2024-04-10 Steering Committee Plenary Meeting Notes

Attendance

Steering Committee Members Attending and Participating 
●    Daniel Bachenheimer (Accenture Global Solutions Limited)
●    Steve McCown (Anonyome Labs)
●    Wenjing Chu (Futurewei Technologies, Inc.)
●    Drummond Reed (Gen Digital)
●    Karla McKenna (GLEIF)
●    John Jordan (Province of British Columbia)

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. 12:09 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 (0 min)
Announcement for EFWG (1 min)
Welcome GLEIF (10 mins)
Trademark Registration Status (2 min)
Future Planning (20 min)
Spring Communications Planning (20 min)
Upcoming Meetings Reminders and scheduling (5 min)
Open Discussion

Approval of Minutes 

Judith Fleenor presented a resolution to approve the minutes from the previous Steering Committee meeting (Exhibit A) March 27, 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 March 27, 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

Nordic Legal Entity Identifier AB
Cérebrum
Blerify Inc.
CPQD

Announcement for EFWG

Thursday April 11th, the Ecosystem Foundry working group is having the next in their Speaker series with Switchcord, which has to do with the music industry. This will take place at their regularly scheduled Ecosystem Foundry working group meeting on April 11, 2024. 

GLEIF Introduction

Judith Fleenor introduces Karla McKenna of GLEIF. Judith reminds Karla that we have a process of doing a welcome blog when a new steering committee member joins. When the timing is right for GLEIF we will help draft a blog and post to our list of blogs. We will also put GLEIF’s logo on the ToIP website under the steering committee members. Judith confirms with Karla that the logo she is presenting is the correct logo to place on the website. Karla confirms that it is. Karla Ok’s the placement of the logo on the website. Karla will also work on creating a blog to post. 

Karla McKenna gives a brief introduction of GLEIF. Karla explains that the work that GLEIF is doing was the driving factor in joining Trust OverIP and to be able to participate in this kind of work. Karla continues on with an overview of the Global LEI System, Introduction to Organization Identity and the verifiable LEI (vLEI) and GLlEIF’s participation in ToIP. The presentation can be found on the wiki page under the April 10, 2024 meeting page.

Trademark Registration Status 

The ToIP Wordmark Registration has been completed in the USA.

It is noted that to maintain a trademark there are steps we need to do at certain times fifth and sixth year, tenth year, etc, providing documentation, showing that we are using that mark and so we are putting that here in the notes to be recorded as: 

To  Maintain Trademark
Between the fifth and sixth years after the registration date File a Declaration of Use and/or Excusable Nonuse under section 8 
Between the ninth and 10th years after the registration date
File the first Declaration of Use and/or Excusable Nonuse and an Application for Renewal under sections 8 and 9
Every 10 years after that (between the 19th and 20th years, 29th and 30th years, etc.) 
File subsequent Declarations of Use and/or Excusable Nonuse and an Application for Renewal under sections 8 and 9
https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/maintain/keeping-your-registration-alive#What-happens-next-and-timelines

Future Planning 

As discussed in the previous meetings, budget for a paid Executive Director currently ends June 30th.

We explored the longtail options of changing our membership structure to allow for multiple smaller company fee structures. We have spoken to DIF more, having more smaller funding members. What has come back is that LF does not have acceptable way to support this in this timeframe. 

We were and still are hopeful of securing 1-3 large Steering Level paid members, but we can’t count on that, especially in the timeframe required.

Therefore, we need to start planning for low power mode. Which means running the organization without paid ED support.

Judith presents the 3 Options she sees as possible outcomes for ToIP: 

Option 1: If we are able to secure one large Steering Level paid member by the end of June.  Retain Judith, at half-time for 4 months with a 4 month contract, this would get us through the summer, and early fall conferences, and perhaps the ability to getting more paying Steering Level Members.

Option 2: If we get no new Steering Level paid members, recruit volunteers to do the only the very necessary parts of the ED job, coordination of meetings, etc.   Leave new member recruitment up to all members.  Lean on Michelle for support, as needed.

Option 3: Magic happens and we get 3 new Steering Level paid members, business as usual.

Judith is open to other suggestions and explains her thinking on how we should use the Spring Conference Season: 

IIW - used to have conversation with existing members about becoming General paid Members.

Europe travel - Already paying for Judith to go to EIC as speaker and attending SIDI pre EIC day. June 3-8th
Add to that Judith attending DICE, minimal extra expense (Hotel and in Europe travel Berlin - Zurich) June 18-19th
Potential to add Identity Week in between, if speaking slot can be secured (again Hotel shared BnB with Kay ED of Kantera and then Berlin-Amsterdam-Zurich travel) June 11-12th

Use Europe to promote our specs, our vision, and do member recruitment.  Also use Europe to recruit volunteer leadership, if we need to do option 2 - low power mode.

Spring Communications Planning 

Keri Suite (KERI, CESR, ACDC) - BLOG Posted

Issuer Requirements Guide  - BLOG Posted

ToIP Trust Registry Protocol Specification - BLOG Posted

ToIP Trust Spanning Protocol Specification - BLOG draft expected by End of Week.
Judith requests an ok from the group as the official rules we follow from the Communications committee is to have a 7 day review period. Judith asks if there are any objections to as soon as the blog draft is given to Judith, to put up the blog immediately?
TSP Implementers Draft Blog Post: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_0mOrx40DVEFfDLBKApKFD_IVrX0lqOpRNsKMWPAbcs/edit?usp=sharing
No objections were given to this request Judith has put forth to the group. 

ToIP Technology Architecture Specification - BLOG expected post IIW
Drummond Reed: The goal is this a spec we've had out for 18 months now, we have promised from the outset to have a second draft that will now have a complete glossary. It'll have use cases. It will incorporate the third generation stack or diagram.  The 3rd generation ToIP stack diagram, which is now called the ToIP Trust Canvas. The series of slides that start here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KA8FHHTSVwDr2rd7kkaxh0anEUhNGSKxCFJ4T-BsvE0/edit#slide=id.g2c73a6df5c3_0_72

HXWG/IPTF - Wallet Survey Results
Andy Woodruff - HXWG met yesterday, and have set a deadline for ourselves of next Friday April 19, to have the draft of the blog as well as a condensed version of our presentation ready. We target next Friday April 19 to send it to the Communications Committee.

BLOG expected end of April early May

GLEIF Welcome BLOG when they desire

IIW Roundup blog will be added to the list. 

ToIP V3 Diagram

Trust Canvas Guide Book

Mini-YouTube Webinar Series Highlighting Key Points

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

Judith Fleenor: What do we plan to do to promote our specs that have come out and get implementers using our implementers drafts? In our next discussion meeting Judith requests to start talking about what is the road map for a road show to get it beyond the people of IIW and the people of Trust OverIP. Who else needs to be implementing this. What is everyone’s current thinking is on this, how are we going to get these out in the world beyond us? 
This is a discussion topic that Judith suggests we add to our next Discussion meeting and asks the group to start thinking of ideas to move this forward on promoting our specs. 
Upcoming Meetings Reminders and scheduling 

Planned

April-All Members CANCELLED due to OSS/IIW
April 24th - Steering Committee Discussion
(Many this to discuss including: timeline for ToIP SC review of specs headed to ISO)

May 8th - Steering Committee Plenary
May 15th - All Members Meeting
Findynet presentation on Trust Ecosystems with Markus Hautala and Bo Harald
May 22nd - Steering Committee Discussion

Planned
June 12th - Steering Committee Plenary (During European Identity Week)
June 19th - All Members Working Group Updates (During DICE)
June 26th - Steering Committee Discussion

Suggested
Move All Members Working Group Updates to June 26th
Combined Steering Committee Plenary and Discussion and place on it also on June 26th. Call additional meetings, as needed for any budget re forecasting.

GenAI Tools
Reminder July, a month of AI… 
All Members special Topics and revisit the AIMTF proposals, etc.

Adjournment

At approximately 1:05pm PT, Judith Fleenor adjourned the meeting.