Presence and IntComm WG

["Ben Chinowsky" <>]

*Action Items as of February 2*

[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
a future PIC call.
[ACTION] Jamey will test Eyebeam against the 090 prerelease version of SER,
which is what PALS is running now.
[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 - Airespace (being bought by Cisco)
- Jeremy - Eckehau (via Walt Magnusson)
[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*

Ben Teitelbaum (acting chair) - Internet2
Steve Blair - Penn
Deke Kassabian - Penn
Dennis Baron - MIT
Candace Holman - Harvard
Rodger Will - Ford
Joe Rork - Ford
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

The group discussed plans for its double session at the Internet2 Spring 
Member
Meeting. Rodger volunteered to speak, and Jeremy, Ben T., Joe, and Deke have
done so previously. Candace may be able to present also.

The first session is concerned with the big picture; there was general 
agreement
that it would be good to have both open-source and vendor perspectives here.
Deke suggested that we talk about how PIC is already being used to solve real
problems, as well as our broader open-source vision. There was strong interest
in recruiting Henning Schulzrinne and Jeff Pulver for the first session. 
Henning
would give an academic perspective on the global, long-term future of PIC;
Rodger would give a customer perspective on the short-term future of 
open-source
PIC solutions, focusing on Ford's plans; and Jeff Pulver would discuss the
current state of the art in commercial PIC solutions.

The second session will discuss specific deployments. The focus will be on the
activities (past and planned) of the PIC working group, but the group agreed
that deployments of commercial products (e.g. Vocera) could also be included,
provided the WG takes care to ensure that what's being presented is really 
PIC.

There was also strong interest in getting Jiri Kuthan to talk about 
open-source
presence software; its not clear which session he'd go in.

Dennis asked if the Cricket Indoor Location System
(http://nms.lcs.mit.edu/projects/cricket/) would make a good topic for the
second session. Cricket is very precise, doing location on the centimeter 
scale;
Dennis described it as a technology looking for an application. Ben observed
that as the PIC WG has focused on locating people, it hasn't thought much 
about
the value of greater-than-room-level resolution. No decision was reached on
including Cricket.

Ben T. noted that the NG911 project
(http://ntiaotiant2.ntia.doc.gov/top/awards/details.cfm?oeam=486004012) is 
doing
a demo during the MM (either at the MM site or elsewhere in the DC area). This
project concerns location-based emergency calling, which Ben described as
probably the most urgent application for location services. He suggested 
having
a rudimentary skiff demo there, showing which PSAP a call goes to, depending 
on
the location of the caller. There was interest in this suggestion, but again 
no
decision was reached.