Presence and IntComm WG

["Ben Chinowsky" <>]

*Action Items as of August 30*

(high priority)
[ACTION] (8/24) Ben T. will contact the Galago developers to find out how the
presence-agent project could make use of Galago.
[ACTION] (8/24) Mark will see if he can find interest in the presence-agent
project on the Psi developers' list.
[ACTION] (8/17) Peter will ask Sean Egan for an update on Jingle in Gaim.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will launch an email discussion of if and how to fix 
pals
and pals-dev.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will recruit Peter to provide an update on recent
developments in the Jabber community, in particular developments at OSCON.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will send out pointers to an assortment of XMPP-client
feature-comparison matrices, highlighting items of particular interest or
concern to the group.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will revise his Gaim setup instructions.
[ACTION] (5/18) Ben T. will post the calendar-integration code (written by his
2005 SoC student) on the Penn XMPP server; Mark will evaluate prospects for
modifying it to drive XMPP presence.

(medium priority)
[ACTION] (8/3) Joe will update the group on work in IETF SIMPLE, after he
talks to Jon Peterson at VON.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will put a discussion of current vendor offerings in the
location-services space on the agenda for a future call.
[ACTION] (5/11 - on hold for the summer) Ben T. will look for students active
in Place Lab to work with PIC.
[ACTION] (pre-12/8 - in progress) Rodger and Joe will write up some use cases
for enterprise federations.

*Attendees*

Rodger Will (chair) - Ford
Joe Rork - Ford
Mark Sirota - Penn
Deke Kassabian - Penn
Dennis Baron - MIT
Neal McBurnett - Internet2
Ben Teitelbaum - Internet2
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

The group discussed where to find more participants for Mark's presence-agent
project. [ACTION] Ben T. will contact the Galago developers to find out how 
the
presence-agent project could make use of Galago. [ACTION] Mark will see if he
can find interest in the presence-agent project on the Psi developers' list.

There was a discussion of presence and wireless communications. Rodger noted
that Nextel has a location-based service for cellphones, tied closely to the
walkie-talkie service. Also, Vocera now has a wifi-based location service.
Ben T. noted that half of all cellphone calls are for "manual presence" -- 
e.g. "I'll be home in ten minutes" -- but there are still no hooks for 
presence
services in consumer cellphone service offerings. Rodger noted that the 
biggest
growth in telecommunications is in text messaging, and video doesn't seem to
be taking hold.

There was general agreement that the group needs to a) identify some 
compelling
use cases for the presence agent, and b) choose a location-acquisition
technology to focus on. With respect to use cases, there was more interest in
putting forward a large number of small possibilities (e.g., the social
networking ideas discussed on the August 17 call, presence-based notification 
of
upcoming events) -- giving a sense of the versatility of the technology -- 
than
in pushing a small number of large use cases or a single likely killer app.

With respect to location acquisition, possibilities include approaches based 
on
wired infrastructure, wifi, cellphone towers, and GPS. While no decision was
made, there was strong interest in making this as general-purpose and
non-client-specific as possible. Ben T. noted the recently published LLDP-MED
standard for network-based geolocation [see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLDP-MED].