Presence and IntComm WG

[Candace Holman <>]

Nice writeup Ben!  Thank you.

Candace

Ben Chinowsky wrote:

> This is a summary of discussions about the future of the PIC WG that took 
> place
> on the September 15 conference call and at the September 20 face-to-face 
> meeting
> in Philadelphia. The following people took place in either or both of these
> discussions:
>
> Rodger Will (chair) - Ford
> Joe Rork - Ford
> Candace Holman - Harvard
> Jeremy George - Yale
> John Stier - Stony Brook
> Alistair Munro - Bristol
> Dawn Augustino - Penn
> Steve Blair - Penn
> Deke Kassabian - Penn
> Ben Teitelbaum - Internet2
> Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2
>
> The group's current charter is at http://pic.internet2.edu/charter.html. 
> Rodger
> observed that we've accomplished "Example Activities" A-E and H as well as the
> first part of F. What next?
>
> The group considered three main questions:
>
> 1. Should we continue the group's focus on SIP (RFC 3261), or broaden it to
> include work on creating gateways among the proliferating commercial "walled
> garden" solutions?
>
> The group agreed to stick with SIP. There was consensus that shifting to a 
> focus
> on gateways would amount to confessing defeat for the SIP/SIMPLE cause, and 
> that
> we're not ready to do that. The work of the PIC WG can influence the direction
> of presence technologies more generally, and we want to exercise that 
> influence
> in favor of open standards.
>
> 2. Should we build a centralized PIC service on the Internet2 Commons model, 
> or
> continue the PIC-SER focus on campus deployments?
>
> There was a strong consensus on continuing the campus focus. An attempt to
> create a centralized service would absorb all available resources and would 
> run
> the risk of turning into just another walled garden. In particular, the group
> agreed to continue basing its campus work on SER, further developing PIC-SER 
> and
> getting the PIC-SER code incorporated into the main SER code base.
>
> The group discussed possible new features for PIC-SER. There is keen interest 
> in
> adding multiuser capabilities (especially group chat) and a way to make use of
> local authentication mechanisms. There was general agreement that we want to
> keep working toward supporting a broad range of clients, and that we don't 
> want
> to build our own open-source client. More generally, assessing future PIC-SER
> inter- and intra-domain functionality requirements, and working with vendors 
> to
> get them implemented, will be priorities in the coming months.
>
> Candace has handled a huge proportion of the PIC-SER workload, and isn't sure
> she can maintain this level of commitment; further volunteers are needed.
>
> The group briefly reviewed some of the PIC-SER written reports. This led to 
> the
> conclusion that we need to get the PIC-SER teams to present this material on
> upcoming conference calls; Rodger is pursuing this.
>
> 3. Should we continue focusing on computers as endpoints, or should we start
> working more with mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs?
>
> There was no general agreement on this question, though there was consensus 
> that
> device compatibility will be one of the main issues to consider in developing 
> a
> list of functionality requirements. Ben T. noted that the cell-phone
> infrastructure is fragmented and closed; until WiFi becomes ubiquitous or
> campuses figure out how to do cell-WiFi roaming, we don't have a mobility
> infrastructure to work with anyway. Ben T. also called the group's attention 
> to
> WiGLE.net, which gathers user-reported location information for wireless
> networks (over four million so far) and creates a map.
>
>