Presence and IntComm WG

["Ben Chinowsky" <>]

*Action Items as of January 12*

[ACTION] Jeremy will write a blurb for the PIC MM session and request a
2.5-hour timeslot.
[ACTION] All will give some thought to PIC's plans for the Spring and
Fall Internet2 Member Meetings.
[ACTION] Jamey will get a copy of Eyebeam for testing.
[ACTION] Jeremy will take Ben T. up on his offer to get someone from Xten
to join a PIC conference call.
[ACTION] Candace will coordinate a test of Eyebeam with PALS on
the Jan. 20 PIC call.
[ACTION] Candace will write a description of a simple way to append PUBLISH
messages from the client to the servers, in order to provide a basic way to
do location and presence tracking.
[ACTION] People will research skiff-like offerings from various companies:
- Dennis - Newbury
- Steve - Airwave
- Candace - Airspace
- Jeremy - Eckehau (via Walt Magnusson)
[ACTION] Jeremy will start recording the PIC calls on January 13, and come 
back
to the group for a consensus on posting the recordings.
[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] Jamey will continue working on the future of the skiffs, and solicit
opinions from PIC members as needed.
[ACTION] The group will continue its discussion of what kind
of package to provide for paths-in-the-snow-engineering trials.

*Attendees*

Jeremy George (chair) - Yale
Jamey Hicks - HP
Deke Kassabian - Penn
Candace Holman - Harvard
Joe Rork - Ford
Rodger Will - Ford
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

The group agreed to go ahead with its plan for a 2.5-hour session at the 
Spring
Internet2 Member Meeting, focused on recruiting for paths-in-the-snow trials.
Jeremy, Ben T., Joe, and Deke have all committed to presenting; Candace may be
able to also. [ACTION] Jeremy will write a blurb for the PIC MM session and
request a 2.5-hour timeslot. Looking further ahead, the Fall Member Meeting is
at Penn. Deke noted that he and Steve can do a lot to make the meeting
PIC-friendly, and asked if PIC wants to get involved in designing the network
for the meeting. There was strong interest in Deke's offer. [ACTION] All will
give some thought to PIC's plans for the Spring and Fall Internet2 Member
Meetings.

Jeremy and Candace shared some information on commercial skiff-like products.
Jeremy said that the Radiance and Alcatel products are not applicable to what
PIC is doing. Radiance makes what they call an "indoor positioning system"
which has limited functionality and is targeted almost entirely to hospitals.
Alcatel's product is completely tied to the rest of their product line, such
as APs. Jeremy hasn't heard back from Walt Magnusson about Eckehau; he'll keep
trying. Candace talked to someone from Airmagnet; as with Alcatel, their
skiff-like device is closely tied to the rest of their gear. On the other 
hand,
the Airmagnet Surveyor, which is generally used to survey wireless access
points and generate maps, could be useful, though it only runs on PocketPC.
Jamey noted that the Skiff2 is now commercially available.

Jeremy asked the group for its thoughts on what distinguishes what PIC is 
doing
from the various commercial offerings that are becoming available. Location
services are the one thing PIC offers that's not yet widely available from
vendors, but that's changing quickly. Rodger suggested that PIC's openness is
"one huge notable difference" from almost everything else out there, and there
was general agreement. Rodger noted that at Ford there is keen interest in
having an open solution. Joe observed that "we want SIP to be a service, not a
product." Rodger suggested that it's still possible to accomplish this, but 
time
is running out. Jamey gave a brief overview of the progress of some of the 
IETF
standards needed to build an open location service: XCAP is close to RFC; the
data model for aggregation across multiple devices will probably take another
six months or so. Jamey observed that to a certain extent, people are going 
with
proprietary solutions because they have no choice. Jamey also pointed out that
some vendors, such as Xten and Wave3, seem to be taking a more open approach
than Microsoft; Rodger added Marconi to this list.

The group agreed to schedule a discussion of Candace's draft packaging-
requirements document, starting with the "Preliminaries" section; see
Candace's email of Dec. 20. Due to vacations this discussion probably won't
happen until February.

Finally the group discussed the Xten Eyebeam "Video SIP softphone" (see
http://www.xten.com/index.php?menu=products&smenu=eyebeam). Candace noted that
Ben T. can get PIC members permission to download a free copy of Eyebeam for
testing. [ACTION] Jamey will get a copy of Eyebeam for testing. [ACTION] 
Jeremy
will take Ben T. up on his offer to get someone from Xten to join a PIC
conference call. [ACTION] Candace will coordinate a test of Eyebeam with PALS 
on
the Jan. 20 PIC call.