[saml-dev] SAML Interop 2002 at Burton Catalyst

[Don Bowen <don.bowen@sun.com>]

Dear Fellow SAML Interop 2002 Participants,

My name is Don Bowen and I am leading the SAML Interop coordination for Sun. I am working closely with our engineering team, which is building our first SAML-compliant product, now called Sun ONE Identity Server.

I know Prateek Mishra from Netegrity has sent out a more formal proposal for the technical focus for the interop and I hope to see more responses to that proposal soon. At the same time I believe there is a need to start thinking about this event from a little higher level and to begin to map out a timetable and the details for how we will make this happen.

If for some reason I have missed a prior effort by someone else on the list to initiate this same activity, my apologies. I am just getting a little concerned with time and having recently been a Burton Group employee, I know the level of professionalism attendees will expect (and I'm sure many of you do as well).

I would like to schedule a conference call as soon as possible, possibly as early as next week, to discuss some of the following issues and others, which we can hopefully identity via email in the next few days.

Again, assuming the technical focus will be worked out separately, I wanted to highlight some of what I've been thinking about and then let others add, remove, clarify, etc. My apologies in advance for this format.

• What will we call this? Has this been decided already? You can see the subject line for my vote :-)
• How will we execute a dry-run?
• Will we meet somewhere centrally and bring our equipment, switches, cables, software, etc.?
• This is probably most efficient, but not cheap
• What location is the most effective?
• If we did it on the west coast, for example, could we have one or more vendors provide more of the hardware (one of us should be able to do that :-) Let me go on record as voting for this approach.
• We should probably book a hotel with conference room large enough to "work" in very soon.
• Would we try to do this over the internet and avoid the travel?
• At first thought this seemed more economical, but now seems likely to be:
• more expensive
• more time-consuming
• less helpful for what we have to execute at Catalyst
• How soon do we need to have the dry-run?
• Catalyst runs from July 15-17 (actually the registration/dinner is July 14th and not to be missed if you haven't attended before - this is my 6th one :-)
• Our "hospitality suite" where the demo will occur is Monday, July 15
• We will want time to regroup after the dry-run and "fix" things.
• Should we shoot for end of May? Middle of June? I'd prefer the former.
• At Catalyst
• We can have access to the suite for setup on Saturday. I am currently planning to arrive Friday night just in case I can be of any help and also to make sure that we are ready to begin the setup activity on Saturday morning. The suite will have internet hookup, but nothing else will be provided.
• We really need to be ready to go (imho) by Sunday afternoon, but I am hopeful that Saturday evening is a possibility. Much will depend on how well the dry-run goes and how much stays the same :-)
• During the day, actually in the morning, on Monday, July 15 we will be required to provide a briefing and demo for the press.
• During the evening on Monday, July 15 we will open the suite to Catalyst attendees for demos and briefing.
• Details for how the demos will be done is something we need to discus. We definitely need a vision here, followed by a well written script. This could be one of the most difficult issues to address and may be the most key.
• On Tuesday during a general session, one of the SAML TC co-chairs, Jeff Hodges or Joe Pato, will provide a SAML report, including a "post mortem" on the previous day's activities.
• Marketing
• We will want to have some kind of marketing done on this prior to Catalyst. The sooner the better. I am not aware of any plans, but that doesn't mean there aren't any.
• I talked to Jim Kobielus at Burton, who is our interface and he will help. I actually think it is very important that they assist a lot here, but again, just my thoughts. I told him we should begin to "hype" this onsite at registration and during the dinner on Sunday.
• We will need to create collateral specifically for this event, but what? At a minimum we need:
• A printed handout that gives an overview of SAML (with links to more detail), shows who is participating and diagrams/describes exactly what is being demonstrated (order to be determined)
• Graphic visual-aids for the walls in the suite. This could include a banner, blow ups of the diagrams, etc.
• We need to agree on the size and format for the signage to be used by each company and should probably discuss how and where this is to be placed.
• What have similar Interop events done? Are they comparible? Can we leverage any of what they did? Should we avoid something they did? I've taken the liberty to ask Jim to research this and provide his thoughts.
• If we can show that SAML is very real in products that will soon be shipping (or already are) AND have all vendors feel good about their participation, we will have been very successful.

I am sure that all of you will be able to add to this list and maybe even
point out why some of these issues aren't big (or
are even bigger). Whatever the case, let's try to build a fairly succinct
list of issues/discussion points. Then let's get on a
conference call and try to make decisions on some and divide and conquer
the rest. For those issues it becomes clear can't be
solved on the phone or which require more investigation, we can assign
an individual or individuals to develop a
strawman, discuss via email and if necessary have another con call.

This email is only my attempt to move us forward. If there is a better way or if somehow this is already going on and I'm
just not aware, please point me in the right direction. Thanks.

If you've been waiting for a fire to be lit under this effort, please consider this email the match :-)

Don;

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