Presence and IntComm WG

["Ben Chinowsky" <>]

*Action Items as of November 9*

(high priority)
[ACTION] Rodger and Joe will write up some use cases for federations.
[ACTION] Candace will get details from Vaclav on how to patch SER with his
update of the PIC-SER PA module.
[ACTION] Candace will confer with Jamey about PIC-SER PA testing.
[ACTION] Steve, Ben T., and Candace will confer on next steps for PIC-SER PA
testing.
[ACTION] (in progress) Ben T. will compile SER on PIC-DEV with the latest
PIC-SER PA module.
[ACTION] (in progress) Ben T. will update SER on PALS with the latest PIC-SER
package.
[ACTION] Rodger will try to organize a call with CounterPath sometime in the
next few weeks.
[ACTION] For the next few conference calls, Rodger will recruit PIC-SER
participants to summarize their experiences.
[ACTION] The PIC WG will evaluate what functions (e.g. group chat) should be
added to the next version of the PIC-SER package.
[ACTION] Steve will ask Jamey for an update on open-source HP location-
tracking technologies -- especially a) the status of the software, and
b) whether any writeups of this work are available.
[ACTION] Candace will get information needed to produce useful PIC-SER bug
reports.
[ACTION] (in progress) Dennis will draft a short description of the proposed
topic for Cullen Jennings' talk.

(medium priority)
[ACTION] (in progress) Steve will try to schedule Cullen Jennings as a guest
speaker on one of the PIC conference calls.
[ACTION] (in progress) Candace will add a Wiki document on strict vs. loose
routing.

(low priority)
[ACTION] Candace and Jamey will initiate an email discussion of their proposal
to modify the SER PA module so it can do presence via SUBSCRIBE and NOTIFY, to
accommodate clients that don't do PUBLISH.
[ACTION] Jamey will enable eyeBeam to use presence info to decide
whether messages should go straight to voicemail.
[ACTION] Jamey will update the interface requirements document.
[ACTION] People will research skiff-like offerings from various companies:
- Dennis - Newbury
- Rodger - Airespace (now part of Cisco)
- Jeremy - Eckehau (via Walt Magnussen)
[ACTION] Candace will look into Tyler Johnson's H.350-enabled version of the
NIST client.
[ACTION] Ben T. will write a short document describing the motivation for the
paths-in-the-snow approach to PIC development.

*Attendees*

Rodger Will (chair) - Ford
Joe Rork - Ford
Dennis Baron - MIT
John Stier - Stony Brook
Candace Holman - Harvard
Steve Blair - Penn
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

The group agreed to postpone further discussion of the draft federations
definitions (https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/wg-pic/2005-10/msg00025.html)
to the next call that Ben T. is on.

Steve ran into library problems trying to update SER with the new patches.
[ACTION] Candace will get details from Vaclav on how to patch SER with his
update of the PIC-SER PA module.

Rodger asked the group to give some thought to plans for the Spring Internet2
Member Meeting, and in particular to how we can involve vendors.

Rodger called the group's attention to recent postings from Erik Lagerway on 
the
need for presence and on SIP/SIMPLE vs. XMPP (http://blog.tmcnet.com/sipthat/ 
,
October 28 & 31).

There was a short discussion of the demand for group chat. Candace noted that 
it
can be useful as a way for people to submit comments to be included in meeting
minutes. Steve noted that 70% of the IM users in his department use group 
chat,
but as this group is mostly sophisticated users located at some distance from
one another, he's not sure how representative this is.

Rodger reported that since Ford's recent shift to pass-through security, IM
is "magically working for our whole user base". Most of the users haven't
discovered this yet, but Rodger is looking forward to finding out how usage
changes when they do.