So there was a whole little section on identity within the workshop. Sxip submitted a paper about all the requirements of an identity system and then proceeded to just pitch their own ‘solution’. I am sorry that W3C workshop paper Observations on Distributed Authentication and Authorization in Web Applications was not given air time.
I got to present about Identity Commons and Identity Rights Agreements and Reputation for Service Providers. They were very receptive to our work particularly since the P3P stuff is now almost completely wound down. There were some concerns by one of the guys from the banking industry about the stack model to stand up. I think several guys will make it to the workshop in May.
W3C workshop
What is the map of the challenge? Usability and Web Authentication
Last week for two days I was at the W3C workshop on usability and authentication. It was hosted at the top of a citibank building in Brooklyn. We had to present ID at the door to get upstairs.
The room was a very long rectangle room with three presentation screens and 2 giant columns. It is a terrible lay out. The first morning we heard 3 ppt presentations about ‘the problems’ of for usable security and authentication. Maybe people are 1/2 present doing e-mail and other things.
I really wanted to interactively (as in facilitated face to face discussion) create a map of the problem space. By the end of two days I sort of got it but I know we as a room could have come up with that in 1/2 a day and then sent the rest of the time really working on ideas for solutions.
There are a bunch of constituencies.
Browsers – Firefox, Opera and IE (Microsoft)
Big websites – AOL, Yahoo, Google.
Certificate Authorities – Verisign
Banks
They all want security of verifying websites to be more usable and understandable to normal folks. So there was usability experts.
I think I understand why ‘standards bodies’ and processes get bogged down. They are really not very innovative in their face to face technology – presentations for a two days do not create a positive energetic vortex and community to move forward on solving problems.
I am really tuned into this need to get better at our face to face process so our ideas and innovations for the online world can actually work.