Identity Woman

Independent Advocate for the Rights and Dignity of our Digital Selves

IIW

Internet Identity Workshop Fall – 3 events

By Leave a Comment


The Tenth Internet Identity Workshop in May, 2010 was the largest ever. We have had inquiries from community members on the East Coast of the US and in Europe have been lobbying us to bring the event to their locations.  We are happy to confirm that we are going host IIW’s in Washington, DC  and London.
WE NEED YOUR HELP! Please take some action if you like IIW and are reading this. IIW is been about the community that attends and participates year round in the activities of groups that use the event to get real work done and move the industry and vision of user-centric identity that works for people forward.
So with these events upcoming Phil, Doc and I need your help in spreading the word to your collegues on the East Coast and in Europe who would enjoy the event.
To help you do this we have several tools and options.
Blog badges for specific events. (These are two of them their are more on the wiki)

For IIW-East September 9-10 in Washington DC


For IIW-Europe, October 11 in London we have

For IIW #11 in Mountain View, November 9-11

If you value IIW and the conversations that happen there please take some initiative and reach out to colleagues to spread the word about these events.  Because of the community focus of the events we  rely strongly on community word of mouth to let people know about them.
It would be great to have community ideas put forward for the main IIW invitation articulating the current foci of conversations.

Internet Identity Workshop in DC

By Leave a Comment

The Internet Identity Workshop is coming to the east coast for the first time – September 9-10, 2010 in Washington DC.
The theme for the event is Open Identity for Open Government. You can learn more about the event on the IIW website and register over on this site.

Internet Identity Workshop comes to DC!

Theme: Open Identity for Open Government.

Register Here!

Internet Identity Workshop East (IIW-East) is September 9-10, 2010 in Washington DC  at the Josaphine Buttler Parks Center.  This event immediately follows the Gov 2.0 Summit.
The Internet Identity Workshop has been held semi-annually in California since the Fall of 2005. The 10th IIW was held this past May and had the largest attendance thus far. There have been many requests to have an IIW on the East coast, and now the Open Identity for Open Government Initiative is providing a timely incentive to have one in Washington.
IIWs focus is on “user-centric identity”, addressing the technical and adoption challenge of how people can manage their own identity across the range of websites, services, companies, government agencies and organizations with which they interact. IIW-East will focus mainly on the government adoption of open identity technologies for use by government websites.

Unlike other identity conferences, IIW’s focus on the use of identity management approaches based on open standards that are privacy protecting. IIW is a unique blend of technology and policy discussions where everyone from a diverse range of projects doing the real-work of making this vision happen are able to gather to work intensively for two days. It is the best place to meet and participate with all the key people and projects such as:
  • OpenID
  • IMI Information Cards
  • GSA approved schemas for open identity protocols
  • Personal Data Stores
  • NIH pilot adoption of Open Identity technologies
  • Certification of industry open identity credentials
  • Business models for higher LOA open identity credentials
  • National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace

The event has a unique format – the agenda is created live the day of the event. This allows for the discussion of key issues, projects and a lot of interactive opportunities with key industry leaders.
The event compiles a book of proceedings with the notes that are gathered from the conference. You can find the Book of Proceedings for IIW7, IIW8,  IIW9 & IIW10 here. BTW these FOUR documents are your key to convincing your employer that this event will be valuable. As attendees register we ask about topics they wish to discuss.
Providing identity services between the general public and government websites is a different problem than providing authentication and authorization services within one or a few organizations (enterprise provisioning/termination or federation between two companies or government agencies).
As a community we are exploring these kinds of issues:

Questions Agencies Face:

  • How can open identity technologies enable open government
  • How can agencies leverage identity credentials generated by other organizations
  • How can the government  leverage the efforts of social networking sites that offer user-centric identity credentials
  • What are the advantages to agencies of adopting open identity technologies
  • How can open identity technologies enable your websites to move beyond brochure-ware
  • How can we increase the speed in which government organizations can benefit from the use of open identity approaches
  • How to manage Federated Identity on an ever increasing scale
  • What are the implications of National Strategy for existing policy mandates
  • Should there be integrated political architecture
  • There are five distinct Cyber Security Bills in Congress now – what are the implications

Policy  Considerations:

  • The relationship between FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) and identity management
  • What are the business cases for agencies to adopt Open Identity Technologies
  • What are the new legal constructs that make this work
  • How to use open identity technologies to preserve privacy while providing personalization
  • GSA standards for the use of open identity technology
  • Data Privacy Issues
  • Personal Data – how is it stored and shared with end users
  • How are these new approaches regulated

Technical Issues:

  • Open identity standards (identity and semantic)
  • What software is available to leverage open identity standards
  • How different standards and technical implementations interoperate
  • How agencies can accept identity credentials generated by other organizations
  • How open identity technologies can enable your website to move beyond brochure ware, without using cookies
  • How to leverage open identity technologies in your technology roadmap
  • How to implement Federal Identity
  • Tecnlogy issues involved in implementing existing Identity Management technology
  • Lessons learned – what are the most effective ways for Federal Agencies to build and employ identity systems

New Industry Developments:

  • Personal Data Stores/Data Banks with our digital footprints recorded
  • What new Identity Management technologies are on the horizon
  • National strategy for trusted identities in Cyberspace

Please join us at the Internet Identity Workshop

To consider all these and more!

It is the best place to meet and participate with all the key people and projects such as:

  • OpenID
  • IMI Information Cards
  • GSA approved schemas for open identity protocols
  • Personal Data Stores
  • NIH pilot adoption of Open Identity technologies
  • Certification of industry open identity credentials
  • Business models for higher LOA open identity credentials
  • National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace

IIWX Internet Identity Workshop 10, Introductory Talk

By Leave a Comment

I gave this talk at the 10th Internet Identity workshop reviewing the shared history, language, understanding and work we have done together over the last 6 years of community life.

Internet Identity Workshop 10 – Introduction to the User-Centric Identity Community

Part of this presentation touched on a timeline of events in the community. Those and more are reflected on this timeline that is beginning to be developed here. IIW11 will be November 9-11 in Mountain View, CA The first ever IIW outside the Bay Area will be happening September 9-10 in Washington DC following the Gov 2.0 Summit with the theme Open Identity for Open Government. The first IIW in Europe will be happening in London likely October 9-10 (dates still to be confirmed) prior to RSA Europe. If you would like to know about when the next IIWs have registration open please join this announce list. TheIdentity Gang is the community mailing list where conversations are ongoing about identity. You can follow modest updates about IIW on twitter via our handle – @idworkshop You can see IIW 10 attendees on our registration page.

IIW is NOT an advocacy group – sigh “the media”

By 1 Comment

Facebook’s Online Identity War quotes me and labels IIW an advocacy group. IT IS AN INDUSTRY FORUM. Douglas MacMillan.
Sorry but I am still learning “how” to talk to reporters. They don’t like to quote me as “the identity woman” and link to my blog.
I “do” run the Identity Workshop with Phil and Doc but that doesn’t make it an “advocacy group”
Identity Commons & IIW have a purpose and principles believing in user/centric identity. The power of individuals to manage and control their own identities online. We don’t “advocate” for them – we create a convening space for people who want to work on this ideal.
Facebook does on some level “agree” with the idea of user-centric identity – Luke Shepard has participated in the community for quite a while & they hired David Recordon. They sponsor IIW.
I am clear that the opening up of previously controlled information with no warning “jives” with my understanding of user-centric control. It was more from my own point of view I was commenting. That is with my “identity woman” hat on… and the values I carry from Planetwork and the ASN… but the press hates that. Uggg. Chris Messina gets to be an “open web advocate”… that is what I do to but just about identity “open Identity advocate” (mmm…) but then that sounds like “just” OpenID and it isn’t just about that one particular protocol. sigh.
I am still wondering – How does one “belong” and have “titles” in a way the media can GROK when one does not have a formal position in a formal organization.
sigh – identity issues.

IIW9 Highlights – IIW10 Reg Open

By Leave a Comment

I am really pleased to share that the notes for IIW9 are available in PDF form now. All sessions also have a wiki page too.
Heidi Nobantu Saul did an amazing job collecting notes and we managed to get all session notes except a very few on the last day.
Highlights include:

The 10th Internet Identity Workshop is May 18-20.
Registration is Open Now and Extra Early Bird Rates are in effect until January 31.

Fire Fox and Identity in the Browser

By Leave a Comment

ReadWriteWeb reports this week:

Decrying redirects and iframes, Raskin tells of a brave new world where an in-browser button that defies navigational difficulties allows for something closer to true identity portability than we’ve seen yet:Identity will be one of the defining themes in the next five years of the Web. Nearly every site has a concept of a user account, registration, and identity. Searching for “sign in” on Google yields over 1.8 billion hits. And yet, the browser does nothing to make this experience better save for some basic auto form filling. The browser leaves websites to re-implement identity management, and forces users to learn a new scheme for every site… Your identity is too important to be owned by any one company. Your friends are too important to be owned by any one company.

Finally! They said it!

Comments in reaction to the ReadWriteWeb post highlight Information Cards & CardSpace are not mentioned – I point out in my comment that the work is all connected ant pointed to the IIW conversations about Active Clients attended by all.
Aza open their post with this paragraph:

Identity will be one of the defining themes in the next five years of the Web. Nearly every site has a concept of a user account, registration, and identity. Searching for “sign in” on Google yields over 1.8 billion hits. And yet, the browser does nothing to make this experience better save for some basic auto form filling. The browser leaves websites to re-implement identity management, and forces users to learn a new scheme for every site.

They make these key points following the images they have (you should check the images out)

• Identity is part of where you are, and what you are looking at (Amazon looks different depending on if you are signed in or not). That’s why we put it in the URL Bar.
• For most sites, you’ll probably only have one identity, so login will be a single click or automatic.
• Putting verbs into the navigation bar isn’t new. See Taskfox.
• To increase visibility, webpages should be able to make a Javascript call that opens the login/signup bubble.
• For webpages that want to own the login-process, the account creation simply acts as the ultimate form-fill. For those interested in the evolution of the idea, you can see an early mockup with comments as well as Alex Faaborg’s similiar mockups.

They also make this point…

Chris Messina and others has been advocating for a model which follows the Facebook Connect lead: a single verb, to connect. Once connected, you decide exactly what information to share in an asynchronous manner. Unfortunately this bleeds information — your name is known to all websites which which you connect. We’d like to explore what a connect metaphor in combination with the ability to remain anonymous but connected means.

I agree with the firefox folks. Having a way to do verified anonymity is essential.
“Selective Disclosure” is the name for technologies that do this.
The firefox team should check out Stefan’s U-Prove Technology that may be released shortly by MSFT that acquired it over a year ago –
(seems like Stefan killed his blog when he moved to MSFT..mmm..anyways.)
Firefox folks invite people to get involved here.

Internet Identity Workshop Details + Regular Registration Ends Wednesday

By Leave a Comment

This is cross posted on the IIW Blog

Regular Registration ENDS NEXT WEDNESDAY – October 28th at Midnight. Prices go up $100 after that.

The Internet Identity Workshop #9 Tuesday – Thursday, November 3-5 in Mountain View, CA Computer History Museum

Please blog/tweet about the conference. The hash tag is #iiw , our twitter handle is @idworkshop

Proposed Topics List is here. We all make the agenda together beginning at 1 on Tuesday and again on Wednesday and Thursday morning. If you want to know more about how to prepare for an unconference check out this piece called “unconferencing” by Kaliya Hamlin (@identitywoman) the facilitator of the workshop.

You can see the specific times of sessions.

Tuesday Morning Opening talks will cover: * The Identity Trust Framework activities – Drummond Reed and Don Thibeau * Data Portability releasing their EULA work * Action Cards – Phil Windley and Paul Trevithick * Discovery etc. – Eran Hammer-Lahav * Activity Strea.ms etc. – * A VRM update * We might cover activity happening in the healthcare sector * We are working on having Vivek Kundra the CIO of the US join us via skype – as yet this is unconfirmed.

They won’t cover – OpenID 101, Information Cards 101 or SAML 101 If you are unfamiliar with these topics we recommend reading these papers/watching these videos. There is a lot of information online covering these topics on the foundations/organizations respective websites.

OpenID – http://openid.net/ OpenID video about it – http://www.youtube.com/

Information Cards – http://informationcard.net/ Video – http://informationcard.net/watch-the-video

SAML – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurityAssertionMarkup_Language Video – Ping Identity on SAML 101

All together now – the Venn of Identity The paper – by Drummond and Eve the update – The Zen of Venn

Demo Hour: We still have Demonstration slots available you must sign up ahead of time to Demo. It is Wednesday after lunch short 5min demos will be happening throughout the hour – throughout the room. Please e-mail Kaliya[at]mac.com to get a table and more information about how it will work.

Food: I forgot to ask if there were any special dietary requirements. Please let me know if you have any – this is what we have in store for you.

Tuesday – Burrito Bar, Tied House Wednesday – Indian, Italian Thursday – BBQ Boys

Thank you to our Sponsors:

Without their contributions this conference would not be possible. (we still have sponsorship opportunities available)

<a href=”http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com/sponsors/”> <img src=”http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IIW9Sidebar.jpg”> </a>

About the Notes Taking Procedures: In our effort to document the whole confernece and give all attendees access to all the happenings in sessions we have a notes taking procedure:

If you convene a session it is your responsibility to get a note taker for your session.

The note taker needs to use the NOTE TAKING FORM – found here in digital form (the paper version will be avaliable in each break out space too). When notes are complete, the note taking form must be e-mailed to iiwnotes@gmail.com OR transfered to a USB key at Documentation Center OR if paper notes are taken transcribed by the notes taker on computers provided in Documentation Center

We will also be collecting a more immediate list of results from each session on 11×17 sheets.

We are looking forward to seeing you next Tuesday!

let us know if you have any other questions,

-Kaliya, Phil and Doc

IIW IX is open for business

By 1 Comment


Iiw9_4.png

Internet Identity Workshop number 9 is coming up in about 10 weeks. November 3-5 (Tuesday to Thursday) in Mountain View California at the Computer History Museum.

We are excited about all the developments in the industry with protocol evolution in the social web space AND larger and larger scale deployments of open identity technologies including OpenID and Information Cards.

There will be much to talk about at this fall’s event.

Early REGISTRATION is Open! UNTIL SEPTEMBER 16 then prices go up by $50-75

Early Bird Prices are….

  • $274 regular tickets
  • $148 for independents
  • $ 50 for students

We need to get 75 people registered by September 16 to make a final confirmation for our conference space at the Computer History Museum.

Special this year we have the “BIG” ticket for those can expense $998 (but can’t convince marketing to sponsor). This is a GREAT way to support IIW!

IIW is a completely community driven event – we don’t pay anyone for marketing – the community is our marketing.

Please put our LOGO ON our blog our WEBSITE.

Follow IIW on Twitter – @idworkshop

SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES ARE STILL AVAILABLE!!! Please contact Phil if you are interested in learning more phil@windley.org

JOIN THE COMMUNITY MAILING LIST

THE INVITATION TO IIW!

The Internet Identity Workshop focuses on “user-centric identity” and netizen empowerment on the social web trying to solve the technical challenge of how people can manage their own identity and social activity across the range of websites, services, companies and organizations that they belong to, purchase from and participate with.

This is where everyone from a diverse range of projects doing the real-work of making this vision happen gather and work intensively for three days. It is the best place to meet and participate with all the key people and projects. This is a comprehensive list of the technology communities that are covered.

The event does not have a pre-set agenda instead as people register they are asked what they would like to present about, learn and discuss with peers/industry experts. These are all collected here . The first morning of the conference will be introductory orientation about key projects and technologies in the community. After that the community creates the agenda itself using the Open Space Method. Dinner both Tuesday and Wednesday are a big part of the conference.

Here are links to notes that cover most of the sessions from the last two conferences IIW #8 spring of 2009     IIW #7 fall of 2008

These documents are great resources for convincing your boss of the value of this event.

The heart of the workshop is a practical idealism in working towards the shared vision of a decentralized, user-oriented identity layer for the Internet.

Because the web was built around “pages”, no tools or standards were created to control how the information about you was collected or used. At the Internet Identity Workshop we bring the people creating these tools and standards so people can safely manage their online identity and control their personal data.

It is not about any one technology – rather it is a place to discuss multiple interoperating (and possible competing) projects, standards, and networks for identity, data sharing, and reputation.

As part of Identity Commons, the Internet Identity Workshop creates opportunities for both innovators and competitors. We provide an open forum for both the big guys and the small fry to come together in a safe and balanced space.

There are a wide range of projects in the community:

  • Open conceptual, community, and governance models.
  • Open standards and protocols.
  • Open source projects.
  • Commercial projects.
  • Projects to address social and legal implications of these technologies.
  • Efforts to rethink the business models and opportunities available with these new technologies.

User-centric identity is the ability:

  • To use one’s identifier(s) on more than one site
  • To control who sees what information about you
  • To selectively share presence and profile information
  • To maintain multiple identities and personas in the contexts you wish
  • To aggregate attention, navigation, and purchase history from the sites and communities you frequent
  • To move and share your personal data, relationships, documents, and other publications as you wish

All of the following are active topic areas at each IIW:

  • Improving Existing Legal Constructs Privacy Policies Terms of Service
  • Creating New Legal Constructs – Limited Liability Personas, Identity Rights Agreements
  • Creating New Business Models – Identity Oracle, I-Brokers
  • New Citizenship Perspectives – Activism Community, Event Coordination, Community Identity and Data Sharing

The Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) was founded in the fall of 2005 by Phil Windley, Doc Searls and Kaliya Hamlin. IIW is a working group of Identity Commons The event has been a leading space of innovation and collaboration amongst the diverse community working on user-centric identity.

Web Finger! moving out into world

By 1 Comment

I love the Internet Identity Workshop! it is where innovative ideas are hatched, answers to hard problems are vetted and standards consensus emerges. This is just the latest in amazing collaborations that have emerged.

Web Finger was covered on Tech Crunch today with this headline – Google Points At WebFinger. Your Gmail Address Could Soon Be Your ID.

At IIW in May they had a session lead by John Panzer. The notes were not filled out that much but (All the Notes from IIW)   

but there is a white board of their conversation and a link to what google had up.

Chris Messina spliced it together

XRD the discovery protocol is part of how Web Finger works. This spun out of XRI.

Techcrunch didn’t explicitly pick up on the fact that Eran Hammer-Lahev has been a key collaborator and is at Yahoo! (they did link to the mailing list where he is posting). He has been really driving XRD forward lately.

All exciting stuff.

Cultivating Community

By 2 Comments

Communities don’t usually “just happen” there is idea, or vision that attracts people, and there are community organizer(s) or catalysts that proactively seek out others who share a vision and help bring a community together.

Growing community, cultivating community, nurturing community, weaving community, building community, creating community – all slightly different metaphors describing this process that happens when people make the effort to create space (an environment) for people to meet, inviting people into the space and encouraging conversations that help connections and foster relatedness.

Community is what unfolds when people come together voluntarily, learn about one another, begin to care about one another, and start to do things together. In doing things together that are successful, trust develops and people begin to work and act together IN community, doing progressively more difficult things, becoming strong and more resilient.

Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point we know about Connectors, Mavens, and Salespeople, social archetypes that play different roles, each with their own value in helping information flow, networks form and communities emerge.

It was great to have him articulate this i finally had a label for my own activity/passion – I have become a maven of a few things throughout the years. user-centric digital identity was a subject I really got into in 2003-4. I read everything I could about the subject as I began to meet some of the people thinking about it. I became passionate about the topic and applied my connector skills and started meeting finding people who were interested in the subject. Those who didn’t know about the subject I sold them on the idea :). I am not by nature a sales person about “anything” but only those things I believe in.

One can also see a community as the evolution and maturing of a network, that is the relationships between people. When beginning the links might be very weak, but in time as the potential community members get to know each other and take action together and the ties strengthen; they become a stronger and more resilient “real” community. A paper that was very influential in my understanding was Building Smart Communities through Network Weaving by Valdis Krebs and June Holley that I read in 2003 (along with every popular science book on network science out then: Linked, Sync, Six Degrees, Emergence, Nexus)

This paper investigates building sustainable communities through improving their connectivity – internally and externally – using network ties to create economic opportunities. Improved connectivity is created through an iterative process of knowing the network and knitting the network.

Knowing the network and knitting the network have been foundational in my practice of community weaving. I regularly meet with people in the community and help them get connected to others who’s work is related to their goals. Two examples first RSA as often happens those new to the community “knock on my door” and ask to meet for lunch or coffee to share what they are doing and learn more about who they should connect to in the community. Mike wanted to meet with me he to share about his new company Gluu that does inter-domain identity. It was great to learn what he was up to and also share papers/doc’s/projects relevant to his work and people he should meet. Yesterday I followed up with someone I invited to/and attended IIW. I spent 2.5 hours talking with Joe Johnston who attended about his efforts to bring interoperable identity (OpenID and other things) to Pachamama Alliance and other organizations with similar missions.

In terms of knowing and knitting networks between different communities/standards bodies/consortia/projects I wrote a post about Community Diplomats and Community Diplomacy last year thinking about different community-connecting roles and how if they are named they can be seen better and foster inter-group collaboration and communication.

Another essential but often un-named aspect/milestone of community development is communities development is shared language and then shared understanding. Shared Language is a prerequisite to collaboration enabling what were different perspectives and world views to sync, and then out of that it is much easier to work together. Eugene articulates three elements needed to create shared language:

  • Share individual contexts
  • Encourage namespace clash
  • Leave enough time and space to work things out

An example of shared language that was developed in the community was the identity gang lexicon that Paul and others worked on in 2004-2005 so that when discussing different identity technologies there was at least a common language to talk about them.

Another example of the evolution of the communities shared understanding grew out of Johannes original presentation at IIW2006 with the identity triangle with three pillars – user-controlled, company controlled and then microsoft controled. He did an updated it almost a year later explaining of the community language and understanding had evolved. This starting point was moved forward by Eve Maler creating the Venn of Identity and became an IEEE paper written by her and Drummond Reed. Johannes has continued to be a wholistic thinker about the landscape and in 2008 he articulated an onion to think about which identity technologies are applicable where.

Space and Spaciousness for community to form is a key part of what the Internet Identity Workshops have been about about. We have never “set the agenda” there but instead allow anyone attending to post a session idea. We encouraged dialogue with space rather then having an agenda.   

We have an amazingly rich community fabric of working relationships that is both resilient and delicate.

FU – The Monday After, Facebook Usernames and Your Domain on the Web

By 1 Comment

Last week it was announced that on on Friday Night at 9pm Pacific Facebook had a name space land rush. Everyone was free to pick for themselves their username that would appear in their URL. facebook.com/username

I actually found this a bit surprising – remember the big debate on the Social Web TV I had with Josh Elman about “real names.” He was against handles completely and felt that the big value facebook brought was “real names”. I argued for handles and the freedom to choose one’s “identity” on the web. I made the point that free society – having the ability freedom to have the option to have and use handles on the web NOT linked to our given/ in real life names. Another thing is that handles help us navigate namespace clash from regular names. Max from MySpace is 8bitkid not some other Max in a sea of Max’s.

I ran into Josh Elman at the Building43 party and we agreed I kinda won the debate with this latest development. It seems that having peoples pages rank higher in google is helped by having readable URL’s.

They of course “strongly encouraged” people to just pick a URL with one’s real name and did so by “suggesting” names that were derivatives of one’s name. You could override this and type in your own name choice (however defaults matter so most people will end up with names similar to their real name – rather then being asked to think up one). They give users an addressable identity.

Max Engel of MySpace became /8BitKid – his handle “everywhere”

David Recordon surprisingly didn’t go with DaveMan692 – his handle most places – he is /DavidRecordon

My friend Jennifer became /dangerangel as she had originally signed up for in Facebook but they disallowed her to have it.

I just became /Kaliya (I am hoping I can get enough fans to claim /identitywoman for that persona)

What is particularly interesting is the layers of identity in Facebook.

With a Facebook URLFacebook has the one’s username is not one’s e-mail address as it is with Google profiles and one also has a common name (or as they say “real name”) that is presented to throughout the system.

Google ironically enough they ask if you want a “contact” me button on your page that does not give away your e-mail address when the profile URL gives away your e-mail address.

Twitter has /usernames AND another display name of your choosing that is changeable (the /usernames are not). However most twitter clients display one or the other. If you are used to seeing the display name and then are on your phone that is only showing @handle /username then you don’t know who is talking.

Facebook usernames is another example Twitter feature adoption by Facebook others being activity streams becoming much more like twitter streams.

I said when I first “got” twitter about 18 months ago – a big part of the value it provided was its namespace. It gave me a cool anchor on the web that allowed communication between me and others via the web.

So how is it going so far? Inside facebook reports that over the weekend 6 million folks – 3% of their userbase gut URLs. 500,000 in the first 15 min, 1,000,000 in the first hour and 3 million in the first 14 hours.

There were several examples of FaceSquating. Mike Pence took Obiefernadez’s name.

Anil Dash has the funniest post ever about the whole thing. Highlight the point that users don’t need facebook URL’s they can just get their own domain name. He repeats this throughout the post about what these services are not telling you:

None of these posts mention that you can also register a real domain name that you can own, instead of just having another URL on Facebook.

I completely agree with him – he also misses a key point the usability of facebook is vastly higher then the usability of domain name registration, cpanel management and other things involved in getting ones own personal web presence going. DiSo isn’t hear yet so we can’t link to our friends without linking capability that a facebook provides. I suppose Chi.mp was trying to

He links to a post of his from December 2002 called privacy and identity control.

I own my name. I am the first, and definitive, source of information on me.

One of the biggest benefits of that reality is that I now have control. The information I choose to reveal on my site sets the biggest boundaries for my privacy on the web. Granted, I’ll never have total control. But look at most people, especially novice Internet users, who are concerned with privacy. They’re fighting a losing battle, trying to prevent their personal information from being available on the web at all. If you recognize that it’s going to happen, your best bet is to choose how, when, and where it shows up.

That’s the future. Own your name. Buy the domain name, get yourself linked to, and put up a page. Make it a blank page, if you want. Fill it with disinformation or gibberish. Plug in other random people’s names into Googlism and paste their realities into your own. Or, just reveal the parts of your life that you feel represent you most effectively on the web. Publish things that advance your career or your love life or that document your travels around the world. But if you care about your privacy, and you care about your identity, take the steps to control it now.

In a few years, it won’t be as critical. There will be a reasonably trustworthy system of identity and authorship verification. Finding a person’s words and thoughts across different media and time periods will be relatively easy.

What people don’t quite get is that if they anchor their whole online life around someone else’s domain they are locked in. When I first started paying attention to user-centric identity online this was one of the meta-long term issues that the first identity commons folks (Drummond Reed, Fen Lebalm, Owen Davis, Andrew Nelson, Eugene Kim, Jim Fournier, Marc Le Maitre, Bill Barnhill, Nikolaj Nyholm, etc).

A few of them wrote a paper about it all – THE SOCIAL WEB – Creating an Open Social Network with XDI.

They liked the XRI/i-names architecture because it addressed the URL recycling problem with a layer of abstraction. All i-names also have linked to them a conical identifier – an i-number. This number is never reassigned in the global registry. However one could “sell” one’s i-name (mine is =kaliya) and that new person could use it but it would have a different i-number assigned to it for that person.

This past week at the Online Community Unconference we were talking about the issue of conversation tracking around blog conversations. How an one watch/track the conversation about one’s work if it is cross posted on 10 different sites OR if it is just posted in one place and one is distributing a link through 10 different channels? We never did get to an answer – I chimed in that the web was missing an abstraction layer – that if one could have a canonical identifier for a post that was up in 10 different places this would make it easier to track/see conversations about that post. What we do have now that we didn’t have 3 years ago for helping track conversations across multiple contexts is OpenID at least so you can see if someone commenting in one place is the same as someone commenting in another.

There is an additional layer of abstraction in the XRI architecture that supports several things are key to helping people integrate themselves and information about themselves on thew web.

One is cross referencing – so I could have have two different (URI) addresses for the same information (in the identifier – not just mapped over one another leaving me with one address OR the other) and also have one version of my profile be the one I controlled and a different be a version that appeared in a certain social context.

There is also a concept of much finer grained data addressability and control – so I could have my home address in one place and instead of entering this into each website/services/company portal that I want to have this information – just hand them a link to the canonical copy I manage and then I don’t have to change it everywhere. This is of course where the VRM folks are going with their architectures and services.

We shall see how it all evolves. That is what we do at the Internet Identity Workshop is keeping on working on figuring this all out.

Open Stack & IIW Proceedings for the Holidays :)

By 1 Comment

I thought you would all like to know about this event coming up December 19th in San Francisco. Learning about the Open Stack for the Social Web. It will be a great overview of the components of the “open stack” (although some take issue with this name – I think it will do)
5:30 to 5:40 – John McCrea introducing the Open Stack
5:40 to 5:50 – Eran Hammer-Lahav on Discovery
5:50 to 6:00 – Allen Tom on OAuth
6:00 to 6:10 – David Recordon on OpenID (including OpenID + OAuth)
6:10 to 6:20 – Kevin Marks on OpenSocial
6:20 to 6:30 – Joseph Smarr on Portable Contacts
6:30 to 6:40 – Chris Messina on Activity Streams
These components are the alternative to Facebook Connect (or any other proprietary identity silo) LockIN. It is exciting to see all the progress that has been made and in particular the work coming out of this last IIW.
I am very proud of the fact we actually have collected basically all the notes from all the sessions at this IIW. They will be published in a PDF by the end of day today. Here is the link to the wiki with all the notes as well. The PDF will be be linked to off the top of the page.

You know your conference is to cheap when…

By 1 Comment

You know your conference is to cheap when other conferences offer you $200 discounts to register EARLY and yours only costs $200.

In case you missed it the Internet Identity Workshop has an announcement up and registration is open. Phil and I implore you to PLEASE register early so we know how many of you are coming.
We subtly softened our language about “user-centric identity” to take into account that there is some concern that this might be going to far in one direction and it may be that the parameters of the relationship in the middle is where the focus needs to be.

The Internet Identity Workshop focuses on what has been called user-centric identity. Basically asking the question how can people manage their own identity across the range of websites, services, companies and organizations that they belong to, purchase from and participate with. IIW is a working meeting for a range of groups focused on the technical, social and legal issues arising with the emergence identity, relationship and social layer of the web.

I think this year Identity as a service will make a strong appearance. Companies like Symplified are doing interesting things that have application in the enterprise market first but could have usefulness on the consumer side maybe sooner then we think.
More from the announcement:
As a community we have been exploring these kinds of questions:

  • How are social networking sites and social media tools applying user-centric identity? (this is the question I am interested in knowing more about. How is it working now that you can actually implement some of this stuff – it is not just big ideas any more)
  • What are the open standards to make it work? (identity and semantic)
  • What are technical implementations of those standards?
  • How do different standards and technical implementations interoperate?
  • What are the new social norms and legal constructs needed to make it work?
  • What tools are needed to make it usably secure for end-users?
  • What are the businesses cases / models that drive all this?

Our event is highly participatory anyone who wants to present can do so. The agenda is made all together on Tuesday morning. We do this unconference style – for those who have not yet been you can read what community leaders have said about the effectiveness of the format.
If you are NEW please come to Monday’s introductory session starting at 1pm. If you have attended before it is worth coming to get the latest updates on where things are.
Yes it is CHEAP – $200 if you are an independant, and $350 if you come from a corporateion. You get all your meals paid for (healthy food – some say the best ever conference food).
If you want to come and you can’t afford it – talk to us – we want you there if you want to be there.
If you are an Identity blogger and have been to IIW PLEASE blog about this one coming up. We also have a blog sidebar logo you an put up.
border=”0″ hspace=”3″ vspace=”3″ align=”left” title=”IIW2008 Registration banner”alt=”IIW2008 Registration banner” />

PARTY!!! after IIW / before DSS Party hosted by Chi.mp

By Leave a Comment

So this year after the Internet Identity Workshop there is going to be the Data Sharing Summit – in between is going to be the Chi.mp Happy Hour – in honor of Decentralized User-Centric Identity.
It is FREE (if you RSVP) from 6pm to 8pm Wednesday May 14th at Temptations, 288 Castro Street, Mountain View, CA 94041
You can eat there or move on to other fine venues on Castro Street.
I have to say how personally greatful I am to be working with Tony and his team on this event.
I met Tony about 2 months ago in NYC when he came to the Identity Commons meetup that Ryan Janssen hosted with me at Angel Soft. We talked a lot about the community and the history and the future – Ken Jordan, author of the Augmented Social Network: Building Identity and Trust into the Next Generation Internet (2003 First Monday), was there too. He has been doing a great job blogging about the issues on Own Your Identity and I am excited to introduce him to the whole Identity Commons and Data Sharing Community this week.

IIW and DSS retweeter set up on Twitter: follow IIW6

By 1 Comment

I have a ‘retweeter’ for the week of events set up at Group Tweet. My thought is we should just use one for both events – to help information flow between them. (if people really want a different one for both we can do that but lets discuss)
So how does this work.
First get a twitter account.
Then Follow IIW6 (this is because it is the 6th Internet Identity Workshop)
Then IIW6 will follow you back
When you direct message IIW6 it will be rebroadcast out to all the other subscribers to IIW6.
To direct message you simply type “d iiw6 Kim is giving a great talk in room A”
Then IIW6 will say “via @identitywoman Kim is giving a great talk in room A” and everyone who is following IIW6 will hear it.
With this set up we can talk to each other – back channel like.
The tweets that get sent out are currently sent to public.
If you have never tweeted before I think this a great opportunity to try it.
You can just follow one account – even have it come to your phone (because the volume won’t be that high) to do that you have to set device updates from IIW6 to ‘on’ another step after you click follow. It is very unlikely it will go over you total limit for text messaging for the month usually 150 or 200 messages on a standard plan.

IIW Monday is FREE & program announced

By Leave a Comment

If you are wondering what the Internet Identity Workshop is all about we have a new articulation posted on the main wiki page for our upcoming conference. It goes into the range of topics covered along with the technology and social issues. This is our 6th event and I think it will be a great one.
**** MONDAY IS FREE (beginning at 1PM) ****
We have Monday’s program figured out and Monday afternoon is FREE to anyone who wants to come and check out the emerging field. We will open at 1pm.
We will open with a ‘newbie’ perspective from Ryan Janssen who has been an amazing active reader of the community blogs and writing about it as Dr. Star Cat

Everyone will get a hand out of all the community project one pagers.
Presentations will then follow about five centers of gravity in the community that we see:
The VENN OF IDENTITY
1) OpenID – David Recordon
2) SAML/Liberty Alliance – Paul Madsen
3) i-cards – Pamela Dingle
4) Data sharing/linking – Drummond Reed
5) Vendor Relationship Management Project – Chris Carfi
Between 3:30 and 4:00 we will be all together – considering “what useful things can we do” along with other questions please be there for this if you feel all up to speed on “everything”. We think that the presentations will be informative for those already familiar with the landscape it has moved forward since we last were together – so we encourage you all to get there at 1PM.
We are working on a blog push on Thursday May 1st – blog about it that day- (if you miss that day – blog about it anyways over the weekend)

Giddy about IIW & Monday is Free

By Leave a Comment

I am Giddy with excitement about IIW. Really – I have been bouncing off the walls all day. Almost* all my ‘identity’ friends are coming together and some new friends are showing up to meet you all. New people I don’t know will be there and adding to the mix.
We are experimenting with a new way to do monday with our introductory track being lead and choreographed by Phil. Each of the working groups/ major projects will have one-pagers for everyone to get a clear picture of the different activities. (BTW you still have time to get your one pagers to me).
Monday’s Introductory Track is going to be Free for folks who want to ‘check it out’ to come by. If they want to stay for dinner they are welcome if they chip in. If they want to stay for the conference they can register for it.
Joseph has written a great post about ‘why’ IIW has been really valuable to him and Plaxo.
Sean Ammirati has a great post just posted on Read/Write Web highlights why user-centric identity is important and how it fits into some of the themes discussed on RWW.
I hope we do get ‘slammed’ because it would be great to have more people who really want to engage. As a producer I get really worried about this because we ordered food for 150 people. So I will take a deep breath and hope it all works out.
So…The MC ‘position’ for the Untalent Show is open. If you would be interested in doing this let me know (Eve Maler who has been the MC before is not going to be at this IIW). Prepare your talents’ it could be anything – really. We are a friendly bunch….You can also do hybrid creations – we often have a few verses from a popular song – reauthored to reflect the community’s unique perspective on things.
IIW is a Community event and there is basically “no staff” (There are some students who are there to help ‘extra’ but that is not staff.)
This year my goal is to actually have enough ‘space’ to attend 50% of sessions (I only really attended one last time). So we are going to have a volunteer sign up opportunity so many people can do a few small things to make our event go well. So look for this if you would like to help. ALSO each person taking responsibility and doing the little things like putting your lunch plate in the trash helps make our space nice.
Oh and this IIW we are going to do compostables. So all of our plates, knives, forks, clear cups for juice will go to compost. (The coffee cups are brought by Rich and as far as I know are not compostable)
If you want to BRING YOUR OWN COFFEE MUG you could be trash free for IIW.
I can’t wait – it is going to be great!
* Bob Blakley is not going to be at IIW – some important other thing he has to do for us all.

Identity Faire? just come to IIW

By 1 Comment

David Kerns proposes an “Identity Faire”

Now, I do agree that we need more conferences of this type. We do have them in North America – things like Courion’s Converge, the Internet Identity Workshops and NetPro’s Directory Experts Conference come to mind

He forgets two more conferences DIDW and Burton Group Catalyst has a significant Identity component and Gartner had and Identity and Access Management Summit.
This idea was inspired by this comment by Symlabs’ Chief Architect Felix Gaehtgens.

He recently dropped me a note to tell me about a European Identity conference he’d attended, and what he found unique about it. In his own words:
“Last week, I was at the 1st European Identity Conference in Munich. This conference is organized by Kuppinger + Cole, a German Identity Analyst group. We know that a lot of new ID Conferences are springing up, since ID management is a hot topic, and many organizers are trying to cash in on numerous conferences out there. However, this conference had something truly unique.
“So what made this conference stand out? First of all, the scope of the presentations. This was something completely new that I haven’t seen before. Most conferences pitch (exclusively, unfortunately) to the CxOs, management and decision makers, and are therefore kept to the high level. This conference also addressed those needs with overviews, workshops and user/case study presentations. HOWEVER, and this is what I liked about it, this was the first conference (in my opinion) that had a broader scope by also addressing the needs of those techies and geeks that roam these types of conferences.
“There were several presentations and workshops that were very technical and ‘hands-on’, going into the real guts of the technology and implementations. I’ve been to a presentation where a person from a German bank talked about how to integrate Kerberos between Unix and Windows. That presentation was fantastic, and very lively. You could feel the electricity in the air with all those geeks like me talking technology. Then there was a real ‘how-to’ workshop on how to boot-strap the Liberty ID-WSF (Web Services Foundation) using two different implementations using a practical example and showing how everything fits together.”

Many of the Identity Gang / Commons folks I spoke to about the conference said it was really just the same conference they keep going to. Talking heads on the range of identity topics. I would put forward that more conferences with talking heads are not needed but an expansion of conferences with cross cutting themes and industry players that come to the Internet Identity Workshop who – do work together.

[The current conferences are] generally organized around a particular vendor, product or technology rather than as part of a conference covering a broad spectrum of identity. Maybe what we really need is an identity fair (or “identitie faire”) with PowerPoint presentations for those who need them and hands-on labs for those who don’t. Something for everyone, under the big top. Not just a “dog-and-pony” show, but a real three ring circus. Who’ll step up and organize this?

Eugene Kim , Phil and I have been thinking about IIW and how to make improvements for next time. We welcome community input on how to make it better – so write us.
I am very clear that we need to systemically as a community have and execute a strategy to reach out to other pockets of folks explicitly doing “identity” work AND to our neighboring fields like Semantic Technology and get them involved in IIW. I think it was good that the ITU folks joined us at IIW this time. There was a call from the floor for more Lawyers next time. I would love to see some proactive outreach to those technical/professional identity communities who you see should be involved in a ‘faire’ being explicitly invited to IIW.

The IIW2007a Spoken Word: CommunityIdentityAuthenticity

By Leave a Comment

CommunityIdentityAuthenticity

This community…has its challenges.

Harnessing its own enthusiasm and energy to affect real change
It’s a challenge…
Moving together
despite differences in the details
Getting the populace to understand
what we can barely understand and
communicate
between ourselves
It’s a challenge…
Communicating the understanding and importance of internet identity
to the average member
of society
It’s a challenge…
Trust
Divergence versus Convergence
Policy evaluation privacy evaluation
I just feel like shouting out …
My life
My terms:
Choice, Privacy and Control !
Like shouting…
One hundred and eighty passwords — and counting — is too many !!

Shouting
Where’s the money?!
We need to get out of the technology ivory tower!

Shouting

V R M!
I feel like shouting

We are all painting variations on the same picture!
— and it is hard
to see
what the image is.
And then I think, if I were the user, I would say

Don’t rock the boat!

I would say

Keep it simple and make it just…work.
Keep it simple !!!
Why can’t you make this easier for me?
I would say…
What is actually happening here?
Here is what I wish for the future:
I wish it would .. “just work” … for users.
Here’s what I hope for:
Something my dad can use and not get phished.
Here is my dream:
That we get how to engage in real-value, consensual transactions
Here is my dream:
Breaking down power structures
safe and powerful for everyone
in all contexts
Becoming invisible
and indispensable
Authenticity.
— by Mark Aiken, Kevin Turner, Brad Fitzpatrick, Eddie Codel, Peter Davis, Ajay Madhok, Mike Jones, Johannes Ernst, Joe Andrieu, Mark Lentczner, David Recordon, Henrik Biering, Drummond, Reed, V. Gale, Gerald Beuchett, heathervescent, Weston Triemstra, Martin Atkins, Steve Williams, Paul Bryan and Lisa Heft
This spoken word piece was the closing for the
Internet Identity Workshop
May 15, 2007 — Mountain View, California, USA, Earth