[Community] notes from the phone meetings for the last two weeks

[Eugene Eric Kim]

Hi everybody,

Apologies for sending these minutes late.  These are for both this
week and last.  These are summaries of the past two phone calls
primarily for historical purposes; I'll summarize the major decisions
made in another email.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006
--------------------------
Attending:
  - Kaliya Hamlin
  - Eugene Eric Kim
  - Brett McDowell
  - Joaquim Miller
  - Drummond Reed

The most important tasks for the next few weeks leading up to IOS at
Digital Identity World (our self-imposed deadline for getting things
done) are outreach -- making sure others in the community are aware of
where we stand and -- and implementation -- forming working groups,
forming a stewards council, etc.  Joaquim suggested forming an interim
stewards council immediately, whereas Eugene countered that forming
working groups effectively gave you a stewards council.  (This was
discussed in much greater detail this past week, as you'll see further
down.)

Mary Rundle will be in Switzerland in mid-September, and she has
offered to help find a legal agent to push us forward on the Swiss
incorporation front.

Brett asked if the decision to form a Swiss corporation was final.
Eugene said it was not.  Brett then repeated the Liberty Alliance
proposal, offering some clarifications about Liberty's organizational
status.  Liberty operates under an umbrella of the IEEE ISTO, which is
its own 501(c)6 and which hosts many similar organizations.  The
overhead for being part of IEEE ISTO is high -- Brett estimated
between $6-10K/month.  The Liberty proposal to Identity Commons was
that it would help it become an IEEE ISTO group, possibly paying part
of the overhead.

Response to Brett's proposal was lukewarm, although the ISTO
clarification seemed to shift people's opinions.  The main feedback
people offered Brett was that Liberty was perceived as being an
industry alliance, and that perception would be hard to shake.

Wednesday, September 6, 2006
----------------------------
Attending:
  - Dick Hardt
  - Eugene Eric Kim
  - Joaquim Miller
  - Brett McDowell
  - Dan Perry
  - David Recordon
  - Drummond Reed

This is the last phone call before IOS, and as it turns out, it will
be the last phone call of this informal group.  Eugene once again
emphasized the need for outreach and also completion of working
groups.  Brett asked if there were a FAQ for who we were reaching out
to, and how to outreach to different folks.  Eugene said no, and asked
if Brett would be willing to seed it on the Wiki.  Brett said yes.

Several people explained that the Wiki was hard to edit.  Eugene said
that he would move the instructions higher up on the front page
(done), and that we were going to OpenID-enable it as quickly as
possible.  Apparently, MoinMoin (the current Wiki software) has been
OpenID-enabled, so it should just be a matter of upgrading the
software.

Dick raised the question of bootstrapping: How will we decide which
working groups will be the first working groups of Identity Commons?
Under the guidelines we created, the Stewards Council makes this
decision.  However, there's a chicken-and-egg problem, because until
there are working groups, there can't be a Stewards Council.

Dick suggested that those who are funding Identity Commons creation
get to make the decision.  David seconded this.  Drummond and Joaquim
expressed opposition.  Their arguments were that it wasn't necessary
and that it would have a negative effect on what we're trying to do,
which is to be about community and not about who pays the most.

We decided in the end on the following:

  * Everyone who has participated in any of our phone calls or who is
    subscribed to the community at idcommons.net gets a vote.

  * Proposed working groups must be formed by 11:59pm, Friday,
    September 15, 2006.  That means charters must be in place and a
    stewards rep selected.

  * Once those working group charters have been finalized, the people
    above will vote on the charters on the mailing list.  If you vote
    for a working group, you give it a +1.  If you're against a
    working group, you get a -1.  Working groups with a majority of
    +1 based on the total number of votes it received will be
    approved.

  * This voting procedure will be complete by 11:59pm, Tuesday,
    September 19.  At that point, we will have an initial set of
    working groups and a Stewards Council, and Identity Commons can
    start operating as planned.

This also means that this phone call is the last of this informal
group.  The new Stewards Council can decide how it wants to meet in
the future.

The Identity Open Space next Monday will be a great opportunity for
people to discuss and form working groups.

Dan asked about brand transfer issues.  Eugene explained that the
current Identity Commons trustees needs to decide that the new
Purposes and Principles are consistent with the existing ones.  Dan
explained that there will be legal overhead in the actual transfer,
and suggested that we should start working those issues out now.
Eugene will put him in touch with the existing Identity Commons
people.

=Eugene

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Eugene Eric Kim ................................ http://xri.net/=eekim
Blue Oxen Associates ........................ http://www.blueoxen.com/
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