2022-1-26 Steering Committee Discussion Meeting Notes

Agenda 

Overview of Purpose of Meeting
- Judith Fleenor, Director of Strategic Development

Review of Origins and Purpose of ToIP
- John Jordan, Executive Director

Discussions of the Strategic Imperatives of ToIP

Open Discussion of next steps

• Recording

Link

• Presentation (Google Slides)
  

Notes

John Jordan shared his personal experience and journey by detailing that it’s important to develop technology with the understanding that it will be deployed in the human social context. He believes the core fundamentals of the effort. He went on to say that one of our Core Principles is that we aim to create an open community with this as a Core principle. Dir. Fleenor asked for feedback and Steering Member Chris B said he believes the why is the fact that when we’re talking about trust, we’re talking about knowing things and the decentralized nature of decentralized identity lends itself to horrific things potentially. He continued further with, if we don’t have someone to say “this is good”, then we don’t have anything standing in front of efficiency. He believes we need to highlight this and advocate for this on behalf of ToIP. 

John Jordan stated that view can inform some of our communication efforts to engage the community and then Steering Member Drummond Reed  said that the idea of putting human needs in the context of governance, one thing that we are known for as an org is that we’re tackling the governance half of the equation and problem. Reed mentioned he's a little concerned that there's an idea that the technology part is being driven by other organizations and that we’re seeing signs within the market that there is traction.

WHAT are we trying to accomplish?

John Jordan believes that in order to have a system that globally enables digital trust at a globe scale, (i.e. car industry, steam/electric/open bodies/wheels, etc.)  a variety of factors, there was a dominant model that was created, companies move from feature discovery to production. When this shift happens, that’s what we’re trying to achieve. How can we as an organization, encourage the establishment, that allows us to create digital relationships on the internet that aligns with our principles. We must include tech choices and governance model choices so that when we gain adoption, we have to help establish digital trust.

Steering Member Chris B said he’s appreciates the car as an example and he believes the ecosystem idea, he likes to compare us to the NTSB National Traffic Safety Bureau, “they don’t make better cars, but they make cars better”

John Jordan, proposed the question, who are the organizations we need to bring into the conversation? He went on to say that within various industries, we want this to be adopted by and large because we believe the model is better for our citizens because they can conduct their data with easy and safety. Steering Committee member Drummond Reed  said, I would like to drill into some implications of what the “dominant design” strategy means for the ToIP stack.

The interview with Mike Brock, head of the TBD division of Block (new name for Square) is well worth listening to (even though it’s an hour and 20 mins long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z24inNueCe4 

The interview with Mike Brock, head of the TBD division of Block (new name for Square) is well worth listening to (even though it’s an hour and 20 mins long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z24inNueCe4 

Steering Committee member Andre Kudra  agrees with John Jordan.

Steering Committee member Wenjing Chu  mentioned the reason he joined ToIP, is that existing technology has limitations from a technical point of view. He said that a decentralized perspective is more efficient and that without a new system, future applications will hit limitations. He continued that If you look at financials, technology solutions can make that better. Digital domain will push privacy issues to a stronger position as a larger problem from the whole. Big players may not publicly say it, but we’re seeing it. What we’re working has technical stack but more importantly where a governance play into that. Great from migration and adoption point of view.

Steering Committee member Steve McCown  mentioned an article by Andrew Tananbaum is that the best thing about standards is there’s so many to choose from. The world knows there needs to be decentralized identity and they need to be lead. There are a number of standards that fall under the toip stack. One is that ppl really want security with interoperability, illustrating how those standards can fit together is one of our strengths bc we’re superimposed over it all. The other thing is that larger companies will say they’re intestsed in the technology and that it’s going to stand the test of time. He’s also observed that jack dorsey started an effort that he’s written a white paper about moving finances around. It builds on verifiable credentials and steve will post the link in chat. We need to put into a framework that companies can adopt, but we also have large players that are pushing the technologies. 

https://tbdex.io/whitepaper.pdf 

John Jordan, asked the Committee what are we trying to enable? Contractual relationships at large. Everything we do that has trust, is essentially a contractual relationship. 

Steering Committee member Marie Wallace  mentioned there are 32 paper credentials that need to be verified to complete the process. Critical mass, challenge how can we co-exist with existing systems? How can we convince customers that benefits will increase, but it will happen overtime and it might be a long time. How do we co-exist with legacies that are in opposition with SSI?

Steering Committee member Drummond Reed, i was just with Avast identity management team and now that we’re part of a larger group/company is how do we solve this in the immediate term. TCPIP and Desstar was established voice, great story why TCP went out. We are that global alliance that we believe can become the dominant design. Every step, we’re going to hit resistance and how will this work with what we have? I think the steering committee really understands and is brought into the idea of creating something that will be the dominant design. Most active architecture needs to get down to the protocol and details. High level spec by end of the year, but we have to make the decisions in order to get to the interoperability. 

Judith Fleenor, are you in agreement to move to being the dominant stack?

Steering Committee member Bryn Robinson-Morgan , i want to build on what Marie Wallace said with the legacy world. The idea of shifting to old way to new way, is a fallacy. What is important is how you integrate between the new/old. Governments want to maintain control. Here is where we separate the registries of systems but have a centralized way of connecting with their systems. We’re going to be a relevant org bc we’re going to bring something that works.

Steering Committee member Chris B first i think that technologists think of trust as unilateral and we need bilateral in whatever we build. In the real world, trust is usually unilateral, so how do we create this trust. We need to recognize that there will be casualties and we will improve some things while others might be worse too. We need to have expectations that there will be disenfranchised. 

John Jordan  cannon vs xerox and caterpillar example, it needs to be adaptable with social and technical systems that we have. How do we reduce uncertainty?

Kudra: Disruptive Innovation!

HOW?:

John Jordan, the choices that we help make, an org looking to adopt this approach, learn to bring it in, along with their existing systems, a digital trust model that scales (tech and governance). Ultimately leads to software that is adoptable, open source software. This is how we will pave the way for adoption. Being compatible with the way we govern and the tools we use to do this, we can discuss next. 

Steering Committee member Wenjing Chu, adoption with technology migration, how does this happen? Companies have a choice, improbability. Needs to be easily adoptable, reducing the downside. 

John Jordan, i think trust is interesting. Where does the trust need to occur? Helping ppl understand how this choice can help them realize the choices that they really want to make

Steering Committee member Marie Wallace  the problem is the middle man is the middle man. How can we repurpose what they’re currently doing as “middle man”, maybe we imagine a new model

Steering Committee member Andre Kudra  are we able to discuss what the narrowed scope is for ToIP?

Steering Committee member Drummond Reed Drummond yes, i’m optimistic about the opportunity for us to get into…maybe it s future SC meeting about the big picture, this is what we’re trying to get to. Design principles document helped us make progress. 

John Jordan, that discussion is the main objective for the year. This can help us formulate our communication strategy to help ensure we’re engaging the right audience. We need public sector voices in the conversation. We need to have more principle discussions in gov. More challenging in a biz setting. 

Short list of strategic objectives for 2022:

• Design the stack within stack, have discussion of how are we tackling destructive path and when are we intentionally designing in the stack, this is how we connect with the legacy system.
  • I would go so far as to say that “it is the power — and market value — of the trusted data ToIP Core will unlock that will drive adoption”.
• Drummond Reed, 1. What is the optimal design of stack? 2. What is the body of work on how to optimize/simply for integration? 
• Steve McCown, built an interface to dropbox that would encryption and description on the way down. That allowed me to integrate with major systems with his own touch to it. I believe we need to integrate with what’s there but we need to stay focused on what the stack is and how it works. Also reach out to folks who are working with current/legacy systems and show them how they can implement
• John Jordan , be careful of false dichotomy, decentralized vs centralized. That’s not going away and it’s not at odds with Self sovereign identity. We need to be clear about this overall
• Bryn Robinson-Morgan, Agree that ToIP stack is the ToIP stack - it is the points of integration with legacy and future stacks that is important
• Chris B, agree with Drummond Reed, we have to start with reverence architecture 
• Wenjing, comparison of our stack vs existing stack, we are trying to do the minimum possible to achieve our principles. We want to do the very minimum to achieve the goals, so that everyone can adopt and put work on top so that enables easy adoption.