Editor's note:  These minutes have not been edited.


User Services Working Group Minutes
IETF - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Monday, June 24th, 1300-1500
Chair: Joyce K. Reynolds/ISI (jkrey@isi.edu) 



Joyce Reynolds opened the session by providing a brief overview of, 
"What is the USWG?". Joyce also presented a report on IETF User 
Services Area activities, which included USV Area Working Group 
Status and related USV Area I-Ds. There are currently eight active 
working groups in this area. Six working groups met at this IETF. Two 
active working groups have completed their goals and are in process of 
shutting down.

The following are the current USV Area related documents in process: 

draft-ietf-userglos-glossary2-01.txt - Approved by IESG for 
publication
draft-ietf-trainmat-catalogue-06.txt - Approved by IESG for 
publication
draft-ietf-ssh-handbook-03.txt


A pointer was provided on a multilingual users glossary: 

http://wwli.com/translation/netglos/netglos.html 


David Hartland, convenor of TERENA's ISUS (Information Services 
and User Support) provided an overview and report of their meeting, 
which was held in Budapest, Hungary. Their email list is: wg-
isus@terena.nl. David also provided a pointer for further information 
on TERENA and the ISUS meeting minutes: 

http://www.terena.nl


The rest of the session focussed on the future vision and strategic intent 
of the USV Area in the IETF for the next two years. The group 
concluded that it shall continue to:

- liase with TERENA ISUS,

- update certain selected FYI RFCs,

- continue to provide documentation for developing 
countries, and

- liase with other IETF areas.

Joyce reported on the IESG retreat that was held last April. She gave a 
presentation about the USV Area to the other Area Directors and the 
IETF Chair. She spoke about the continuing need for USV to intertwine 
with other IETF areas.

So far, the results are that the Applications Area Directors (Harald 
Alvestrand and Keith Moore) are very interested in continuing to work 
with USV. The two ADs will work with Joyce on new USV/APPs 
working group tasks.

Allison Mankin, co-AD of IPNG and AD of Transport is very interested 
in working with the USV area. Pat Smith (Merit) volunteered to 
attend working groups in Allison's areas and to report back to Joyce on 
what could be developed between the two groups. Pat and Allison will 
also coordinate between each other on potential working group 
endeavors. 

The Operations and Security area directors were reminded that we 
need to continue to liase like we have in the past. 

The "strategic intent" issue of this area is still being worked on, and 
should be completed by the December IETF in San Jose. There was quite 
a lively discussion during the session on where to steer the area in new 
directions. There were three issues of discussion that seemed to emerge 
with the most interest. 

Martyne Hallgren (Cornell) started off the discussion with the USWG 
on how we could research and develop a model to describe user needs 
and behavior. Then when these descriptive models have been 
determined, seek out technical solutions, if possible, to support 
problems. Michael Hrybyk (UBC) suggested that this group may want 
to standardize and enhance trouble ticket systems, which he felt was 
sorely needed. George Munroe (UNITE) contributed his ideas of 
integrating existing tools and inspiring network users to support each 
other using the mailing list approach. This is an endeavor that George 
and his UNITE (User Network Interface to Everything) team has been 
working on within TERENA's ISUS. Also, there is keen interest by 
ISUS to develop this concept further.

Joyce, Martyne, Michael, George, and other interested parties will 
continue to pursue the above topics, and should have a report on 
progress for the USWG session at the next IETF in December.