PGP is a system for encrypting and verifying the authenticity of information, and is commonly used as a tool to sign and encrypt e-mail. For PGP to be useful, a means of obtaining and distributing trust in public keys is required: in PGP, this is done by adding signatures to keys to build a "web of trust". Key signing parties are one way to build an effective web-of-trust.

Big Key Signing parties are tedious: lots of hexadecimal, and often little attention to the important matter of verifying identities. Big key signing parties are also awkward to schedule. This presentation proposes an alternative approach: to hold several, smaller key signing parties which can be interconnected by individuals who attend more than one of them. This approach is being followed for PGP Key Signing at NANOG34.