again. ✪
Nate Otto: Well I I do appreciate the invitation to join for an AMA uh and there are a number of other members of the the work group who are on these these calls regularly so there is a lot of information sharing so I wanted Tech is a member organization and um most of the official deliberations are members-only voting as member is only for instance however we have um. ✪
Nate Otto: This community opened Badgers Community has advocated for very long time that the work on open badges should be done in the public and so our GitHub repository um for the open badges specification is a public repository and issues are discussed their poll requests are discussed there so you can follow along the actual issues and pull requests and anyone may open an issue um or comment on an issue so a lot of the the actual nitty-gritty work does have that Avenue of of visibility and then in addition there are some conferences um wanted to take puts on um a number of them they had they just got through the learning impact Conference in June and then um the big 1 for digital credentials every year is their digital credentials Summit which next year will be in Phoenix I think in March. ✪
Nate Otto: Cool well thanks for the question let me let me get to the other half of your question which is um. ✪
Nate Otto: Happens for open badges 2.0 issuers um previously what do they do we actually have a section of the open badges implementation guide that. ✪
Nate Otto: Covers a handful of scenarios for what such an issue or could do and the Crux of the difference is that open badges 2.0 largely relied on a phone home approach where the issuer would host a verification file on their own website and that URL of that file would which was the up-to-date version of the credential would be um included in the credential and then a verifier the instructions were instead of verifying a signature you just throw away everything else you have go fetch that the URL to the thing and that is the canonical copy of the um the credential and so if it was revoked he'll be able to see that if it um had changed uh since it was originally issued um you you would be able to see that as well. ✪
Nate Otto: Bad is 3.0 largely we're uses the um cryptographic proofs that are familiar to verifiable credentials. ✪
Nate Otto: And um that is a very different model because it's not just built in that you have the revocation checking and the status checking um but also that there's a lot of issued badges there's millions of issued open badges in those 2.0 formats largely held within um a small number of software platforms that implemented them and I think the that they can continue to coexist that the the open badge is 2.0 and 3.0 versions can be considered 2 different serialized of the same achievement and there will be some products that don't yet support 3.0 for a little while uh yet so in some cases you may still want to like share and download the the 2.0 version um and then for newer wallets and use cases you can get the 3.0 version but the Crux of what makes it possible for you to do both these versions together is that sharing by URL is going to continue to be a really. ✪
Nate Otto: Open badges when you want to share a credential to your LinkedIn profile to show a qualification that you have or some experience that you have um. ✪
Nate Otto: Pretty much the only thing LinkedIn can accept besides a few metadata Fields within what they call certifications is a URL and there's no way to put a cryptographic signature into LinkedIn you have to have this URL to share and so because open badge is 2.0 is built on your url based sharing um you can build an experience where you still implement the URL based sharing um in 2.0 formats and probably also have your open graph tags on there to make it really easy for for um social platform Bots to get a sense of what the content is and render a preview card and then you can also deliver the 3.0 credential uh maybe downloaded to a user's wallet um in the new format for when they need it so we have a guide specifically on how you could do that at a technical level built into the implementation guide. ✪
Nate Otto: Tidbits to your question asked about the the badge connect API um which is a server to server method of uh transmitting badges from issuers to um hosts was the term in that API um also kind of thought of as a backpack or a wallet um and then from those hosts out to verifiers using an ooth based um authorization code redirect Grant structures the users in the browser authorizing a connection and then once they've done so those 2 servers can talk to each other on behalf of the user until in the future even if the user is not there so like if a new credentials awarded the issuer can to throw it right over into the um the house without the user um showing up in the browser to click buttons and accept it there is another version of this API brought forward in the open badge is 3.0 and so it's basically the same thing but uses the 3.04 formats instead of the 2.0 formats and so um we will see as far as what protocols open badges. ✪
Nate Otto: To send the the badges around I'm building a product myself the open source Orca platform that so far has implemented chappie to um send credentials to same device wallets for users in browsers but I'm also implementing the open badges 3.0 API um so that um Learners can say where they want their credentials to go authorize that flow and then it just happens in the background automatically on their behalf. ✪
Nate Otto: So we'll see how how the implementation landscape lines up and and which um options uh people choose their. ✪
<sharon_leu> Thanks!
Nate Otto: That's a really good question um skill and competency recognition is 1 of the key use cases for open Badges and um open badges has the capability to align to a skill um particularly those that are identified by URL within a competency framework so for example if there's a um a competency framework that is published to the credential engine registry and each of the items within it has a unique URL a badge could align to that URL and say hey this badge this is achievement completes that uh competency. ✪
Nate Otto: On how much this is used and it really varies widely by issuers um there are some issuers like Western Governors University that has awarded um. ✪
<sharon_leu> @ildiko I think it's not only an issuer issue, since the relying parties
Nate Otto: Me tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of credentials and each of them aligns to a large number of skills and then there are um a large number of longtail issuers that um aligned to you know 1 skill or don't align to um a skill URL at all and then there are a number of issuers that they don't have a a competency framework with URLs so there's nothing out there beyond the badge to align to but the badge itself represents a skill or a competency and that's another use case covered by open badges um but it's a little bit hard to get um hard data on this um instantly I think that as that ecosystem develops we will start to get better data about what achievements are in use which issuers are awarding them uh and the you know the prevalence of different choices around the the metadata um partly just because we absolutely need to build services that can answer those questions for the the basic trust model um. ✪
Nate Otto: Because there's a lot of issuers out there tens or hundreds of thousands of different issuers that could be using open badges most consumers will not know which issuer they are going to receive badges from when they you know a new job applicant walks in the door to share them and so we will need services that help verifiers such as employers make sense of the badges that they're being present. ✪
Nate Otto: Um and that means having services that answer questions about like what achievements are out there which issuers are out there and which is issuers our trusted to issue like achievements for which skills. ✪
Nate Otto: I mean first of all we do see a lot of skill and competency badges it's 1 of the core use cases and so that that's 1 of the most important things that we we have but in this stage of the ecosystem most badges that get awarded. ✪
Nate Otto: Tell tell a story of an accomplishment and that their intended for human eyeballs and the aura screen reader and a human brain to make sense of. ✪
Nate Otto: Addresses and the maturity of the ecosystem grows we'll start having more capabilities for kind of machines to act on badges um automatically and to be able to do things but right now um these are great storytelling tools for expressing skills and competencies and uh you'll kind of like know the quality of it when you see the the badge come across your desk and it'll be accompanied by say a job applicant so they'll say hey here's the badge. ✪
Nate Otto: In my previous experience and here's why it matters and how it applies to how I would um work in this new position and that's like exactly the same type of thing that people are doing with cover letters and resumes for uh many years. ✪
<deb_everhart_(credential_engine)> Credential Engine is seeking data sets from badge platforms for analysis in the next version of our Counting Credentials report, to analyze the data for better clarity around credential types and skills included
Nate Otto: Good question okay so alignment um the concept of here's an external thing identified by URL that this achievement aligns to it's basically unchanged from open badges I think 1.0 was sort of when we we implemented it originally back in like 2013 um the idea is that there's a URL to a thing it we have a name and a description and maybe a name of the framework that it's within we've had uh 1 new. ✪
Nate Otto: Option which is really cool in 3.0 though we have the alignment Target type we can tell you now in the badge what is the type of the thing on the other end of the the URL here is it a competency or is it um something else and I can uh look up you know what those what those alignment types are in in the spec there's a whole bunch of different um like 20 uh different types of things that might be on the other end of the alignment. ✪
Nate Otto: What was the other half of your question. ✪
Nate Otto: Yeah yeah so um let me offer 2 illustrations um the first category of things that has largely changed in data elements is that open badges 3.0 is a lot richer and Fuller there's a lot more optional stuff that you can put in there than there was in open badges 2.0 and largely these fields came from um 1 Ed texts other related digital credentials spec uh the comprehensive learner record. ✪
Nate Otto: CLR offered a bunch of different data fields about like what an achievement meant and um 1 of them is this. ✪
Nate Otto: Concept that there might be a rubric associated with an achievement and this is um implemented in the concept of a result description in open badges 3.0 and CLR 2.0. ✪
Nate Otto: That's the other element of this uh is that we're not only bringing open Badges and verifiable credentials together we're bringing open Badges and CLR together into a common data model it's a nice cluster of stuff but there's this concept called a result description which could include a rubric could include a description that says hey this is a scored assignment and the scores range from zero to 100 and then within the credential there is a result against that result description so the result description says maximum score is 100 and then the results says you got a 85. ✪
Nate Otto: Put a grade directly in achievement sometimes there's um privacy rules that govern how you can include that information or not um but the capabilities there and so that first example categories there's a lot of expanded um data elements a bunch more stuff that you can say about the achievement another example there is achievement type uh where you can say that oh this is a competency or this is a degree this is a course completion or a participation um badge you can more explicitly say in a um Regular controlled vocabulary uh which of several types or extensions um the the achievement represents the second major data model change is that. ✪
Nate Otto: Now with the definer of the achievement. ✪
Nate Otto: Is no longer the only party that might be able to recognize it uh in open badges 2.0 the way that the the structures were related there was a Structure called the assertion and then that linked to the badge class which we now call achievement and then the badge class linked to the issuer there was not a direct link between the assertion and the the issuer of it but now in verifiable credentials um the credential goes straight to the issuer it says who is my issuer and then also through credential subject it's what claim is this issue we're making an open badges the core claim is that the subject has met the criteria of an achievement and now the definition of who created that achievement and who is making this claim the possibility opens that these might be different entities. ✪
Nate Otto: What it actually means in practice uh for someone to process a credential that has a difference there is much more of an open question and so some of my um ongoing work uh with the bit of trust organization is around answering like what are the real use cases for when we Define. ✪
Nate Otto: Achievements that are possible to be issued by other issuers when do we want to say that they're not possible to be issued by other issuers and uh you know how might we we actually like shuttle all the information to the verifier so that they can decide in the case of 1 of these mismatches is it permissible for this particular credential issuer to recognize achievement of the achievement that is defined here. ✪
Deb_Everhart_(Credential_Engine): Hey Nate thank you so much for all your work on this front um and a lot of that uh better Clarity um that you're describing in terms of the data structure that can be in ob3 and CLR 2 is thanks to the efforts of um. ✪
Deb_Everhart_(Credential_Engine): Nate and Carrie and and a bunch of people are who are also on this call to get that in there thank you for including CDL in that structure and. ✪
Deb_Everhart_(Credential_Engine): I put a note in the chat but it's a ways back so I'll just restate it um 1 of the things that credential engine is aiming to do if we can get the data we need is to bring better Clarity to badges that are in the field the badges that don't have all that rich data that can be expressed in CLR. ✪
Deb_Everhart_(Credential_Engine): I'm sorry an ob3 CLR 2. ✪
Deb_Everhart_(Credential_Engine): As part of our next counting credential report 1 of the things we're seeking is badge sets not any personally identifiable information um but the badge classes from badge platforms so that we can um use some tools to analyze those to see how we can determine what data is inside not on a badge by badge um basis but in aggregate to give is all a better sense of the field and this kind of usage and you know 1 of the incentives for the badge platforms to do that is that we'll share back everything we can including the tools for an instructions for how we did that if they want to take it even further. ✪
Deb_Everhart_(Credential_Engine): So I just wanted to put that out there as um an effort for better Clarity and a request if you know any badge platform providers or badge data sets that we could be working with. ✪
Nate Otto: Great yeah thanks for plugging the good work um it's worth noting that you can extend any open bad achievement with additional CDL data if you would like and um yeah plus 1 to reporting data for the counting credentials report and generally publishing your achievements to the credential registry is a great place to share information about the credentials that are issued by various different organizations. ✪
Nate Otto: So I didn't bring any visual aids with me unfortunately but um you've got the model right uh we previously had this concept called the badge class and now this has been renamed achievement. ✪
Nate Otto: And the idea is that there's a defined set of things that go together it's named there's a symbolic image perhaps the descriptive of this achievement there's a criteria describing how it will be assessed whether someone has met the um the threshold or not that alignment skills Etc all that bundle of information that applies to everyone who Awards there is awarded the same achievement is part of that packet that we call the achievement and So within a verifiable credential the structure is that the credential subject um claim in an open badges um credential type has an achievement property and then the achievement property is 1 single entity bundle of this stuff and so many different individual Learners can have a credential uh that recognizes the same achievement as 1 another. ✪
Nate Otto: I got to unpack that a little bit uh you know and explain for the audience like what is a traditional backpack um. ✪
Nate Otto: Back in 2012 2011 um the Mozilla Foundation uh worked on what they call the reference implementation of an open badges backpack and that was a web service in which an individual would have an account and it was possible to upload the badges that that user had earned uh to that account um only badges uploaded to the account email address would be allowed within the backpack but then within the backpack uh you could share individual badges by a URL on the the backpack domain or you could. ✪
Nate Otto: Getting a little background noise from some of these mic please be. ✪
Nate Otto: I should gather them together into a collection and then share a collection as a URL um we do see a number of verifiable credentials compatible web wallets that are using the same type of pattern where it's a web service not a strictly a mobile uh device there is cloud-based storage for the credentials and you can upload them from various places in addition maybe some of these um web wallets will implement the open badges 3.0 API and and have sort of server to server connections where they can be a Dropbox for your credentials even when you're not present in the browser to click buttons and accept them uh and in that way it is entirely possible that a a credential wallet um that compatible with open badges 3.0 will function really similarly to how a um open badge is 1.0 uh backpack worked back in uh 2013 um there is a lot of open questions on like which protocols to deliver credentials to users will. ✪
Nate Otto: Actually pick up and which uh backpacks hosts wallets whatever you want to call them um will become you know broadly usable um my my theory on this is and we can check back in another few years and see if I was right is that the way the consumption platforms are really what matters um when we have killer apps for verifying a credential that does something really valuable for the user because they had a credential that wouldn't have been possible if we didn't have a credential recognizing that thing um then whatever platforms are connected and able to help the user present their credentials uh into that killer app um verifier are going to be the ones that um become the most valuable and so whatever protocols make sense for those uh those wallets working backward to the issuer will be the ones that the issuers will most want to implement um open badges you know trees like in in some ways it tries to do all the things um before we picked up uh verifiable credentials compatibility with 3.0. ✪
Nate Otto: You had to define something for every layer of the tech stack and that included. ✪
Nate Otto: Protocol for delivering 2 backpacks and then from backpacks to verifiers uh it was covered you know all the verification layers and now we can Outsource some of those layers into specialist specs um at the w3c the credentials community group um Etc and so open badges can maybe focus on its real core value proposition which is on the data model itself on what it means to have an achievement um and the the trust model for you know what it means when many issuers are out there in the world recognizing many different achievements aligned to many different skills. ✪
Nate Otto: They get did I get the fence that you were asking pretty well. ✪
Nate Otto: Cool yeah I mean great questions and maybe uh very close to my heart because I I really think that verification and consumption you know using badges for something valuable is is really what's going to drive this Market um forward and so I can tell a little bit about my work um as well so uh I now have a small consultancy that my company skybridge skills uh that advises companies on how they might Implement in this space what the technical decisions custom code Etc um and also I am building an open source platform as part of my work called Orca um it's the open recognition Community app um right now it's in a fairly early stage uh we did hit a version 1.0 and made the open source release in December at the Epic conference in Vienna and we'll be uh you know trying out uh a conference based badge earning and peer recognition experience coming up at the badge Summit in August and then again at the um this year's edition of the Epic conference. ✪
Nate Otto: Didn't want to just build another issuing platform there's it's it's pretty easy to put credentials out there um thanks to a lot of the great open source low-level libraries produced by the verifiable credentials Community uh you know special shout out to digital Bazaar I'm using a lot of their libraries. ✪
Nate Otto: Um but uh consumption is really where the energy is and so Orca is a platform that right now it can issue but I'm struggling to find time and implementing the verification side I'll have that in place by August um at the badge Summit and we can really um play around with this idea the idea is that there is a community that. ✪
Nate Otto: Has a reason to be together anything from a local sports team whose primary interest is making sure people show up for the practices so that they have enough people uh who are ready to play at the pickup game on Tuesday um all the way up to say a department at a formal higher ed institution um but you know maybe like better for communities that are within that dunbar's number you know people who actually know each other um so this platform prioritizes self claiming workflows and peer endorsement workflows each achievement that is um defined within an orca Community can be associated with a set of governance rules about who can claim it who can invite others to claim it um and whether there's prerequisites whether this is a review requirement before whether you know a certain qualified user needs to review it before a claim becomes valid uh and it can be customized to the needs of the whatever Community is using it for whatever type of achievements matter to them um skills recognition is probably. ✪
Nate Otto: And as part of orca's flow we want to make it so that if you have an achievement recognized in a badge from a different Community or some other issuer that you can bring it in and use it as evidence to apply for an achievement that is valued locally so imagine there is a um software development company 50 employees and they have a number of skills that they care about for their team covering the the tech stack that they work on you need to know a few languages you need to know some deployment and build tools you need to have uh experience with the QA methodologies and project management methodologies that are used and then you need to have a whole range of uh you know transferable skills 21st century skills um durable skills however you you define those within your community. ✪
Nate Otto: Um if you've got some of these hard skills or soft skills from elsewhere that are recognized in a credential bring it in um but it might be named something else if it came from somewhere else it's not directly transferable but the local community has an interest in understanding what is it that you know as it applies to our local understanding and naming of these Concepts. ✪
Nate Otto: Drop in the badges you already have um onto the badges that you want and then that will allow you to create a claim for those badges that you want which will then be reviewed through the appropriate governance mechanisms of that community and so I I hope that through this particular open-source um implementation of verification we can really explore a lot of the concepts of how do we transfer meaning between different communities uh on open badges In This Very decentralized ecosystem there's many different achievements out there that might represent almost the same thing there's many different issuers most of which you've never heard of before um how do we navigate the trust landscape and use these achievements as evidence to turn into some kind of real actionable local understanding within the communities that you participate in and uh care about so open source software Orca produced by skybridge skills come try it out at the badge Summit um and. ✪
Nate Otto: Give me your opinions and and takes on what um verification stories really matter to you. ✪
<michal_jarmolkowicz> Is there a concept of reputation of a community in ORCA?
Nate Otto: Can I um yeah can I get Mel's question um Mel in the chat asks is there a concept of reputation of a community in Orca and you know a community in this case think of it as any credential issuer at all so is there a concept of the reputation of a credential issuer we are trying to maybe build that concept together as a community uh we're trying to build it in ways that are appropriately flexible and Equitable but simple and powerful enough to actually use and we need services that help us do that and so there are some missing pieces in this ecosystem and particularly the the trust model of credentials. ✪
Nate Otto: Point it's both a easy case and a hard case for thinking about um reputation of issuers and Trust of credentials and I think it's a really great ground for us to try out some of the trickiest problems and to force us to build the services that really matter the most um essentially we need to be able to decide. ✪
Nate Otto: Is this credential that I'm being presented today reputable and I want to be able to access information about its issuer um and. ✪
Nate Otto: Of the credential itself ensure that the issuer actually is the organization that it says it is which is itself quite a large problem. ✪
Nate Otto: What are the data sources that could help you answer some of those questions certainly we have the data in the credential itself we can see the the names of the skills that it is aligned to Etc but if we can't answer whether the issuer is actually the organization that it says it is is this Kalamazoo University or is this uh you know a fake issuer just saying that their Kalamazoo University um then we wouldn't really be able to get very far on this question of of issuer reputation and trust and so um I am looking to help uh Implement and build and cooperate with others in the space around. ✪
Nate Otto: Angle that I'm going to take with with Orca and Sky Bridge skills which is. ✪
Nate Otto: To think of reputation as something that we need to have information about very quickly that's actionable that we can um you know have at our fingertips on demand about the whatever arbitrary issuer we're asking about but also it's it's something that needs to develop and grow or organically through the actions of the users in um the ecosystem and so what I mean by that is that. ✪
<pl/t3> This is quite analogous (verification stories) to the perosnal identity reputation signals that we'll hear more about tomorrow with meronymous communication within a particular community - in this case academic researchers and students in a particular discipline.
Nate Otto: Review of accreditation of Institutions does not scale quickly to the hundreds of thousands of issuers that were actually going to see out there in in the open badges World especially if you know there's open source software like Orca or anyone can just pick it up either run as a hosted um uh service from a service provider like skybridge skills or um as open source software that they host themselves they could just become an issuer and how do they organically like merge into a world in which um accreditation exists and we need to have all these trusts questions answered so I think that we need to find ways for. ✪
Nate Otto: To mediate issuer trust by making that information available immediately on demand but also be collected. ✪
Nate Otto: In the background consensually um every time that uh credential is accepted by another organization there should be a place to be able to report back a little bit about the reputation information that you have created through the process of evaluating and accepting that credential and so I'm interested in building um trust registry services and collaborating with that and protocols such as the um verifiable issuers and verifiers list um protocol to extend that and. ✪
Nate Otto: Be able to have 2 directional information flow about reputation of issues and communities. ✪
<michal_jarmolkowicz> Great, thx
Nate Otto: Might have been a little bit more of a deep dive uh M but how did that go for you. ✪
<pl/t3> @Nate - do you think people will be willing to spend the time and energy giving this feedback you're suggesting for a trust registry?
<simone_ravaioli> Michal did you want to intervene ?
Nate Otto: That's a great question I mean I think bring your use cases feel free to suggest um issues on the open badges specification repo within the 1 Ed Tech um GitHub organization um I think that we'll see some extension of additional optional metadata that you can put in there but the really key important pieces for open badges maybe around some of these trusts questions um so we may see some approaches that are trial by um folks out here in the implementation land um. ✪
<pl/t3> Just repeat it briefly yourself @simone - little time left
Nate Otto: We may see those elevated up into the spec uh to be able to answer some of those key questions we'll also likely see additional uh did methods and proof um crypto Suites and formats kind of blessed um by the the work group um 1 other element that I didn't mention yet in today's call is that 1 a tech offers certification for platforms um from paying members who um pass their certification suite and you need to choose 1 of the the methods uh for all the different layers of the text act supported by the certification platform so it's likely that the the types of methods supported by the certification platforms will grow as part of a little 3.1 releases but what we have for 3.0 is a huge change from uh 2.0 um especially with compatibility with verifiable credentials and we have you know a decade of exploration of the awesome potential that this um release has created there's not a huge need for you know burning use cases that are. ✪
Nate Otto: The most important work that we have in the coming. ✪
<sharon_leu> Are 1EdTech members going to start implementing 3.0 before we even start the 3.1 conversation?
Nate Otto: Years is implementation work and to my eye especially implementation work on the verifying and consumption side. ✪
<nate_otto> Yes, Sharon, implementation first, I doubt there will be a 3.1 charter even proposed for 18 months with possible scope.
Nate Otto: Uh yep absolutely um so we don't have much time uh on left on this call but I recommend going to the open badges specification itself there is a certification guide linked from the specification um and so I recommend taking a look at that there is a. ✪
<sharon_leu> Certification is only for conformance, though, right?
Nate Otto: A certification test suite and you basically go to a website and then plug in some information upload some credentials and it will in an automated way test whether your platform is conformant um there is an open source version of that software published on 1 of text GitHub um organization and in Java and uh I certification is open only to paying members but you could download the Open Source public verifier and like check to see if your platform um meets it but then the result of certification is that your platform is published on the 1 Ed Tech what they call the trusted apps directory um where other um where where our customers can hopefully find you and purchase your uh Your solution um as far as finalization of the spec there is a um certification requirement before the spec goes final and open badges met that hurdle uh in quarter 2 um which then opened it up for the final vote and now open badges 3.0 is final final um CLR 2. ✪
<sharon_leu> canivc.com works too
Nate Otto: Which has a common data model to open badges 3.0 is not yet final just because they're waiting on the last uh certification so if you're in a certified if you're uh ready to certify in a verifying consuming role for CLR you can help that spec get over that last hurdle by implementing passing the certification Suite. ✪
<deb_everhart_(credential_engine)> thank you so much all!