At the IETF

I attended only the first two days of the IETF in Boston (or rather, Cambridge). On the Monday I chaired a "BOF" on "Universal Document Identifiers" or "Uniform Resource Locators" (URLs) as they came to be called. See the minutes for details.

It seemed to be agreed afterward that the meeting had been and productive, with agreement on the goals and that most of the technical details were boring, but important. The attendance was small but almost everyone had read the background document, and understood the issues. There had been a lot of discussion on the net befroehand, and the discussion was much more focussed than previous BOFS where people had been getting to grips with what the problem is all about. The URL matter needs some homework by me and some discussion on the mailing list, and then we will have an essential elemmnt of interworking of information systems nailed down.

There was a strong Networked Information Retrieval (NIR) presence at the IETF, including Jill Foster and George Brett who are trying to coordinate NIR services in Europe and the US respectively; Simon Spero, the WAIS programmer who is working on a Z39.50-1992 implementation, and some regulars such as Cliffs Neuman (ISI) and Lynch (CNI); the archie pair Peter Deutch and Alan Emtage, now Bunyip (Bunny-IP?) Ltd.; John Curran and a bunch more. Brewster Kahle turned up at the bar afterward ;-)

I missed the NIR BOF on Tuesday night as I had to leave during the afternoon.