The NymIP Research Group will hold its first physical meeting on Sunday, December 10, 2000, from 14:30 US/Pacific (22:30 UCT) to 17:00 US/Pacific (01:00 UCT December 11), before the IETF meeting in San Diego, California. We invite interested parties to attend, either in person or by telephone. The NymIP-RG is a newly formed entity dedicated to studying anonymity and pseudonymity in Internet communication. The RG's goals are to develop better understanding of the technology of controlled nymity, to solve some of the unsolved problems, and eventually to bring the effort to the point where open implementation and standardization can begin. The NymIP-RG is part of a larger effort called the "NymIP effort", whose goals extend through standardization, development of open reference implementations, and eventual broad deployment. More information is at http://nymip.sourceforge.net. We expect that the NymIP-RG will apply for a charter from the IRTF, and that future NymIP standardization work, if any, will be done in the IETF, but these decisions have not been finalized. This first meeting is a brief, relatively unstructured get-to-know-you affair, designed to identify those interested and start them talking to one another. There is no real technical program beyond an introduction to the problem. Future meetings will presumably have more structure and more technical content. Most of the group's work will be conducted over e-mail, rather than in meetings. To get the exact location and/or telephone number information, please send e-mail to jbash-nymip-dec2000-meeting@velvet.com. Please include information about the number of people you expect will be coming in your party or calling in from your location, so that we can plan resources accordingly. Early responses will help us to plan better. If you plan to attend by telephone, please do NOT plan to have multiple attendees using a speaker phone. Having more than one speaker phone on a conference bridge usually leads to problems. We'd rather provide more bridge ports than have people using speaker phones. We apologize for the late notice, and recognize that it will be hard for many people to attend in person. We'll try to do better in the future. You may have been blind-copied on this message to prevent your e-mail address from falling into the hands of spammers. If you don't see any lists you're on in the headers, that's probably the reason. Please feel free to forward this message to anyone you feel may have a serious interest in this area. -- J. Bashinski Secretary, NymIP-RG