Rebooting the Web of Trust 13 - 2024 - Ventura

Our thirteenth Rebooting the Web of Trust (#RWOT) design workshop on decentralized identity technologies will be held in Ventura, California, USA, Monday October 7 through Friday October 11, 2024.

This event starts Monday evening on October 7th with presentations and a poster session for the top advanced reading papers. It will END Friday evening, October 11th with a group dinner. Plan your travel accordingly.

• Topic Paper Night is on Monday evening, October 7th. This will be open to the public and is an integral part of the workshop process. Here, we will begin the process of sharing ideas and forming teams.
• Group Dinner is on Friday October 11th. We have something special planned for all registered attendees.

NOTE: To qualify for an advance reading discount, you must first submit a 1-2 page advanced reading paper as a Pull Request to our Github repo adding your paper to the advance readings directory. Then, request the appropriate promo code (either Corporate or Independent) from [email protected]. We'll send you a promo code to unlock the discounted tickets here at Eventbrite. More details at https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rwot13-ventura

Over the last nine years, Rebooting the Web of Trust has published over sixty-five (65) collaborative white papers, technical specs, and code repositories. The focus of all of our events is on decentralized identity, including technical models, reputation systems, smart contracts and more. We've had high-level users tell us about practical use cases and applications, and we've had engineers create technical specifications and code.

Some members of our community have leveraged this work and turned it into projects that have received VC funding, while others have brought in SBIR grants and other contracts from the US Government. Technology specifications incubated at our events are also moving toward acceptance in W3C and IETF as international standards. Still others have integrated RWOT work into proprietary identity platforms.

The terminology of “Self-Sovereign Identity” created at our design workshops is now being used broadly as the future of identity by many identity organizations worldwide. The W3C recommendation for Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) in the W3C Decentralized Identifier Working Group https://w3.org/TR/did-core drew heavily on the work at our workshops (as well as at IIW and the W3C CCG).

This English-language, four-and-a-quarter day facilitated event will use the same basic format as the previous successful Rebooting the Web of Trust design workshops in San Francisco, New York, Paris, Boston, Santa Barbara, Toronto, Barcelona, Prague, The Hague, and Cologne.

We work together to produce white papers, specifications, and code to influence the future of decentralized identity by establishing and promoting new identity technologies. Full documentation of the prior events is available in the Web-of-Trust GitHub repositories—including photos, drafts, graphic output, and previous White Papers.

The design workshop is intended for developers, cryptographers, researchers, user-experience designers, and policy experts who are actively involved in building a next-generation web of trust. We also welcome participants with demonstrable needs for decentralized technologies, to ensure the diversity of the event.

The goals of Rebooting the Web of Trust are:

• Create at least five collaborative work products—white papers, software implementations, or specifications—on topics that will have the greatest impact on the future.
• Explore use cases and requirements for decentralized identity.
• Explore tools that could be useful to developers, researchers, and funders.
• Discuss and suggest approaches to the adoption of these technologies.

A substantial discount is offered to participants who write an advance reading paper to share with other participants. Alumni may qualify for this discount by updating a previously submitted advance reading paper. These one-or-two-page papers might explore:

• A specific problem related to identity or trust.
• A discussion of why current solutions such as PGP or CA-based PKI cannot address the problem.
• A specific solution using decentralized identity
• Specific questions not addressed by current solutions.

Examples of advance readings from previous workshops are available in our Github repos. ALL Advance reading papers are due by September 6th to allow other participants to read them before the event (for Early Bird pricing, the deadline is August 2nd). You may upload your papers directly to the RWOT13 Advanced Reading directory via pull request. For more details, please read the Advance Reading primer.

You may also benefit from reading the RWOT primer, which is packed with details about the entire process, from preparing advance readings and collaborating on-site and after the event, through publishing fully edited professional quality papers.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at [email protected].

During and between events we use @RWOTEvents at Twitter to stay in touch and improve our collaboration. Follow if you'd like to be a part of the conversation.

We also use a separate channel for real-time messaging during the event to help people coordinate local logistics, from confirming dinner details to finding fellow attendees for an ad-hoc connection at a coffee shop. Participants will receive details about how to join that channel a few days before the event.

The term "Web of Trust" dates back thirty years to PGP, where the "Web" referred to a distributed network of systems and the "Trust" was limited to the validation of keys. It revealed the need for decentralization and recognition on the internet.

Today, those needs remain, but the Web of Trust has grown larger, encompassing the creation, authentication, and verification of self-sovereign identities as well as privacy protection, reputation assessment, smart contracting, and more. The blockchain has come to be one of the most interesting and new tools for these tasks.

Rebooting the Web of Trust is a global collaboration influencing the future of these technologies.

All prices in $USD. Eventbrite will handle currency conversion.

Paper submission by August 2nd

Purchased by August 9th

$1,988 Corporate participant

$1,488 Independent/Startup participant*

$1,488 Corporate participant with paper submission

$788 Independent/Startup participants with paper submission

$188 Academic (or recent academic) with paper submission and proof of enrollment or graduation

Paper Submission by September 6th

Purchased by September 13th

$2,288 Corporate participant

$1,788 Independent/Startup participant*

$1,788 Corporate participant with paper submission

$1,088 Independent/Startup participant* with paper submission

$288 Academic (or recent academic) with paper submission and proof of enrollment or graduation

Purchased after September 13th

$2,588 Corporate participant

$2,088 Independent/Startup participant*

We do not offer advanced reading discounts for on-site purchases as participants will not have an opportunity to read late submissions.

CONTACT US ([email protected]) if you would prefer to buy a ticket in bitcoin.

To facilitate collaboration and person-to-person connections, we take a half-day break during the week with optional coordinated extracurricular activities. It's a great chance to get to know each other outside the focused flow of the workshop.

Family and travel companions are welcome to join these activities.

All attendees will be sent an email with an opportunity to purchase these activities in advance.

We offer travel stipends and ticket scholarships for select attendees bringing diverse perspectives to the event. To apply for either, you must submit an advance reading paper by August 2nd so we can make our selections before the August 9th Early Bird Deadline.

All papers are due no later than August 31th and MUST be submitted to the Github repo prior to receiving a discount code. If special circumstances delay your submission, contact us. We are flexible; however, getting your papers in early is a kindness that your fellow attendees will appreciate.

NOTE: Early Bird Papers MUST be submitted by August 2nd for consideration for the Early Bird purchase deadline. Advanced Purchasers seeking an advance reading paper discount MUST submit their paper by September 6th.

Interested students should submit a paper and provide proof of enrollment or recent graduation when contacting us for a discount code.

* Startup pricing is for small firms just getting started, generally less than $2 million in annual revenue. Contact us if you have any questions.

Every workshop we consider a limited number of sponsors interested in supporting the work. Contact us for more information.

As a live, in-person event, we will assist individuals who need to minimize the risk of spreading or catching COVID-19 and other communicable diseases, based on our best judgment given the current local guidelines for safety as specified by the US Center for Disease Control, the California Department of Public Health, and both Ventura County and Ventura City.

Masks and Rapid Antigen Tests will be provided for attendees.

Rebooting the Web of Trust is proud to enjoy the support of the following sponsors, without whom we could not run this event.

Additional sponsorship opportunities are available. Contact our treasurer, Joe Andrieu [email protected], for more information.

Digital Contract Design

Blockchain Commons

Legendary Requirements

Rebooting Web of Trust events bring together people from around the world who are committed to building a new Web of Trust based on self-sovereign principles. It is a space inclusive of persons of all backgrounds, orientations and identities. Dialogue, mutual respect and sharing are at the foundation of the decentralized web community and we expect all participants to follow these values.

Our Code of Conduct provides guidelines to help all of us establish collective trust and engage in productive deliberation. https://www.weboftrust.info/about/code-of-conduct/ All participants are to be aware of the code of conduct and to act accordingly, with respect and kindness.

Your safety and comfort are our priority. If you have a query or any concerns at any point before, during or after the conference, contact us at [email protected].

Host or Publisher Rebooting the Web of Trust, Inc.