[cap-talk] Capabilities SIG meetings in Silicon Valley?

[Jed Donnelley]

At 12:07 PM 1/9/2007, Russell Whitaker wrote:
>On 1/8/07, Russell Whitaker <whitaker at google.com> wrote:

>The reason I'm breaking silence right now is to ask if anyone would be
>interested in having regular, monthly meetings of a "Capabilities SIG"
>(or some other, better name) hosted at Google's main campus in Mt.
>View, California... would this be welcomed?  I'm thinking something
>along the lines of the BayPIGgies meetings
>(http://www.baypiggies.net/) we also host here...
>
> > How about monthly recurring Thursday nights that aren't otherwise
> > taken by BayPIGgies
> > meetings?
>
>Anyone?  No interest at all?

I'm interested.  I'm an occasional attendee of the HP Friday morning
gatherings.  I find those meetings quite helpful as I usually find a
group there interested in the issues that we've discussed on cap-talk.
A group with whom I can move rapidly forward there on those issues with
face to face discussion over a white board.

The reasons I don't attend the HP meetings more often are:

1.  I have to take a day of vacation to attend, and
2.  I have to drive down and back from Berkeley.

An evening meeting would eliminate reason #1 as a limiting factor,
though of course evening conflicts are also possible.  At present
I don't have any regular Thursday evening conflicts.

I'd be willing to attend a first or first couple of meetings of a
"Capabilities SIG" at Google on Thursday evenings to see
what value might develop.

What I'd like to understand and perhaps explore a bit is what
value this meeting would serve beyond what's contributed by the
HP meetings:

One possibility is that having an evening meeting might allow
some additional people to attend.  Is there anybody, specifically
anybody on cap-talk, that might attend such an evening meeting
that has difficulty attending the Friday HP meetings?

Another possibility is that by having a meeting in another location
we might attract the interest of some people who currently aren't
active on cap-talk.  Many of us (most?) on cap-talk are passionate
about the capability paradigm and the value we believe it can
and should provide to the modern computing and communication
infrastructure - essentially POLA cooperation.  We believe the
capability paradigm has been widely misunderstood over the years,
particularly in the light of what sorts of controls are even theoretically
possible (e.g. in the light of the communicating conspirators problem).
We believe that the capability paradigm can be used to implement
any sort of controls that can be meaningfully applied and can do
so in a way that supports modular decomposition with POLA.
<cap-talk objections to my "we believe"s?>

As everybody on cap-talk knows, some of the HP folks made some
nice presentations that covered various aspects of the capability
paradigm (ABAC in the terms of those presentations), some modern
developments, etc. in their Google talks:

AlanK: 
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7179100659758053865>http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7179100659758053865
MarkM: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8527120258517176598
TylerC: 
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8799856896828158583>http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8799856896828158583 
, and
MarcS: 
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7961423532989255419>http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7961423532989255419

Perhaps this additional meeting might, as Alan said, "disinfect others
with the worlds craziness and infect them with ours?"

That would be enough to get me to participate.  My only question would
be about who might participate and what would the agendas for the
meetings look like?

I'd be willing to come down for one or two to see who would show up and
to help shape an agenda.  If the meetings work out and seem to add value
beyond the weekly HP meetings, great.  In that case I'd hope to see some
additional people both there and showing up on cap-talk.

--Jed http://www.webstart.com/jed/ 
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