[OpenID board] December 6, 2012 OpenID Executive Committee Call Minutes

Mike Jones Michael.Jones at microsoft.com
Fri Jan 11 01:56:22 UTC 2013


December 6, 2012 OpenID Executive Committee Call Minutes

Present:
Don Thibeau, Executive Director
John Bradley
Mike Jones
Kick Willemse
Eric Sachs

Visitors:
John Ehrig, Global Inventures
Jason Grigsby, Cloud Four
Megan Notarte, Cloud Four

Absent:
Nat Sakimura (on a flight)


1.      OpenID Foundation Web Site Assessment
Jason Grigsby of Cloud Four presented an assessment of the OpenID web sites.  Cloud Four is a consultant that has developed the Account Chooser and OIX web sites.  Cloud Four has built sites for other standards organizations, including DMTF and SNIA.  They are members of the OpenID Foundation.

He stated that challenges for our sites include people having trouble finding information, content being out of date, and inconsistent designs between the sites.  His thesis is that the underlying issue for openid.net is that the direction and role of the foundation has changed.  He stated that previously, the OIDF direction was consumer adoption of OpenID accounts, whereas now, the direction is promoting adoption of OpenID technologies, including OpenID Connect, Account Chooser, and Backplane Exchange.  He said that we're acting more like a traditional standards organization.

Traditional standards development organizations (SDOs) exist to create a market or ecosystem - not to directly touch consumers.  For example, the USB forum didn't focus on promoting USB to end users; instead, it promoted USB to Apple, Dell, Microsoft, etc.  Consumer adoption followed.  It is difficult for SDOs to make consumer pitches.

He stated that accountchooser.net will make the consumer identity pitch.  Whereas, openid.net should facilitate the activities of working groups as a primary function.

He surveyed the tools used by OpenID and OIX working groups.  They included Mailman, Google Groups, Github, Bitbucket, GoToMeeting, Google Calendar, and Google Docs.

He recommended that the organization adopt a common set of tools for working group needs.  He recommended Google Groups, Github, Google Calendar, and Lucid Meetings.  (A founder of Cloud Four participated in writing Lucid Meetings.  It is intended to facilitate process within meetings.)  His purpose, in part, was to facilitate automated data gathering from those tools to present status information about work on the openid.net web site.

He showed an example "status dashboard" site for the OpenID Connect working group to facilitate discussion.  It lists specifications, commits, meeting minutes, getting-started content, and other things.  He proposed automating pulling this information from the tools into status pages.

Mike asserted that a primary purpose of the openid.net web site should be helping people decide to join and participate in the activities of the foundation - not so much just facilitating the internal working of the working groups.  He said that the working groups are largely functioning fine using the tools that they are already using.  Kick also asserted that we want the web site to help increase participation and involvement.

Jason said that it's important that it be evident to people not in the working groups that there is activity under way.  Mike agreed.  Jason stated that he'd like it to be easy for outside people to quickly understand what the status is and what the current specs are.

Jason stated that we need to change the perception that OpenID has failed.  It's not true, but he said that our current openid.net site does little to dispel that view.

Jason asserted it may be an indication of the failure of an organization's tool sets when separate web sites start emerging.  However, he said that sites for international chapters in local languages are normal and appropriate.  That said, he said that it's common for pages to be translated into local languages and then not get updated when the original page changes, and tooling could help alert local site maintainers to changes.

He believes that the openid.net site needs to facilitate the missions of the Foundation as it exists today and not continue to try to reach out to individual consumers.

Jason said that they often use a questionnaire to help organizations understand what they want to achieve with their web sites.  Jason volunteered to send this to Don to help us with that internal evaluation.


2.      Updated Membership Fee Structure
Don will circulate a proposed board resolution updating our membership fee structure to the executive committee for review.  It will then be circulated to the full board for action by the present board.


3.      Next Call
We will hold our next Executive Committee call on Thursday, January 10th.

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