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