3.6. A Neutral Observer

It is common for us to have observers to the interop. This time the observer chose to actually do some “neutral testing” on their own. These are their comments.

This organization is interested in implementing a university-wide (and possibly inter-university) calendaring service to complement the web, e-mail, and other services (IM also coming), so we are interested in calendaring standards for two reasons:

1. Can we hope to implement open and common standards for calendaring usable by multiple clients and/or are there third party vendors that can offer this capability, as well as interacting with proprietary protocols?

2. If so, we are (or should be) willing to contribute to the evolution of such standards, to the best of our ability.

Generally, the IOP event was a rewarding exercise, stressing our own test environment (iCal server) as well as different vendors’ servers and taking part in the discussions that followed. As discussed with the Executive Director previously, we will consider joining either as an individual university.