Prior to attending the workshop you should write an advanced-reading paper and read the advanced readings written by others. Here's more on all of that:
The first step in preparing for RWOT is writing an advanced-reading paper. It's not actually required, as you can choose to pay for a more expensive membership without writing one, but it's highly recommended: it will help you to do a bit of preparation on a topic that's of interest to you, and it will signal that interest to other participants. Your paper will also help to introduce you to people as the workshop begins, and it will aid in generating discussion on web-of-trust topics.
An advance reading does not need to be intimidating. We've traditionally asked that it be just one or two pages long. Consider it a synopsis of a topic of interest. Many participants write longer papers, and that's not necessarily the best choice. Short, punchy papers will get read, will get people interested in the topic, and will leave lots of room for collaborative design at the actual workshop.
An advanced-reading paper might focus on your area of expertise, highlighting the information that you can offer to other workshop participants, but it can also be about something you're interested in, but don't know a lot about, highlighting information that you'd like to receive at the workshop.
The best advanced-reading papers include some of the following:
- A specific problem related to identity or trust; or
- A specific critique of existing identity or trust systems; or
- A specific topic whose discussion will help advance understanding of identity or trust systems; or
- A specific solution using decentralized identity or a web of trust; or
- Specific questions not addressed by current solutions.
Please be sure to write your paper in a timely fashion, meeting the deadlines for submission, as that will help ensure that it's available for everyone else to read in advance of the workshop.
When you've written your paper, please upload it to the advance-readings directory. Please follow the instructions in the advance-reading README to include your paper both in the topic and alphabetical contents, which will make it easier for everyone else to find.
Be sure to also request your advance-reading discount code, which is also described in the advance-reading README!
Obviously, you should do your best to read other advance readings too. The more you do, the more you'll be able to contribute to the workshop. If you can't read all the papers (and you probably can't, which is fine), then look over the topical table of contents, and read the ones on the topics that interest you most (or that you know the least about). But maybe pull just a few others at random, to give yourself a bit of breadth.
If you're taking a plane or a train trip to the workshop, that's a great time to read any papers that you didn't get to beforehand. The easiest way to so is to clone the whole repo, because then you can have everything sitting on your laptop computer. If that's Greek to you, downloading the most interesting papers works too.