Presence and IntComm WG

["Ben Chinowsky" <>]

*Action Items as of November 8*

(high priority)
[ACTION] (10/12 - in progress) Candace will try to fix pals-dev.
[ACTION] (9/7) Mark will post his presence-agent code on the web.
[ACTION] (8/31) Rodger will schedule an evening PIC WG meeting at the
Internet2 Member Meeting.
[ACTION] (8/31) Dennis will contact Skyhook for more information.
[ACTION] (8/24 - in progress) Ben T. will contact the Galago developers to 
find
out how the presence-agent project could make use of Galago.
[ACTION] (8/24 - in progress) Mark will see if he can find interest in the
presence-agent project on the Psi developers' list.
[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) Rodger will put a discussion of current vendor offerings in the
location-services space on the agenda for a future call.
[ACTION] (pre-12/8 - in progress) Rodger and Joe will write up some use cases
for enterprise federations.

*Attendees*

Rodger Will (chair) - Ford
Deke Kassabian - Penn
George Bauer - Penn
Candace Holman - Harvard
Neal McBurnett - Internet2
Ben Teitelbaum - Internet2
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Notes*

The group met in Second Life in parallel with the conference call. Deke noted
two levels of presence in Second Life: you can hand someone a card, which 
tells
them your (virtual) identity, but does not allow them to track your (virtual)
location, or you can put them on your Friends list, which both tells them your
identity and allows them to track your location. There are also three levels 
of
privacy in the text chat tool: individual, group, and open.

Corporate sites are becoming more common in Second Life. Deke led the group 
on a
tour of two of them (Pulveria and the CNET space), along the way explaining
various Second Life capabilities such as displaying MPEG video, maintaining 
eye
contact, and document exchange. There are currently three document formats, 
for
audio, text (including hyperlinks), and graphics. Deke noted that 
virtual-world
collaboration has the potential to recreate many of the conversational cues
present in face-to-face conversation, making it easier to know when to jump 
into
a conversation than does telephone or video conferencing. Audio chat tools are
available in Second Life, although text chat is the norm.

Rodger, who was using Second Life for the first time, observed that it doesn't
take long to get used to. Ben T. noted that Second Life's look and quality are
similar to those of virtual world tools being built for military use at the
Naval Postgraduate School. There was general agreement that virtual worlds 
have
considerable potential as collaboration tools.

It was noted that in addition to the supported Windows and Mac clients
for Second Life, there is an alpha Linux client at
http://secondlife.com/community/linux-alpha.php .