2024-03-27 Steering Committee Plenary/Discussion Meeting Notes

Attendance

• Steering Committee Members Attending and Participating 
  ●    Daniel Bachenheimer (Accenture Global Solutions Limited)
  ●    Steve McCown (Anonyome Labs)
  ●    Drummond Reed (Gen Digital)
  ●    John Jordan (Province of British Columbia)
  ●    Wenjing Chu 

  Also Participating
  ●    Darrell O'Donnell (Continuum Loop Inc.)
  ●    Eric Drury (Forth Consulting)
  ●    Kyle Robinson (Briartech Consulting Inc.)
  ●    Steven Milstein (Collab Ventures)
  ●    Judith Fleenor (ToIP Executive Director)
  ●    Michelle Janata (LF PM) 

Agenda 

• Recording
  • Link

• Presentation (Google Slides)

Call to Order
Judith Fleenor called the meeting to order at approx. 12:07 pm PT and announced the meeting would be recorded. There were no objections.

Antitrust Policy Notice
Judith Fleenor reminded the Steering Committee of the Antitrust Policy. 

Agenda
Judith Fleenor introduced the agenda. No additional topics were added.

• Agenda Review (1 min)
• Minutes Approval (1 min)
• New Member Review (1 min)
• Announcement for HXWG/EFWG (1 min)
• ToIP Hosting Code Discussion (10 min)
• ToIP Sustainable Financial model - Revenue Generation (20 min)
• Spring Communications Planning (20 min)
• AI Gen Tools (5 min)
• Upcoming Meetings Reminders (1 min)
• Open Discussion

Approval of Minutes

Judith Fleenor presented a resolution to approve the minutes from the previous Steering Committee meeting (Exhibit A) February 14, 2024, and solicited questions from the group. There were no questions or objections. 

Judith Fleenor indicated that consensus had been reached and the following resolution was approved: 

RESOLVED: That the minutes of the February 14, 2024, meeting of the Steering Committee, in the form attached hereto as Exhibit A, are hereby confirmed, approved, and adopted.

New Member Review 

Contributor Organizations

Good Future

Netcetera

Contributor Individuals

Andrew Escobar

Steering Committee

Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)

Announcement for Interactive Patterns TF

Please join the Ecosystem Foundry Working Group as they will have a guest presentation from the Interaction Patterns Task Force (IPTF) who will be sharing the results of their Digital Wallet Survey. The meeting will take place Thursday March 28^th, 8:00am PT.

ToIP Sustainable Financial model - Revenue Generation

John, brought us a proposal at the last meeting. Since then he has had conversations with both Kim Hamilton the DIF ED and Mike Dolan of LF. Let’s hear what he has learned. Then let’s discuss how we attract new paying level members. This will lead us into our next discussion item our ToIP Spring Communications Plan.

We need a sustainable financial model more resilient to economic conditions. Currently very heavy reliance on a small member of steering members. Specification Focus organization almost certainly indicates early market, The purpose of specification is to create documented requirements, Requirements may be for novel ideas or to document an early software implementation. In either case, the uncertain nature of the early market makes it difficult to sell to larger companies. Therefore we need a way to create the conditions to encourage Financial contribution by a larger number of smaller companies/Individuals

Move to a long tail membership model

• Long tail model suggests there are a larger number of smaller contributors
• more resilient to membership turnover
• Creates conditions or greater diversity and inclusivity
• Larger number of paying members at smaller dollar value creates more stable revenue stream

Evidence

• DIF
  • Approximately 60 paying members
  • Only two large contributors
  • Remaining our at low dollar value providing majority of revenue

• Current membership
  • Large numbers… reasonable pool from which to draw paying members
  • Already have reasonable amount of large paying members
• Examine membership model we currently use
  • Figure out what we need to do in terms of free membership person paid membership
  • Individual contributor issue: people signing up that are actually employees of companies
• Consider revising model for Steering Committee membership
  • Reserving several positions for diversity and inclusivity
  • New voting approach for steering committee members?
• Linux Foundation
  • Strongly pursue eliminating LF membership requirement for the small contributors

John Jordan had a conversation with Mike Dolan to discuss the Trust over IP Sustainable Financial model proposal. John has determined that the proposed model was not acceptable to LF based on his meetings with LF, Kim, etc. John has come to the conclusion that the Linux Foundation doesn't really have a model where there is a no cost. There is no structure to deal with this kind of approach, and they don't. Mike Dolan did discuss a credit card based sponsorship model that another project had done. It involves custom integration between Stripe and LF with a cost of about $20,000.

The conversation with DIF, Kim, is ongoing. There is still some confusion on whether or not  the low paying membership is helping, but John thinks it's confused with whether or not the member should be free under a thousand people. It continues to be unclear at this point. The conversation will continue with Kim to gain a better understanding of their membership structure. John does not foresee a solution in the next few months.

ToIP will need to consider what this means going forward. ToIP will need to look at the budget as ToIP money will last until the end of June. At which point we would need to move into low power mode.

The April 10 Steering Plenary meeting will be to discuss what shifts do you want to make to have the organization sustain itself in a low power mode.

Deliverables Pipeline

• Issuer Requirements Guide for Governance Frameworks of Verifiable Credentials
• Keri Suite (KERI, CESR, ACDC)
• ToIP Technology Architecture Specification
• ToIP Trust Spanning Protocol Specification
• ToIP Trust Registry Protocol Specification
• ToIP did:webs Method Specification
• ToIP X.509 Verifiable Identifier Specification
• ToIP Profile Discovery Specification

Deliverables Pipeline - BLOG Plan

• Keri Suite (KERI, CESR, ACDC) - BLOG Posted
• Issuer Requirements Guide - BLOG waiting Repo
• ToIP Trust Registry Protocol Specification -
  BLOG expected March 29th for posting first week of April
• ToIP Trust Spanning Protocol Specification -
  BLOG draft expected by April 3^rd
• ToIP Technology Architecture Specification -
  BLOG expected by April 8th for posting April 15^th
• HXWG/IPTF - Wallet Survey Results
  BLOG expected end of April early May

ToIP Hosting Code Discussion

Wenjing Chu – Where should the code be hosted? Policy on whether to host or not.

Darrell O’Donnell presents his presentation ToIP & Software Hosting.

No decision on this will be made at this time. 

GenAI Tools

The AIMTF has seen proposals to deploy GenAI tools as a way of better engaging with the community and providing more relevant information.
Wenjing Chu to open discussion.

Questions proposed by Wenjing. Do we think this is a good idea?. And the second question is,  do we have the budget to cover it? Probably. no, at the moment. And lastly do we have concerns? Currently ToIP does not have the budget for this.

Action: July will be the month of AI, to start and to revisit this discussion. At this time we may have more bandwidth to put toward the option, 3. Looking at what  our policy might be around it, whether it be in Rosy, whether it be in one of these other tools Wenjing mentioned. ToIP will revisit this in July and Wenjing to bring a demo to the group.

Upcoming SC Meeting Dates
Planned:
April 10th - Steering Committee Plenary

April-All Members CANCELLED due to OSS/IIW

April 24th - Steering Committee Discussion

May 8th - Steering Committee Plenary

May 15th - All Members Meeting

May 22nd - Steering Committee Discussion

Open Discussion

Adjournment

At approximately 1:14pm PT, Judith Fleenor adjourned the meeting.