Presence and IntComm WG

["Ben Chinowsky" <>]

*Action Items as of November 30*

[ACTION] Ben T. will recruit someone from Vocera to join the PIC calls and
explore partnership possibilities, and introduce Jeremy to the Vocera contact
via email.
[ACTION] Jeremy will outline a high-level paper on the PIC WG's experiences 
and
lessons learned.
[ACTION] Ben T. will write a short document describing the motivation for the
paths-in-the-snow approach to PIC development.
[ACTION] Jamey will update the interface requirements document.
[ACTION] Jeremy will notify Paul Love that PIC will not be doing a session at
the Salt Lake City Joint Techs.
[ACTION] Jamey will continue working on the future of the skiffs, and solicit
opinions from PIC members as needed.
[ACTION] Jamey will send out a list of products that could be used in a basic
package for paths-in-the-snow-engineering deployments.
[ACTION] On the next call, the group will continue its discussion of what kind
of package to provide for paths-in-the-snow-engineering trials.
[ACTION] Jeremy will start recording the PIC calls on December 2, and come 
back
to the group for a consensus on posting the recordings.

*Attendees*

Jeremy George (chair) - Yale
Dennis Baron - MIT
Ben Teitelbaum - Internet2
Joe Rork - Ford
Jamey Hicks - HP
Candace Holman - Harvard
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

The group reviewed action items:

[ACTION] Ben T. will recruit someone from Vocera to join the PIC calls and
explore partnership possibilities.
- Still to do. Ben T. will introduce Jeremy to the Vocera contact via email.

[ACTION] Candace will a) find out if there's any documentation of how location
information needs to be delivered to the PALS server, and b) look into what
would be involved in delivering location information from sources other than 
the
skiffs.
- Done:
a) This middle layer is just PUBLISH messages. So, all we need is this plus
aggregation. Jamey noted that the XML format is documented in the client
requirements doc.
b) Candace suggested we set up a simulation to allow people to test their own
means of location aggregation. She might be able to write something in perl. 
The
group discussed how much we really want to push non-skiff location delivery 
and
aggregation; there was generally agreement that we want to enable this but not
encourage it.

[ACTION] Jeremy will outline a high-level paper on the PIC WG's experiences 
and
lessons learned.
- In process.

[ACTION] Ben T. will write a short document describing the motivation for the
paths-in-the-snow approach to PIC development.
- Still to do.

[ACTION] By mid-November, Candace will produce an outline of the features that
Jamey has added to SER.
- This was sent to the list on November 24.

[ACTION] Jamey will send the group a note clarifying what code belongs to HP 
and
what's open source.
- Done.

[ACTION] Jamey will update the interface requirements document.
- Still to do.

[ACTION] Jeremy will ask Paul Love to schedule a PIC plenary session at the 
Salt
Lake City Joint Techs.
- The group discussed this and decided against doing a Joint Techs session.
[ACTION] Jeremy will notify Paul Love that PIC will not be doing a session at
the Salt Lake City Joint Techs.

[ACTION] All will send Jamey their thoughts on how HP should proceed with the
skiffs.
- Change to [ACTION] Jamey will continue working on the future of the skiffs,
and solicit opinions from PIC members as needed.

The group discussed plans for paths-in-the-snow-engineering projects. Candace
stressed the importance of the "engineering" part of this idea: deployers 
should
have the ability to customize to meet their needs, and the PIC WG should 
provide
only a basic package for them to work from. [ACTION] Jamey will send out a 
list
of products that could be used in a basic package for
paths-in-the-snow-engineering deployments. Jeremy noted the contrast between
this approach and the previously-discussed approach of pursuing grants to
support per-deployer customization. Jamey suggested that the basic-package
approach would probably require a lot of support the first couple of times,
but be pretty much turnkey after that.

The group discussed the wide range of variation in the location exactitude
needed for various applications: e.g., knowing what building your friends are
in, vs. finding small pieces of lost gear (hospital laundries are interested 
in
this). Candace suggested that a standard package could support this variation:
people could start with no skiffs, then go to one skiff per wireless access
point, then go to skiffs everywhere. Jeremy suggested that PIC make
per-site-type recommendations for what degree of precision to start with; Joe
suggested that the sites provide their requirements and PIC limit itself to
explaining what technology is needed to achieve them. [ACTION] On the next 
call,
the group will continue its discussion of what kind of package to provide for
paths-in-the-snow-engineering trials.

Finally, Jeremy asked how people felt about having PIC conference calls 
recorded
and made available online, as a resource for PIC participants working on
documentation and papers. There was general agreement that recording is fine.
There was less enthusiasm for posting the recordings; online recordings would 
at
least need to be access-controlled. [ACTION] Jeremy will start recording the 
PIC
calls on December 2, and come back to the group for a consensus on posting the
recordings.