This is the first time that I have seen Roger Sullivan since he became President of the Liberty Alliance. He introduced Liberty Alliance and shared their new definition of themselves.
Liberty Alliance is the only global body working on define and drive open technology standards, privacy and business guidelines for digital identity management.
He was very explicitly in recognizing that there were lots of people in the industry working on solving identity management problems.
He talked about what he saw Liberty doing and looking to do in the next year:
- Exhibiting “Market Leadership” through demonstrating value in a particular space
- Increasing Transparency – be recognixed for defining open standards.
- Achieve good visability for members and non-members to activities early and often
- Inclusiveness work effectively with other industry bodies and individuals to define and develop the market – other organizations unique and different
- Reduce barriers to participation.
He spoke again about the need to work with other organizations working on identity and to work together so that the customers are not confused by articulating the commonalities and differences. I completely agree with this however I must point out the obvious – by naming openLiberty -openLiberty market confusion will result because of the similarity with the OpenID name. As someone who spends an enormous amount of her time communicating with to the people and companies in “the market” this just added yet another thing that I must explain to people. Sigh.
He closed by highlighting members of the board of Liberty and their companies. AOL, France Telecom, Ericsson, Fidelity, HP, NTT, Intel, Oracle, Sun, Novell.
They have a new website design that seems easier to navigate. I found this history timeline, backgrounder PDF, and a public community section.