How to Join
Zoom links will be shared only through the following channels:
- Private Signal group:
- Email announcement list:
New participants must join one of these channels to receive meeting invitations. If you were unable to join the Working Circles formation meeting (in January), join the Signal group and query about Working Circles that you might be able to join. (You can also get info at the next all-hands meeting.)
Who Should Participate?
This initiative needs diverse perspectives working together. We explicitly seek participants from different disciplines, backgrounds, and roles:
- Academic & Research Participants: All outputs are designed as citable scholarly contributions
- Developer & Builder Participants: Your implementation experience grounds principles in reality
- Policy, Regulatory & Legal Participants: Essential perspectives on feasibility and institutional adoption
- Advocacy, Community & Lived-Experience Participants: Irreplaceable knowledge about how identity systems function in practice
- Early-Career Researchers & Students: Fresh perspectives that often bridge gaps between communities
Participation Expectations
These workshops are structured around Working Circles: collaborative groups doing real intellectual work together. Participants are expected to join a Working Circle, engage in collaborative writing, and participate in dialogue at meetings.
Time Commitment:
Active participation in Phase 1 will require
- Attendance at initial meetings, then two to three 90-minute Working Circle break-outs, during which the Lens Exploration Brief for your Working Circle will be created.
This is a working commitment, not an observation commitment. Those who wish to follow without active contribution are welcome to join the announcement list and read outputs as they’re released. Workshop meetings are working sessions for active contributors.
Phase 2 will require a greater time commitment for anyone interested in writing full papers based on our topics. We encourage this; we would like as much collaborative work as possible, to create new ideasl for self-sovereign identity that reflect a good cross-section of our community. But it is not a requirement: your active participation in Phase 1 only would represent a well-appreciated contribution of ideas and content!
Recommended Reading
To help ensure a shared foundation, we recommend participants read these materials before the kickoff meetings:
Estimated total reading time: ~90 minutes
- The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity (2016) - The foundational article introducing the ten principles
- Musings of a Trust Architect: The Origins of Self-Sovereign Identity (2023) - The philosophical and political roots of SSI
- Principal Authority: A New Perspective on Self-Sovereign Identity (2021) - Why identity should be framed as a domain of agency
- Five Mental Models of Identity (2020) - Understanding different perspectives on identity
Infrastructure & Accessibility
All participants will need a GitHub account (no git expertise required). GitHub will be used for discussions, issue tracking, and some collaborative activities. Working Circles may choose their preferred platforms for document collaboration.
Also see our Code of Conduct.