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Date

Attendees

NameOrganisation
Nicholas KolbaOpenfin
Rob Underwood

...

FINOS
Frank Tarsillo

...

IHS Markit
Espen Overbye

...

Openfin
Saori FotenosRefinitiv
Jonathan TeperJP Morgan
Neil SlingerJP Morgan
Tim KoleckeCitadel
Johan SanderssonFactset

Goals

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes
1minSelect Scribe for meetinggroupRob Underwood (Deactivated)
5minFollow ups from last PMC
group
  • compliance for minutes (and scribe) still pending.  Rob Underwood (Deactivated) ?
    • WebEx Recording? Automated transcription
  • FDC3 certification & badge still pending
    • Neil and Nick still have the A/I to take this on; they are targeting to work on this a bit more next week (7/16)
    • Badge → Rob Underwood (Deactivated) to follow-up with FINOS design firm on this.
  • Welcome email draft done (see below)
    • Test email went out from Nick; minimal feedback received so far
  • welcome slide posted
    • Published by Nicholas Kolba on Confluence. See link in bottom left of FDC3 overview page on the wiki
    • General agreement from meeting attendees that location Nick chose worked.
  • FDC3 meetups any updates?
    • FDC3 meetup in early September?
      • Alternate between NYC and London.
    • FINOS Meetups?
      • First Wednesday of each month → could be another opportunity to do a meetup
    • Nick: this is not about public outreach; rather this about potentially doing the working groups face to face
    • Frank: Would you like to extend this to the wider community? Or is it just working group members
      • Nick: I think it should be extended to the wider community. Key idea is to have opportunity to WG face to face on occasion. 
      • Rob and Nick to follow-up on how this could be done, and a model for programs as a whole.
5minWelcome Email
group

Draft:  

Welcome to the FDC3 Program!
The Financial Desktop Connectivity & Collaboration Consortium (FDC3) is a member program of the FINOS foundation.  We are focused on the creation and adoption of standards to make interoperability between any number of applications on a desktop happen without requiring prior bi-lateral agreements or bespoke development.  
40+ organizations from across the financial industry participate in FDC3.  Participation is open - you do not need to be a member of the FINOS organization, or have a commercial relationship with any of the member groups.  
We currently have 5 active working groups that meet on a fortnightly basis: API, App Directory, Context Data, Intents, and Use Cases.  There is also a monthly general steering group.  Now that you are on the mailing list, here are things you can do next to get involved:
  • Document and share your use cases
  • Participate in a Working Group
  • Implement the standards in your organization
  • Contribute to reference implementations
  • Provide feedback on proposals, drafts, and specifications
  • Contribute to the steering meeting
Need more help?  Please send general questions to fdc3@finos.org. For organizational questions, contact the Program Management Committee (PMC): fdc3-pmc@finos.org
Thanks for your continued support and engagement!
The FDC3 Community
Neil: "Makes a lot of sense"
Nick: Idea is to give them something to orient themselves that is owned by FDC3 group; 
Nick: Voting procedures are still a little unclear to me; I (Nick) will send a vote email to approve the "welcome email"
5minGithub changes

Nick: Originally FINOS has all of the ownership; this model seemed suboptimal for working together; we changed that now such that the PMC has ownership. If you don't have admin access, talk to Mau. The key thing is do not delete projects w/o FINOS permission; and definitely do not delete the org. 

Nick: Also of note is that FINOS has provided the program its own webex account now. We should move off of our existing meetings. 

Saori: Who do I ask for account / meeting access?

Nick: me.


15minFINOS board meeting summary and retro

Nick: A lot of good discussion. Lot of excitement about FDC3

Nick: Discussion of Plexus / FDC3. One of the things that was discussed was the outstanding pull request. Some of this might be semantics and us just sitting together; we also discussed putting FDC3 under an umbrella - there are lots of different ways to approach this. Curious to get feedback from the PMC about the PMC perception of overall – what has been productive? not productive. One thing raised has been that it's perceived as hard to raise questions in this organization – we want to be inclusive

Frank: Re programs themselves, those are two different programs. One is a platform play (Plexus); FDC3 is a specification of interoperability on the desktop. Have not seen bias; we do need to think about voting and voting capability. There should be a community for how decisions made. I do not think the programs should be folder into each. And the WG structures we need to be tighter on. 

(RU: Also see voting discussion on the Community Handbook)

Saori: I agree with Frank. My comment is more about FINOS programs and how they are scope ... for example the VOICE program. Do we separate specifications and implementations into different programs? Or same program like Voice?

JT: Division of work – multiple programs, one that is specification, multiple others than implement;? Really agree with Frank about voting and governance. Don't know if we plan to go into 

Neil: Plexus is there and in existence ... also the pull request

Nick: There has been a lot of discussion about the PR

Tim: I have also considered Plexus an architectural pattern.

Johan: Non-engineering questions ... is there any work happening in the Plexus program (around standards?)

Nick: Saori is there standards work happening?

Saori: No, that is happening in FDC3. As part of grandfathering, standards work is to happen in FDC3.

Frank: this sounds mostly around the standard

Saori: Would like FINOS feedback on programs and structure; what about DB being on the FDC3 PMC – could that help?

Johan: Symphony also has their own program and also has their interop. 

Rob: Shared Peter Monks transition and there is active discussion about the program taxonomy; ultimately a key board responsibility is the program organization/taxonomy. 

10minStandards Approach in FDC3Nicholas Kolba
It seems like we could do more to provide guidance on the standards process and what it means.
Some thoughts on how standards work in FDC3:
  1. FDC3 is not trying to define a feature complete system for interoperability.  FDC3 seeks to standardize the critical interfaces and touchpoints that will maximize the opportunities for interoperability across the industry.
  2. We are coming to this process with a crowded field of many proprietary solutions providing a range of overlapping functionality.   Many of these are feature complete systems for interoperability - within their domains.  FDC3 seeks to provide what we don’t have today:  a standard that spans across these individual implementations.
  3. This is not a perfect or clear cut process and we need to take the long view.  While under-specifying carries risk of fragmentation.  Because, given a vacuum, different proprietary approaches will fill the void left by light standards.  We are already living with fragmentation and it is always possible to unwind fragmentation.  Over-specifying, on the other hand carries a much greater risk of significant effort spent on a standard that will not and cannot gain traction because it runs counter to use cases, is too complicated to implement, or steps into areas of real competitive value for stakeholders.  For these reasons, the standards process is an inherently slow grind.
  4. Criteria for a successful proposal is not just that it's a useful feature.  Proposals must, among other things, demonstrate that significant and mutual efficiencies would be gained and/or opportunities unlocked by the existence of the standard
          
          Furthermore, standards should follow these principles:
    1. The proposal isn’t picking winners and losers among stakeholders.  
    2. The proposed standard doesn’t set an overly high cost of implementation and maintenance for the implementor.
    3. The proposal doesn’t run counter to accepted best practices.
    4. There is maximum reasonable flexibility around the requirement for implementors apply their own value.
  1. Finally, in the interest of the actual success of FDC3 standards, it seems that the best approach may be to standardize the bare minimum, work on getting things working in the various platforms we represent.  Observe what works, what doesn’t, what the gaps are, then iterate on the standards, and repeat.  
Recommended reading: 
https://www.w3.org/TR/ (W3C standards and drafts)
https://infrequently.org/2018/06/effective-standards-work-part-1-the-lay-of-the-land/. (Blog by Alex Russell - on Chromium team and W3C TAG - on the process and challenges of web standards - and feature - development)
https://paul.kinlan.me/what-happened-to-web-intents/. (Analysis by Paul Kinlan of why the Web Intents standard proposal failed)
Frank: You're looking at how to ratify a proposal?
Nick: Yes, the governance what we need to figure out (FYI, Governance is not my bag). Also look at the web intents blog. 
We should look at FIX model – how they do governance is something to look at
Espen: (Unintelligible due to cell issues)
Frank: Can we make an action item to review the governance piece
14minAOBgroup

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