1) To gauge whether or not there is sufficient interest for people to step up as document editors. I'm not convinced you can handle locating editors entirely via mailing lists. My experience with standards work indicates that people who volunteer face-to-face are more likely to follow through than those who say so only on a mailing list. 2) Charter bashing in a public setting. I'm not convinced that this process should happen completely on a mailing list. Not that it hasn't or won't for other proposals, just that a BOF seems like a more appropriate venue for this particular type of WG. 3) There is a definite interest in this type of WG proposal. This observation is based on informal interactions with other IETF folks as well as folks from the Defense Messaging System Project and the Directories Commitee of the Electronic Messaging Association. 4) There are five primary areas of concern when it comes to Directory Deployment: a) installed base problems and mitigation strategies b) schema inconsistencies and mappings c) piloting activities in support of particular application use of a directory service (e.g., forward knowledge of certificates and a global white pages service) d) co-existance of multiple IETF standards-track protocols e) help and guidance for the people who deploy directories 5) All of the work items described in the draft charter as submitted to the directory-cg@apps.ietf.org mailing list are believed to be useful (eventually) based on the experience of the person requesting this BOF as well as based on many discussions with IETFers and other folks. One goal of this BOF is to slice the draft charter down to something more reasonable and focused based on what's important enough to tackle _now_. The remaining work will be tabled or perhaps pushed off into its own BOF/WG at a future IETF meeting if there is sufficient interest to justify such work.