CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Joyce K. Reynolds/Information Sciences Institute Minutes of the User Services Working Group (USWG) A current report on the IETF User Services Area activities, including working groups coming to closure, new working groups starting up, new publications, and current user services-related Internet-Drafts was presented at the start of the session. It was reported that the IAFA Working Group will soon conclude; Pat Smith (NISI co-chair) and Ellen Hoffman (USERDOC2 co-chair) have resigned as working group chairs; and Mark Prior has become co-chair of TRAINMAT, along with Jill Foster. New FYI RFCs: ______________________________________________________________________________ | | | | | | FYI 23 | RFC 1580 |``Guide to Network Resource Tools'' | March 1994 | | | | | | | FYI 22 | RFC 1578 |``FYI on Questions and Answers: Answers | February 1994 | | | |to Commonly Asked `Primary and Secondary | | | | |School Internet User' Questions'' | | | | | | | | FYI 4 | RFC 1594 |``FYI on Questions and Answers: Answers | March 1994 | | | |to Commonly asked `New Internet User' | | | | |Questions'' | | |________|__________|_________________________________________|_______________| New Internet-Drafts: draft-ietf-iafa-howftp-01.txt draft-ietf-ids-catalog-02.txt draft-ietf-isn-aup-00.txt draft-ietf-isn-k12-guide-00.txt draft-ietf-nir-status-report-03.txt draft-ietf-nisi-nics-00.txt draft-ietf-userdoc2-fyi-biblio-00.txt A short review of a proposed draft, ``A Primer on Internet and TCP/IP Tools,'' was conducted. The working group consensus of this draft is that it is not a primer, but rather, a document for a first-time systems engineer. It is not broad enough, and not for a novice user. The table of contents was considered useful, but most participants felt that the document should start with Chapter 4 and go forward. It was deemed more appropriate that this draft could be worked on and submitted as the update to FYI 7 (``FYI on Questions and Answers: Answers to Commonly Asked `Experienced Internet User' Questions``), if the authors would agree to this suggestion. Scott Williamson and Mark Kosters gave a slide presentation on Referral WHOIS Protocol (RWHOIS). (The slides follow these minutes.) The presentation included discussion of what is RWHOIS, why build RWHOIS, how is RHOIS different from X.500 and WHOIS++, and the complimentary existence of RWHOIS and WHOIS++. The proposed protocol development of RWHOIS will be nested in Tim Howes' Access and Synchronization of the Internet Directory Working Group (ASID) (currently a BOF in the Applications Area), and functionality, requirements, informational document developments, etc., in the User Services Area. Joyce K. Reynolds was renominated to serve on the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) as User Services Area Director for the next two years. Joyce opened the rest of the session to discussion and focus of where the USWG and the User Services Area would like to proceed in the next two years. The User Services Area Council (USAC) proposed and presented six points that they felt were important to focus on in the next two years (listed as most important first): 1. Tighten/clarify the mission 2. Higher visibility for the activities 3. Getting more people involved (i.e., a target audience) 4. Why should they come 5. How to spread the word (USV-Web) 6. Make better use of existing facilities A message will be sent to the us-wg list for continued input and discussion about this USWG discussion. It was noted that the us-wg list is not very active. It should be used as a forum for continued input on the scope of the User Services Area. We ran out of time to fully define and analyze the points noted above. The list presented below identifies the USWG Seattle participants that have volunteered to work with Joyce in continuing to define, develop, and implement the ideas put forward for the following tasks: Tightening and clarifying the mission Jodi Chu April Marine Susan Calcari Investigating a home server for a USV-Web page Susan Calcari Simon Spero FYI RFC formatting concerns with the RFC Editor Joyce K. Reynolds HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) for FYI RFCs, etc. Simon Spero Janet L. Marcisak Bringing in other disciplines Michael McLay Advertising on other lists to get the word out about Sally Hambridge the User Services Area Attendees Sepideh Boroumand sepideh@jacks.gsfc.nasa.gov Lloyd Brodsky lbrodsky@rocksolid.com Susan Calcari susanc@internic.net Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu Ann Cooper cooper@isi.edu Robert Enger enger@seka.reston.ans.net Sheryl Erez erez@cac.washington.edu. Jan Eveleth eveleth@nwnet.net Arlene Getchell getchell@es.net Anders Gillner awg@sunet.se Martyne Hallgren mh16@cornell.edu Sally Hambridge sallyh@ludwig.intel.com Deborah Hamilton debbieh@internic.net Alisa Hata hata@cac.washington.edu Lenore Jackson jackson@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov Barbara Jennings bjjenni@sandia.gov Dale Johnson dsj@merit.edu Mark Kosters markk@internic.net Gary Malkin gmalkin@xylogics.com Glenn Mansfield glenn@aic.co.jp Janet L. Marcisak jlm@ftp.com April Marine april@atlas.arc.nasa.gov Marilyn Martin martin@netcom.ubc.ca Laura McCarty lmccarty@pmel.noaa.gov Michael McLay mclay@eeel.nist.gov George Phillips phillips@cs.ubc.ca Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu Deb Rodgers deb@cac.washington.edu Patricia Smith psmith@merit.edu Simon Spero ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu Scott Williamson scottw@nic.ddn.mil