This is really exciting news for the identity community since getting mainstream adoption of OpenID has been a challenge for the community. They worked with JanRain on implementing the project. Here is the RWW story.

I just went to the KMart site to “join”, and at first I thought it wasn’t there. Turns out the option to sign up with OpenID is below the fold; you have to scroll down to find it. This is disappointing – it turns out that many web users don’t actually know how to scroll! Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, AOL, Twitter, and MySpace are on the first set of options; OpenID and Windows Live ID are on the second.

I choose the OpenID option and entered my i-name (yes, I still use it) and it worked. I like the new “pop-up” method of supporting authentication – it does the redirection without taking you away from the website. I think the OpenID community is improving the UI by leaps and bounds.

One thing I don’t like is having to “pick a screen name” I always get stuck I went with Kaliya figuring that this would be a profile I would almost never use. I may delete it.

Congratulations!

This past month has been interesting for Facebook – they hired Timothy Sparapani as their lobbyist in Washington:

As a prominent privacy advocate, Timothy Sparapani, former senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that Internet companies have too much control over consumers’ data. The self-described “privacy zealot” didn’t join Facebook until seven months ago because he was uneasy about revealing personal information on the site.

He joins 24-year-old Adam Coner for the last year who has had as his main job “educat[ing] members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers about leveraging Facebook to reach constituents.”

The current Chief Privacy officer Chris Kelly will be going on a leave of absence in September to focus on running for Attorney General of California.

EPIC has a very detailed page about Facebook Privacy. It is an impressive page that will give you pause. It outlines all the major features of the service it has concerns about. It has a list of all the EPIC Actions related to Facebook too.

This week Facebook is taking some steps to improve privacy from its website:

The power to share is the cornerstone of Facebook. Privacy and the tools for tailoring what information is shared with whom are at the heart of trust. Over the past five years, Facebook has learned that effective privacy is grounded in three basic principles:

• Control. When people can easily control the audience for their information and content, they share more and they’re able to better connect with the people who matter in their lives.

• Simplicity. When tools are simple, people are more likely to use them and understand them.

• Connection. With effective tools, people can successfully balance their desire to control access to information with their desire to connect – to discover and be discovered by those they care about.

That’s why in the coming days, we’ll be improving privacy on Facebook by launching a series of tests that guide people to new, simpler tools of control and connection.

I wrote about some of the issues I have with Facebook when I heard Dave Morin talk at SXSW “Am I to “old” to get Facebook – or do they not get it?”. I highlighted 3 different issues:

• What Blane Cook describes as “being in a room with everyone you ever met all the time”: all my friends from different contexts of my life get all the same ’status’ updates and I don’t use them cause I feel like it is social spam to speak to them with the same voice and same frequency. I also don’t like that it broadcasts everything I “do” in the network to everyone.

• “Real Names” vs. handles online – their belief they have “everyone’s real name in facebook”

• The difference that women experience in online space and how they manage and protect their identity and what information is online.

Here is what they are saying about how to address this issue:

They are introducing a Publisher Privacy Control so that on a per-post basis users can control who sees each post. Friends, Friends and Family etc. On the other end of the spectrum, you can also share with “everyone” now.

They are simplifying their privacy settings. Hopefully this will make it more usable.

They are figuring out how to gracefully help people transition between the old settings and the new way.

They are asking everyone to revisit their settings…because:

We think Facebook is most useful when people can find and connect with each other, which is why this tool will enable you to make available those parts of your profile that you feel comfortable sharing in order to facilitate better connection. You will have the choice of being as open or as limited in the sharing of this information as you want.

The byline on the post is cute:

Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, is glad to be offering you more control.

Read Write Web goes into their understanding of the announcement and user experience. This is a long, good piece.

I found this last night on Slashdot – it was to important not to blog about. “India to Put All Citizen Info into Central Database“

Reading the article in The Independent this stood out for me

The creation of the ID or Unique Identification Number (UID) was a major plank of the manifesto of the ruling Congress Party during the recent election.

India is not a western democracy where “everyone” has papers and certificates of birth. As the article highlights

“This could be used as a security measure by the government which leaves migrant workers, refugees and other stateless people in India in limbo, without access to public services, employment and basic welfare.”

Our identities don’t come from government – they come from our social interactions and relationships.

The other issue that comes from this is “everyone in one database” is a giant honey pot.

This is cross posted on the IIW blog .

When we first started meeting (the early “seedling” meetings of community) at other people’s conferences, there were Microsoft people, Liberty Alliance/SAML people, Shibboleth implementers, user-centric folks (OpenID, LID, sxip, i-names/xri), big idea folks (Doc Searls), etc. We met for a couple of hours at a time and knew there was common ground, but knew we needed more time to really understand each other: to have more of a shared language and develop enough strength in the relationships in the community to work together. We figured we needed to have more time to meet together, so we convened the Internet Identity Workshop. That first event was amazing and quite formative – kicking off the conversation that would lead to OpenIDv2 via Yadis. Kim Cameron presented his 7 laws of identity that have become foundational to community thinking and introduced the idea of information cards and selectors; much work is now happening around this.

Soon afterward Brett McDowell the ED at Liberty Alliance approached me and Phil about having an Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) next to (the days following and in the same location) an upcoming Liberty Alliance meeting. We thought this was a great idea to create more space for people to meet about user-centric identity technologies and issues. When Microsoft got wind of this, boy did I get an earful – they felt that the neutrality of IIW would be totally compromised if it came to be that closely associated with Liberty Alliance (remember Liberty Alliance was originally formed by Sun and others in response to Microsoft Passport).

IIW had provided a forum for anyone working on user-centric identity technologies to come together without anyone making an “agenda” for the meeting or creating a “technology road map.” Literally anyone who came could put a subject on the agenda on the day of the event. All parties did want to increase dialogue and cross-pollination among the groups, and we found a way through by jointly (IIW and Liberty Alliance) producing what we named the Identity Open Space (we also said we would be open to co-producing with others who asked – we did two with Digital Identity World). It was in Vancouver Canada and Kim Cameron along with several Microsoft folks along with many in the user-centric community attended and because it was the two days after a Liberty Alliance meeting many Liberty people were also there, and it was a good event that moved the industry forward.

Right in the middle of getting this worked out – I on a personal level had a very intense experience being caught in the middle – a giant trade association on one side and Microsoft on the other. We (me, Phil, Doc, Kim, Brett) managed to navigate this as a community and do the right thing and we became stronger as a community for having done so.

We continued to have IIW’s every 6 months and in 2006 it was clear we were going beyond just IIW and needed a community home/container to connect community efforts and provide common services (blogs, wikis, bank account for doing common work like holding events). We held a series of conversations and decided to create a community organization, drawing on an existing one, Identity Commons – the community liked the purpose and principles approach for bringing people together. As a codition of brand transfer to a our nonprofit organization we worked on our version of purpose and principles. There were some delays in actually getting the organization legally formed and the brand transfered, but in 2007 we were an official organization: a network of organizations, initiatives, and projects all working on different aspects of a people-centric identity layer of the web. There are several places you can read about community history and background around Identity Commons. I wrote “What the heck is Identity Commons?”.

Next fall we are hosting our 9th event. Many things have move forward significantly in the community – OpenIDv2, OAuth, Venn of Identity paper, OSIS Interop, Concordia use-cases, Information Card evolution including Augmented Browsing with Action Cards, Portable Contacts, Open Social, OpenID/OAuth hybrid, Activity Streams, Distributed Social Networking, Discovery particularly XRD. So what has made IIW work so well in fostering the kind of collaboration and innovation that has emerged from it?

• We have kept the space free: no one has the ability to buy time at the conference.
• All ideas are welcome: there is no committee controlling the agenda, so politics about what is “on the agenda” or “not” just doesn’t happen.
• It is a working workshop to solve real problems, move technical projects forward and discuss interoperability among them.
• We put attention towards creating the space for relationships between people to form naturally over time and thus enabled trust to grow.

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.

This Friday I am going to be co-facilitating a day of learning and exchange about Innovation, Design and Serious Games Exchange this Friday in San Francisco. I would like to invite you all to participate. It will be an open space style unconfernece – with attendees creating the agenda – it is open to all.

Last September I took a training with the founder of Innovation Games Luke Hohmman (to be a game facilitator) and it was amazing set of fun “games” to play with the users/customers of one’s products. Quite different then a focus group in terms of the kind of information that you get about how to shape/design your products. (wikipedia article – details all 12 games and information about selecting the appropriate game)

I know what you are asking how is playing games going to help with my products, workplace or process. I wondered this too….her is a simple example.

I explained one of them (Buy a Feature) this way at the Online Community Unconference – say you have a next generation set of features to build for your product – you have 10 potential features but only time to build a few of them – how do you prioritize/decide about which ones to put in the next release?
Buy a Feature is a game you can play o do this (and it is both online and face to face)
You bring in 10 current customers together and give them each $200 of play money. You give each of your features a cost totaling $3000-$4000 (one might be $100 (really easy to build) $500 (harder/more time) etc.) They must amongst them selves figure out how to spend their $2000 to by a limited set of the 10 features. You could play this with several sets of customers and then gather information about what they want. It helps you make decisions about what to build AND it is fun for them to play the game of “buying” the features they want.
The conference is not limited to “just” innovation games but also includes other design and “serious” games.

• Design games: Offering collaborative design activities within a game format improves idea generation and communication among stakeholders. By shifting focus to the game, power relations and other factors that might hamper idea generation, are downplayed

• Serious games: Ranging from theater improvisation to interactive games technology within non-entertainment sectors, serious games have uses in education, government, health, military, science, corporate training, first responders, and social change

You don’t have to be an expert to attend – if you are just exploring these things we invite you along.

There have been a few companies in the identity space that have used these tools – I just can’t say who.

I am also happy to talk with folks if they are interested in using games to innovate and do better product design in the identity and social web space.

Here is the book if you are interested in learning more.

“Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play” (Luke Hohmann)

I got a request for the images I posted in “Personal Anchors on the Web for Digital Identity” from David Larlet to use in a slide presentation in France. I decided to open them up and post them here.

Below are versions with english text and a version without english text.

(more…)

I have been evangelizing about user-centric identity on the web 5 years. I talk about the ideas with people constantly explaining and re-explaining different developments in the field, forward looking projects and visionary ideas community members talk about. I watch what I say carefully and I notice when I start thinking and explaining something differently.

The new term that has emerged for me this week is “anchor on the web”... as in Where is your anchor on the web? or People have an anchor on the web – this is there “identity” – the question is do they control (owning a domain name) it or is it controlled by the company that does.

I link this metaphor because it evokes the image of a boat that is you and an anchor that is linking you to somewhere – do you want this to land in a stable place that you have control over? Likely yes – if you anchor to someone else’s ship (have your name in their domain space) you are literally tied to them. Rather then being able to visit them on your own terms and leave if you like.

You can get copies of these images under CC license here.

In my last post I talked about facebook URLs and people getting their own domain name along with the contrast of usability with each. Chris Messina also wrote about facebook URLs and correctly points out that this is a battle over your digital identity.

I got a comment today from IWantMyName.com (they also have a blog) saying I was absolutely right about usability issues that domain registrars have.

You are absolutely right. It’s a common problem of domain registrars / hosting providers. They’re too focused on up-selling other services and the secondary market instead of serving the actual internet user. We’re watching the identity community closely with iWantMyName and will definitely provide identity management features in the future. For now, we already made the domain registration process easy and are helping users setting up apps like Gmail, Tumblr, Posterous etc.

Coincidently – today at SemTech the CEO of Nombray presented as part of Chris Saad’s talk about DataPortability. They let you very easily create a website under your own domain name that aggregates your information from around the web. I haven’t paid the $10 yet but I was very impressed with the usability of the sign up process and you can see my the 1/2 working site here.

There is of course Chi.mp too – but some how it feels a bit more like being tied to somewhere then actually owning your own domain (paying for it) and setting up the services under it.

The next level of interoperability and user-empowerment will be the way these systems map/document your online life and how they give you the data in a standard way when you leave their service to go to a different one.

I am hopeful these sites are the basis of what will become personal data stores that project VRM has brainstormed about and people/companies are developing.

UpDate: Wow and that was Post: 1000 for this blog!

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.

Basically this post is to say I am “back” – I have a bit more time on my hands this summer to pay attention to Cyberspace and want to give attention to expressing my thoughts and ideas in text online again. I am inspired by this mention by Scoble around the launch of  Building 43 that is happening today. I thought it was an actual physical space when I got the invitation. Turns out it is a website that Robert Scoble is leading. It is focused on what he calls the 2010 web and others call Web 3.0.

Here’s another way to put it. When you look at Techmeme and see all the tech bloggers yammering on about the latest cool things, the way they were this week about Facebook’s new URLs that are coming out tomorrow, or Apple’s new iPhone, do they look backward and think about the average businessperson? Not in my experience. We don’t have an industry conversation about how to actually use all this cool stuff to improve lives, make businesses stronger and closer to their customers, and have some fun.

A few people here and there are trying. I watch what Chris Messina, David Recordon, Marc Canter, Joseph Smarr, Kaliya Hamlin, and a group of others are trying to do by pushing a more open web. Those are the kinds of efforts that inspire me and are inspiring Building43. Can we build on what they are trying to do and take it to main street?

This actually impresses me cause I thought Scoble had just become an internet micro-celebrety for its own sake. I look forward to contributing to the conversation about the future of what is becoming a very social web where peoples identity online matters deeply.

Here is where I have been since my last post.

Since Social Web Foo Camp and posting the 80% complete article about communities context and online life. I haven’t blogged. I have been very busy though.   

Immediately following I attended the “identity day” at RSA on Monday April 20th -  talks were given from the front of the room for a day. Liberty Alliance put the day together along with the Information Card Foundation- The Kantara Initiative was “launched”. I am not clear that the format of the day actually provided greater understanding by those outside our community that are confused by all the activity.

The exciting thing that happened leading up to this day was the launch of the new Information Card Foundation Website – I gave some feedback that was included in the core language and messaging. It has great Flash animation explaining the cards along with featured projects including the GSA Demo.

RSA was fun – I didn’t spend to much time in sessions mostly talking to people in the community. I led a peer-to-peer session on Business Models for Claims Based Identity. A good group attended however the room layout was cold and stale. (I will be writing about it on my unconference blog shortly).

Penguin Day followed on April 25th. This is a super fun day facilitated by Allen Gunn focused on Non-Profits and Open Source. I learned more about TikiWiki as a content management system (I am considering it as the platform for She’s Geeky). I also was impressed by how much CiviCRM had improved. I also talked to a college registrar very interested in how information card technology might play a roll in getting them out of paper based management of student records and certification.

The Nonprofit Technology Conference followed – they had a large exhibit hall and I talked to many of the vendors there about OpenID and Information Cards – about 1/2 had heard about OpenID and almost none about Information Cards. It was great to talk to my friends in the industry (I have been attending this conference since 2004). Social Actions is progressing and is creating a way to aggregate action information for social good.

I flew to NYC to facilitate the Creative Unconference on May 7-8 put on by the One Club for Art and Copy collaborating with the Society for Digital Agencies.  This was during Creative Week. The One Club gives out bronze, sliver and gold pencil’s – some of the most prestigious awards in the advertising business. They attended their interactive awards on Friday night – I brought Robert Tolmach along as a guest and he told me about his new project – Class Wish.

I went to DC and spent the day at the Sex 2.0 conference at the intersection of social media, feminism and sexuality. I was particularly interested in how this community was thinking thinking about and dealing identity online and off. Many people had names they went by within the community that were different from their “every day” names. Several presenters talked about having two facebook profiles (one for their sex life and one for regular life) I pointed out that this against facebook policy and they were surprised – it seemed very natural to have two persona’s. Other presenters talked about being fully “out” completely linking their sex life.

I attended the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology Women of Vision Awards. It was a very inspiring evening. Padmashree Warrior the CTO of Cisco was the key note speaker – she was super inspiring and gave ideas about how to connect to the community 2.0 audience.

I spoke at Community 2.0 about identity technologies. I covered OpenID, OAuth and Information Cards and at the end mentioned project VRM for those who were very forward looking. It was a relatively small conference and I spent a lot of time preparing for the talk with my speech coach. My issue has been having to much to say – I can talk about identity for hours and in great detail. Lura helped me figure out what to say. I did a good job clearly communicating and had several people say they enjoyed my talk and it gave them some practical information not just social media guru hype.

I went to the first day of the VRM workshop and was totally impressed by the quality of projects and companies working in the space. Several attendees didn’t know about IIW and a few signed up to attend.

The Internet Identity Workshop was AMAZING. We had the same number of attendees as we usually do. I am going to write some more posts about the event soon. The next IIW is November 3-5 in Mountain View.

I went to the Maker Faire on Sunday the 31st of May – it was fun to see all the stuff people are making. I also got a LiveScribe Pen. I will be using it for diagrams on this blog in the coming months.

June 1 was CommunityOne where i saw Jono Bacon talk about Community there were 10 people to see him speak in an auditorium that held 1000.

I flew to Boston and met with Fabio Carara of the Venice Project Center and Venice 2.0 – they are considering how to leverage 20 years worth of geo-data. We are discussing building a community including a few unconferences.   

I had dinner with Mary Ruddy and we continued progress on Identity Commons infrastructure – particularly our new blog/website.

I facilitated the Mass Technology Leadership Council Spring Meeting that asked the question “What is the future of Software and the Internet” I lead a session on identity – they asked good questions and were impressed by all the activity in the space.

I flew to San Francisco – to make it back for the 2nd Scala Lift Off. Scala is a programming language – some describe as Java++, Lift is a web framework. This is a great programming language community with an healthy online community life. I work supporting them in community building when the meet face-to-face.

Yesterday I was working with Forum One facilitating the 4th Online Community Unconference. This is a great community of online community managers (the folks who moderate online community), platform providers (software providers) and hosts (companies that have online communities). I presented a session about OpenID, OAuth and Information Cards – I even got a bottle of wine during the closing from one of the attendees thanking me for the quality of information that I shared.

Today it is the Building 43 party at Tech Crunch and next week is SemWeb in San Jose – I will likely make it to the Personal Democracy Forum. The next “identity” event is Burton Group Catalyst at the end of July in San Diego.

I look forward engaging in this medium again with a post every few days.  

Yesterday morning I put up an early version of a model I have been thinking about since 2004 about linking face to face communities of different kinds and online social tools.

Community Contexts and Weaving the Social Web

It is an EARLY version – like 80% done. The diagrams will be improved – I threw in what was on the white board yesturday after our conversation. I am hoping with some feedback to complete it by the end of this month.

Today is the last day of early bird registration for the Internet Identity Workshop. No this is not an April Fools Joke either

Bob’s Relationship Paper is now available. If you haven’t read it yet – you should. It articulates a key point about the challenge regarding the current frame of social networks – relationships are just lines on a graph rather then being nodes that hold information about the nature and parameters of the relationship.

Things are coming together for heading to London – I can’t believe I leave tomorrow. The plan is to get up early tomorrow and then sleep on the plane. I have found accommodations for the whole time. I will be in Oxford from the 2-6 and then in london from the 6-11.

The schedule has got a bit more detail in it – if you want to edit it ping me and I can set up an account. I am having e-mail conversations with a few folks about different things.

Joseph Boyle who came to our identity panel at sxsw and then joined us for lunch has been sharing with me some of his OpenID challenges. These happen all the time – ALL THE TIME. Thing is – he is a tech guy and he still can’t get any of this to work. I asked him to document his challenges so I could share them with you – he sent this to me and O’Reilly tech folks (that was where he was trying to login)… I am hoping that these UI issues can be resolved soon.

I was going to sign up at:
https://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2009/user/account/signup/attendee#
and saw a Sign up with an OpenID option. Since I’m interested in OpenID, I thought I’d try to use an OpenID associated with one of my Yahoo or Google accounts, but this is proving more difficult than I expected.
I did manage to find Yahoo’s page for turning on OpenID support for my Yahoo account and did this, getting response:

Feeling geeky?

When you log in to a website that supports OpenID login we’ll send your OpenID identifier to the website so it can identify you.

To make things easy, we have generated this identifier for you:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/T_HpXDQkssQpI_sR……………………..

You don’t need to save this identifier. While logging in to websites, you can simply look for a Yahoo! button or typeyahoo.com in the OpenID text field. You can also choose additional custom identifiers for your Yahoo! account below.

Not geeky enough, apparently, as pasting the Yahoo-provided identifiers into your OpenID box gives errors:
Unable to find OpenID server for ‘https://me.yahoo.com/a/T_HpXDQkssQpI_sR…………………….’Unable to find OpenID server for ‘http://www.flickr.com/photos/josephboyle’
Help! What am I doing wrong? Thanks, Joseph Boyle

Today is Ada Lovelace Day – over at She’s Geeky we blogged about the pledge for today succeeding a few months ago.

Mary Hodder is a good friend and someone I admire a lot for her courage in doing a video startup Dabble as a lone woman founder. She has taught me a lot about technology and has been a good friend for many years.

In the Identity World I am grateful for the other women who have contributed to the field and have been good friends while at conferences – Mary Ruddy and Pam Dingle also both have their own consultancies now.   

Eve Maler is a big inspiration for me – I actually found her blog Pushing String and told Drummond who I was working with at the time he had to meet her. I loved the weaving of cross stitch with XML on that blog – the title says it all. It would be a year or two before we finally met – her URL is also cool – XMLGrrl – another “identity super hero”

I love women who work in tech – one of the reasons I founded She’s Geeky. We are looking ahead to our next conference April 18th in Northern Virginia (DC Area) that I won’t be facilitating because of an invite to an even here in California that has to do with identity.

Pam has officially announced launching her new company – Bonsai Identity.

I remember when I first met Pam at the very end of the first DIDW that I went to in the fall of 2004. I really got to know her when we were attending the Burton Group catalyst conference in 2005.

She has been a great friend to me in the community and now when we go to conferences we are often roomies.

Congratulations Pam!

A friend shared this link with me today. It is a guy on Connan O’Brien.

“The video can’t be embedded apparently so you have to click over to it (I am already “unhappy” about that)” – ok inside joke related to the video.

Someone sent me this link from SF Gate this morning:

In the wake of the hugely depressing shutdown of the Rocky and the Seattle P.I., and with recent death threats to the SF Chronicle and what looks to be a savage year indeed for print newspapers everywhere, these big guns have all stepped away from their normal discussions of deep tech arcania and turned their attention to a 500-year-old technology undergoing its first epic, bloody revolution.

I know people who have been working and building the emerging web who have been trying to dialogue with those in the news industry for the last 9 years about what was happening and coming.

The grand upshot? They don’t really have any idea. But they have some curious, slippery, hopeful, but ultimately disappointing theories. Theories that, to my mind, consistently miss the mark, in at least one or two vital ways.

The dismissiveness tone of the article just sort of proves thew whole issue.

From Clay’s Shirky’s blogs Newspapers Think the Unthinkable:

The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several. One was to partner with companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service that was less chaotic than the open internet. Another plan was to educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. Alternatively, they could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: sue copyright infringers directly, making an example of them.

It is as if when the web people say “i told you so” and “we tried to help” they plug their ears and continue to make noise so they just can’t “hear”.

continued from Clay’s essay…. The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!”

No technologists who are on the cutting edge of technology don’t know what is next – there are things people are working on in different corners – we are working on identity over here…Sem Web folks are working on their things. WE STILL DON’T KNOW but we do know it will arise out of the communities we are participating in and the emergent effect of the tools we use. The Newspaper people didn’t really roll up their sleeves and dive in to learn about the web and how to do what they do but in more interesting web ways (like linking in their articles that are online). Clay sites Craigs List as an example – of “we didn’t know” twitter is another more recent one.

Last year I worked with folks bringing the Journalism that Matters conference to Silicon Valley. I was hired specifically for my expertise in facilitating unconferences in geeky communities. They didn’t really want to hear what I had to say about what was needed in the event design to attract geeks (not that many came even though it was at Yahoo!). A month before the event happened they decided to just go ahead without further help/advice from me. I learned from this experience

• They don’t understand web architecture (the first thing I told them was to get their online digital presence in order. – they had a different blog for each event, a bad late ’90’s site, they didn’t get how to organize a wiki).
• Journalists work alone generally (making collaboartion with co-organizers on the conference a challenge).
• There is a higher normative level of conflict in the tech world compared to the journalism world.
• They are not experts in facilitating time/space for large groups of people (some how the agenda development was driven by the journalist’s need to “let certain people speak”)
• They are in deep morning and loss for the way of their profession and were unable to engage/look at the future – they would need a lot of “emotional clearing” before they could think in new ways about the future.

There is one asset that was developed that I am quite proud of it is a value network map of the newsroom and the new news ecology.

I think these says a lot about what is going on and how to think about things in new ways. One of the reasons these got developed is they kept talking about “the news room” and I challenged the assumption that eveyone would know what that was.

So, I am going to be traveling to the UK for the Oxford Internet Institute meeting on April 2-3 about legal issues. I am “representing the user” at least this is what my position paper will be on.

I decided it was worth it to spend week longer in London until the 11th and meet people, do some fun things, talk about identity etc.

Since I heard about Jeff Barr (an Amazon Evangelist) opening his schedule via wiki it seemed like it would make sense to do sometime. This trip is the time. It is also a good opportunity to use my personal wiki.

Here is the page about My Trip.

• I want to go to go see some cultural things.
• I am going to prepare a 30 min talk – Identity Tech 101 to talk about the current state of where things are – it will be non-technical with pointers to technical material for those who want to dive in.
• I am open to talking on if people want or just having a meal with a small group.
• • I am interested in talking to folks working on VRM stuff
  • I am interested in connecting with those exploring doing things with information cards
  • I am also exploring the intersection of SemWeb and identity things.
• Travel time and options need to be considered when scheduling me.

Unlike Jeff I don’t have Amazon covering my hotel rooms. One friend has offered to put me up for the weekend of the 4th. I can’t stay there all week – I am also looking to find a couch or too.

If you have questions or suggestions please e-mail me kaliya (at) mac (dot) com with the subject “London”.

Lots has happened here at SXSW – The previous post is what i put up on my blog was what we posted on the screen during the OpenID – Oauth and the Enterprise session. hash tag #sxswid

The next session that afternoon in the same room on Open Spec development was very entertaining and I will be writing about it more this week. Hash tag #sxswos

Yesterday after the She’s Geeky Lunch I headed out to the Hula Hut for the OpenID lunch – I couldn’t help but noticing when I arrived that i was the only woman at the table – it is one of the reasons I gave my blog its name – because in 2005 after working in the user-centric identity field for a year of going to meetings with the guys working on it I was the only woman I ever saw at a meeting about the topic.

Following that I hung out on the deck of the Hula Hut and talked with Dave Morin, David Recordon, Chris Messina, Josh Elman, Joseph Smarr, John McCrae the Gowally guy and others who were in and out.

While there Josh and I started talking about one of the things I blogged about the Facebook post I did from Day one of SXSW.

I am not sure if Facebook understands that having people use their “Real Names” is not actually what creates authenticity – the issue has been on the web is not “who you are in real life” but the inability to have online persona’s that are persistent over time and context. The investment into these and the ability to have them be useful has not been solved until recently.

It was decided this would be a good topic for Social Web TV so we recorded it on the spot.

I also got to invite folks to the Internet Identity Workshop happening May 18-20th in Mountain View.

TWITTER HASH TAG FOR THIS PANEL
#sxswid

our handles
@identitywoman
@bobblakley
@etelos
@jsmarr

Panel Outline

1) Brief Intro

2) CONTEXT – 15 min
5m – looking back – enterprise IdM 101 – Bob Blakley
5m – SaaS is happening – Danny Kolke
5m – OpenID and Oauth

3) Discussion – 15-20min

4) Questions

LUNCH AFTERWARDS
we are heading over to Austin Iron Works to continue the conversation
http://idsxsw.eventbrite.com/

The next community event
INTERNET IDENTITY WORKSHOP
www.internetidentityworkshop.com

I am at SXSW this morning. I just came from the session “Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused?” about the difference between private and public spheres and how they are contextual and social contract dependent. They talked about how strange facebook was for merging all ones contexts together (this is my own critique of it). This post was written while listening to Dave Morin talk about the future of the facebook platform “The Search for a More Social Web” (it was really a product plug) – As he oppened the talk he gave us a history of human communication that had the personal computer preceding the ARPA Net (clearly he would benefit from a visit to the Computer History Museum where we hold the Internet Identity Workshop twice a year). While listening I can’t help but keep wondering if I am just to “old”.

When I was in my first year of university at UC Berkeley the web was just beginning to diffuse to widespread use in that context. We had LAND LINES then. I spent $300 a month on long distance to talk to friends back home in canada. I was not “socially” connected via electronic media back then. Some people from my “old lives” have found me in facebook but I don’t feel “socially connected” to them in that I really don’t think they care about what I am “doing now on the web” and I don’t really have an ongoing social relationship with them so that i want to know “all” about what they are doing. They are NOT my “friends” but in facebook they “are”. I don’t want to be rude and unfriend them I am “interested” in their lives – like would be interested in hearing from them once every couple months but they are not in my social world.

I notice a real gap between myself and those 10 years younger then me who had facebook IN highschool and college – they love it cause it keeps them connected to their “friends”. I wonder about this cultural social time divide.

Today I am hearing facebook talk again about how they have people’s “real identities” with their “real names” and how important this is for authenticity. Dave Morin is going around convincing people to switch from their online personal handles in twitter to their “real” names. I thought about just being “Kaliya” in twitter but decided that my online twitter persona and voice would be that of my “professional” self – “IDENTITY WOMAN” I do talk about some personal things I do and mention opinions outside of “just my professional self” but it is not “me” there are ideas and opinions and things i do on the web that are not for everyone to see and I don’t share them in twitter. What I don’t like about facebook and the idea of facebook connect is that it feeds “everything you do” by default to “everyone you know” (within that system – they call these people “friends”). I want to present different selves to different audiences not because I want to “hide” but because I am connected to very diverse communities/friends and they all don’t want to hear about everything I am going everywhere it is to much “social noise.”

I am not sure if Facebook understands that having people use their “Real Names” is not actually what creates authenticity – the issue has been on the web is not “who you are in real life” but the inability to have online persona’s that are persistent over time and context. The investment into these and the ability to have them be useful has not been solved until recently. Bob (his blog is Cesi n’est pas un Bob – a reference to the Rene Magritte painting Ceni n’est pas une pipe/This is not a pipe) and the folks at the Burton Group have been talking about the possibility of people creating Limited Liability Persona’s to create persona’s on the web that are linked to “you” if something goes wrong but is not linked.

The audience of mostly young men in their 20’s and 30’s many of them “developers” on the facebook platform cheered all that was announced today by Dave Morin. I was left wondering and wrote this post as a response.

I am a member of the bridge generation – between the hyper connected young “digital natives” and the digital immigrants. (I was on BBS’s in Highschool (the local school board set one up just for kids within the city school system – that is where I hung out). My child hood home had a rotary telephone). while on vacation in Canada this summer I was struck by the conversations that I overheard by people older then me dabbling in facebook and being kind of freaked out by it. (In Canada Facebook has much higher penetration into the “general” population). The conversations I was having with highlevel leaders in the nonprofit and social business world at a retreat I was at about the dangers of building on closed silo’s like facebook was just beginning to dawn on them – they now understood. I am also a woman and the conversation we had at She’s Geeky regarding women and their presentation of self and identity online was really good. WE ARE DIFFERENT then dudes in their 20’s in San Francisco.

So I wonder… Am I to “old” to get Facebook? – or do they not get it? “it” being the needs of older people and the ability to control in more fine grained ways what people see about me. “it” being the needs of women in social space online.

We shall see.

Today it was announced that Drummond Reed is the new Interim Executive Director of the Information Card Fouundation. I have known Drummond since I first met him with the other “identity guys” at the Planetwork Conference in 2004. I think it is a great role for Drummond and a great move for the ICF. I look forward to seeing what the foundation can do in the coming year. Next up is Identity Day at RSA.

I am really excited to be heading to Austin tomorrow for SXSW Interactive. After attending for 2 years in a row I didn’t attend last year and watched as all the tweets went by – wishing I was there.

I am facilitating a panel on Sunday morning 11:30 – it should be a lively one. OpenID, Oauth, Data Portability and the Enterprise.

It will be moderated by me, Identity Woman and include these find panelists, Bob Blakely The Burton Group, Danny Kolke Etelos, Inc., Joseph Smarr Chief Platform Architect, Plaxo Inc

The debate over identity, data and authentication is gaining ground in the social networking world. The more difficult discussion regarding enterprises and Web 2.0 has yet to start. Businesses realize that they must protect the data of their company, employees and customers. Join brave leaders from several Web Application companies that are beginning the discussion, “Are OpenID and OAuth good for the enterprise?”

Following there will be a Lunch for all those who want to continue the conversation – you can RSVP here.

There is a Project VRM Breakfast on Saturday morning (we figured that at least that morning people would be able/willing to get up early).

Monday for lunch I am inviting women interested in learning more about She’s Geeky to get together.

I will be tweeting away – and this is a good way to find me while I am there just DM me.

I will do some schedule browsing and post sessions related to identity tomorrow.

his is from Tech Crunch today …it only affects .05% of documents…
…and as they say it is a

privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services,

At least it didn’t open all documents up to everyone…

According to the notice, this sharing was limited to people “with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document”

So, I am going to have to unfollow about 1000 people from twitter. This pains me to no end but I gotta do it.

I want to “know” the people I follow and all this week I have not turned on a twitter client cause my existing followers make to much noise. Having said this – I am going to be paying attention to and taking care of the @shesgeeky account more – so the women I am following there….I won’t be following so much as IdentityWoman – my theory is that this way I will actually listen to both these accounts rather then “ignoring both” like i am doing now.

We have opened registration for the 8th Internet Identity Workshop! May 18-20th in Mountain View California.

There are a few things that are different this time around….

We have a shinny new website/blog!
Thanks to Mary Ruddy, Stas Zubalevich and Pam Dingle for helping make it happen.

We are using eventbrite to do registration – and we will be displaying the names of those who are registered.

We are asking questions as you register about what you hope accomplish /talk about at IIW and publishing them.

We have responded to the economic times and lowered the price for the first month of registration (a $50 discount for independents and a $75 for everyone else).

We have an early registration goal of 75 people by the end of the month.

We are starting on Monday morning with a hands on introduction to identity technologies and we will being participant generated sessions at 1pm on Monday.

Demo’s – community sharing of projects and products will happen on Tuesday afternoon.

We are being we have a sub theme that we are promoting - “what are the business models for identity” this is so that “business” oriented folks will attend and hopefully get some where answering this. (we might have some other explicit sub-themes we name as the workshop approaches and community members give feedback on key topics that are arising/need attention)

We will have a different venue for Tuesday night dinner!

Travel is cheaper then ever (so even though your budgets are lower you should be able to make it here for less).

The blog will have guest posts by community members leading up to the conference. (if you want to say something here just let me know)

We will have had the ID-Legal conference in April and will have a cool map of the gap between identity technologies and different legal lenses.

The same….
* We have blog badges for you to use in your posts – put on your blogs.

* We will have Monday night dinner at Tied House

* We will give community awards open style at the end of Wednesday. (if you want to be the wine/other gift buyer or donor let us know)

* The Avante (our conference hotel) will Rock!

I am really pleased to announce that She’s Geeky #4 is happening in Northern Virginia (DC Area) Saturday April 18th. Registration is Open.

It is at LMI’s facilities in McLean (they donated the space). There is one drawback – it isn’t on a metro We have a wiki up to help people coordinate rides. We plan to have an event in DC proper (on a metro line) before the end of the year (likely many months from now if not until the fall). By holding events both in and outside the city, we hope to bridge the gap between the two tech communities.

She’s Geeky in Mountain View covered a really diverse range of toipcs all
* from beekeeping to gunshot detection
* from twitter use to hardware hacking
* from personal finance to government 2.O
* from tweeking wordpress to advanced coding in ruby

I expect the same fantastic range in DC with more women from fields that we have less of in the Bay Area – defense, intelligence, aerospace, nptech, government 2.0.

We are actively looking for sponsors and accepting donations so that we can give discount scholarships to students and unemployed women.

On Wednesday I got home from a 20 day road trip that included hosting three identity dinners along the way.

In Boston, Doc Searls, Mary Ruddy, Paul Trevithick and I called a dinner on February 8th and about 12 folks came out. It was great to connect and some new people joined us. We didn’t take any pictures at that event though Attendees includedTrent Adams, Charles Andres, Gerald Beuchelt, Laura (Pistachio) Fitton, Jon Garfunkel, Chris Reynolds, Halley Suitt, Martin Sandren.

In New York City dinner was at Katz’s Deli (this was Dean’s Recommendation) on February 12th and it was a great group – including one infant. Isabell was there – who I met at OSCON in 2004 when she was working for SXIP. Other attendees included Sean Bohan, Eric Draghi, Adam Fields, Cem P, and Nicholas Givotovsky.

In Seattle a great cast of characters showed up from MSFT – Mark Wahl, Pete Rowley, Kim Cameron, Vittoria Bertocci, and Mike Jones. Andrew Nelson (a founder of IC(1)) came and shared a bit about the cool stuff he is implementing for LLLI,. Drummond Reed was there and invited Kevin Fink, Jason Jerome, Jeremy McKenzie also joined us. My friend Sarah Schacht arrived late and her presence meant that i was not the only woman there. She is working on a project Knowledge as Power that supports citizens being more effectively in their communication with legislators (this means they legislators need to know they live in their districts).

Other activities along the way included work on Identity Futures stuff with Nicholas Givotovsky and John Kelly in the Boston area.

The Online Community UConference in New York City produced by Forum One – this was a lot of fun and Mary Ruddy joined me there we got to talk about identity with a range of attendees. We speed geeked – I white boarded OpenID and Mary demo’ed information cards. I got to hang out with Pauline Ores at IBM and Susan Tenby – Gliteractica Cookie at Tech Soup. It was great to talk with both Denise Tayloe (in the picture) and Carol Altarescu from Privo were there as well.

In DC I met with the women who are connected and local about She’s Geeky coming to the city. I learned that if it isn’t on a METRO line it isn’t “in” DC. We have a donated venue space
but in Northern Virginia and not on a metro – we are going to go with it for a one day event. Working on finding an “in” DC venue for later in the year. The goal is to get all the women who “never go into the city” to come to the Northern Virginia they will have such a good time they won’t mind coming into DC when it happens there.

Last weekend in Portland I enjoyed myself at Recent Changes Camp. It was the 4th one I attended. During it I lead a session about identity – technologies and issues. The people attending had lots of good questions. Most knew about OpenID they were unfamiliar with information cards. It was interesting to hear people’s deep concern about corporate involvement in the development of these standards – the three corporate names I mentioned in relationship to information cards seemed to raise particular ire – Microsfot, Novell and IBM. I invited all those concerned to join the community and meet the people working on this stuff themselves. I mentioned Higgins (the open source project) and talked about the standardization effort at OASIS. This didn’t sway them much they “just distrusted” the corporate involvement.

I personally am very clear that corporate involvement is essential to getting an identity layer to happen. I was re-affirmed in this exchange in knowing that the corporate perspective is not enough and having a trusted space for critical conversations around issues that arise with identity need a commons for them to occur (that is a space where corporations do note have the ultimate veto about what groups are or are not allowed in the conversation). If a space like this does not exist to create a dialogue amongst diverse interests and perspectives then the risk of it not happening or not getting adoption by people.

I invited everyone throughout my travels to the Internet Identity Workshop May 18-20. Registration will be opening this week with a special recession early bird rate.

My next trip is to SXSW Interactive where I am moderating a panel on OpenID, Oauth and other identity technologies in the enterprise with Bob Blakely, Joseph Smarr and Danny Kolke – it is at 11:30 AM on Sunday.

Chris Messina has a good post up about women and the Future of Web applications (the conference and the tools).

As far as I’m concerned, one of the greatest opportunities to seize the future of web apps is to cement the necessity of diversity in our processes and in our thinking, not for the sake of diversity alone (deserving though it is) but because the technology that we produce is better for it, being more robust, more versatile and flexible, and ultimately, more humane.

The future of web apps — and the conferences that tell their stories — should not be gender-neutral or gender-blind — but gender-balanced. Today, as it was two years ago, we suffer from a severe imbalance. It is my hope that, in raising the specter of consequences of the lack of women in technology, we begin to make as much progress in stitching diversity into the fabric of our society as we are making in producing source code.

I actually invited participants at Gnomedex 2006 when I was the “MVP” (that is – i didn’t have a schedulled speaking slot but the audience “voted” me on stage to fill a 15 min void for the MVP audience member) to think about these things.

I said that the app builders in the audience should get out of their boxes and start thinking about apps that socar mom’s, and churches and other realms of social civic engagement that could really use some good apps. Places that are not brimming with white guys under the age of 30 (in San Francisco). The audience wasn’t so sure about this idea.

I personally have been asked to speak at one conference this season – Community 2.0 in May. I am working with my speach coach on the talk and very much looking forward to redeeming myself. I worked with her on the last talk I gave at Net Squared in June that went ‘ok’ and I was thankful for that.

I think my story might be helpful in addressing this issue – which is why I am sharing it.

I was tapped by O’Reilly folks to speak at eTel and Web 2.0 in 2006. I didn’t do that great at eTel – I had never given a 10 min speech. I didn’t get any outside voice to help me and I should have but it didn’t even occur to me that one might hire someone to help one in such a situation. I thought I had to do it all on my own.

After the talk they suggested I talk to a speech coach for my upcoming talk at Web 2.0 Expo that they had tapped me to do (that is I didn’t go through the submission process they just asked me) that some of their own hosts of conferences had used – I figured this was a good recommendation. I listened to his advice but it actually failed me – he was not available to help (health issues) but was not clear about how limited his ability to help would be until to late. O’Reilly conferences were not clear with me what the composition of the audience would be (it was a CMP audience not an O’Reilly audience) so I gave the wrong kind of talk.

I was very nervous about the speech – didn’t prep well for (speech coach sort of 1/2 helping (when if I had just been on my own it would have been better) he also encouraged me to push beyond what I had originally said I would cover in the talk – I didn’t sleep that much the night before. I was visionary but that didn’t match what was in the program. 1/2 the audience walked out and I was shaken to the core – basically had stage fright for a year. (here is my blog post following it). There was no talk with O’Reilly folks about what had gone wrong, what could have been better – just silence and never an invite back.

I was “on my own” it was “my responsibility” but I was also in a vacuum. YES it is up to women to take responsibility but if the whole industry is serious about changing who is “always on stage” it also takes a village of – encouragement, good advice, and support.

Women don’t self-promote like the alpha dog’s in the industry do. Sorry it is just true. Ask women in leadership hiring in the software industry. Men over promote their skill set by double when seeking employment (generally) and Women under promote their skill set by 1/2.

I am am getting much better as a speaker. I certainly know what I am talking about in the realm of user-centric digital identity having facilitated over 15 events in the field in the past 3.5 years, doing technical and non-technical evangelism and working on the subject matter for 5 years now. I don’t run around telling conference organizers that I should be speaking at their conferences either. I did apply to RSA to be a Peer-to-peer discussion leader and was chosen to do so for the second year in a row. I also was tapped to facilitate a panel on OpenID, Oauth and the enterprise at SXSW. That is all the speaking I am doing so far this season.

I organized She’s Geeky as a way to address the challenges that we face – both being small minorities at conferences and not many of the faces on stage. She’s Geeky is the most diverse technology conference I have ever been to – it has the most non-white faces I have ever seen at a technology event. Please don’t get me wrong like the woman on stage at FOWA – I love dudes. I don’t think you last long in this industry if you don’t like men, enjoy working with them and can get along in their culture. I also wish there was more women and have decided once in a while to have a women’s only space to geek out in would be a fun thing to support.

I think it is also important to mention something else. As a woman putting yourself out there is risky. I watched what happened to Kathy Sierra – it was kinda freaky. I talked to a friend of mine – another prominent women in tech that week saying how deepy what happened to Kathy had shaken me. She said – well that is what happens if you become prominent enough – you get hate speech and death threats – basically this is what you signed up for if you chose this career path. It is another reason just go about doing my business – working on facilitating the identity community rather then “raising my profile” so conference organizers might tap me. I have had a mild case of a stalker around my work as identity woman a few years ago and I really don’t want another one. Not something guys think about really when they do their day jobs in technology. The latent misogyny is apparently REAL in some corners of this community. We need to know that we have the support of community behind us and won’t be attacked for speaking out against hate speech.

The issues are complex. I hope that as an industry we can continue to address them.

Bruce writes an interesting essay about our lack of understanding about the potential toxic effects of data. Making the analogy that like our for fathers who polluted the air without understanding the long term implications we are creating data pollution and not understanding what is unfolding. This analogy is most interesting to consider.

Data is the pollution of the information age. It’s a natural byproduct of every computer-mediated interaction. It stays around forever, unless it’s disposed of. It is valuable when reused, but it must be done carefully. Otherwise, its after effects are toxic.

And just as 100 years ago people ignored pollution in our rush to build the Industrial Age, today we’re ignoring data in our rush to build the Information Age.

He highlights RFID’s, Camera’s face recognition tools for Identification, life logging recorders,

He makes an important point

Society works precisely because conversation is ephemeral; because people forget, and because people don’t have to justify every word they utter.

Conversation is not the same thing as correspondence. Words uttered in haste over morning coffee, whether spoken in a coffee shop or thumbed on a BlackBerry, are not official correspondence. A data pattern indicating “terrorist tendencies” is no substitute for a real investigation. Being constantly scrutinized undermines our social norms; furthermore, it’s creepy. Privacy isn’t just about having something to hide; it’s a basic right that has enormous value to democracy, liberty, and our humanity.

Eugene Kim has launched a Sense Making webinars to help people understand and act on complex, current topics related to collaboration.

The first one will be about Internet Identity and Gabe Wachob will be “coaching” it.

Digital identity has always posed unique social and technical challenges centered around security, privacy, and convenience. The Internet has made these challenges even more complex. The good news is that a number of new technologies are creating new opportunities for creating a secure and private Internet, where individuals are in control of their own data. This is a win-win scenario, because it creates new opportunities for service providers. The challenge is that this area is complex and rapidly changing.

Our coach, Gabe Wachob, will help you navigate this space quickly and act on this information intelligently. He will:

* Help you understand the challenges unique to Internet-scale digital identity and how these new technologies fit into Web 2.0 and the enterprise.
* Walk you through the alphabet soup of Internet Identity (from OpenID to Information Cards to oAuth and XRD), including how these technologies are being used, how they’re evolving, and what their practical limitations are today.
* Give you insight and access into the community that is developing these technologies, and explain how you can influence their evolution.
* Work with you on the aspects of Internet Identity that are most relevant to you.

If you are struggling to figure this stuff out – I recommend this offering.

For those of you following me on Twitter I have been on quite a road trip the last two weeks. It continues – today I am headed to Portland where I will be participating in Recent Changes Camp (a wiki unconfernece) and then I will be heading to Seattle for a few days.

While there I am organizing an Identity Dinner – this time not a pot luck and hopefully it will not be snowed in either.

It will be in Bellevue (we will figure out exactly where by Saturday) on Tuesday at 6:30 for drinks and dinner at 7 – this give Seattle proper folks a chance to get there in less difficult traffic.

Please RSVP on the evnetbrite site.

I have written about the participatory panopticon before (we live in public, sousveilance, cia torture taxi’s, Jamais Casio @ accelerating change, Condi caught) – but more in the abstract about stories in the news. This is the Huffington Post article about the photo of michael phelps.

This story strikes more close to home. I was, in my first career, an athlete competing at the Olympic level. In 1996 I was an “olympic year tournament” for Women’s water polo (only the men competed in the olympics) in 1998 I played in the World Championships in Perth Australia and in 1999 I won a gold medal at the Pan American Games (an event run by the Olympic committees of countries in north and south america). I also retired following that event and the following year many of my friends on the National team and college team competed in the Olympic Games. (if you want to see some of what is on the web re: that time of life for me search “Kaliya Young” & “water polo” )

So with this caveat – we were very dedicated athletes – we trained hard, we never went out and partied while we in Montreal our training home base – (a notorious “party town”). After a big event – like any one of the tournaments listed above we would for a brief night or two – take a break – go out and yes many of on the team would get drunk. ((No one our team didn’t have any pot heads on it but the difference between Pot and Alcohol is minimal.)) Some of us on those evening would do things that wouldn’t be great to have posted on the internet for posterity. That is to say maybe 3 times a year many of our team would celebrate together out and get slightly inebriated.

In sports you get insulated – all you do is TRAIN – TRAIN – TRAIN. You don’t party or socialize much at all. I spent 20 hours a week for years in the water at the peak of my training with no summer’s off, no christmas’ – maybe 10 days a year off to visit my family. Michael Phelps was probably spending 30-40 hours a week being an athlete. So once you win – and Phelps won big – you take a break – you go and do a few things in moderation that people your age do all the time every week. Give him a break.

In reading this quote the thing that I think the person who decided to break the veil of his privacy – to “out” his supposed indiscretion should be outed too….

Whoever it was who had the camera to hand to snap Phelps apparently smoking marijuana through a glass pipe, somewhat unfortunately called a bong, made a few quid, but, in those few seconds, Phelps lost his reputation, his aura and, possibly, tens of millions of dollars in earnings from sponsors.

Facebook joins OpenID board – with commitment to improved user experience.

It is our hope that we can take the success of Facebook Connect and work together with the community to build easy-to-use, safe, open and secure distributed identity frameworks for use across the Web. As a next step in that effort, we will be hosting an OpenID Design Summit next week here at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto.

I am not sure what to think about this. I had a post in the works called “facebook must be stopped” because if the NakedJen incident last week and the kicking off a developer who had to many friends. I am not convinced that Facebook isn’t the borg.

User expericne is a good thing to improve – however the containers in which people are using the technology – the companies that have the power over the networks, their policies and practices – their power to ‘be god’ in the spaces the host online that needs to be looked at too.

The power and potential of OpenID was that ANYONE with a domain name could use it – now it seems more and more like just the big “brands” silo’s are making it work for them and well maybe if you are a super hacker you could do your own (but we won’t “trust” you). I am worried that the movement seems to be moving away from empowering everyone with a blog or even those without “blogs” establishing their own node in the the network.

People need the power to have their OWN nodes on the network and link them together sharing information – on their terms (See bob Blakley’s relationship layer paper). If we are locked into proprietary silo’s they have to much control. I think a big vision needs to be painted and built to much faster a truly open social network framework. I hope we can have a way for developers to commit to a values based choice about how they will conduct themselves in terms of users having power and control over their own online lives – in relationship with other.

I have several critiques of facebook the ability to organize communities and groups is really aweful – (I just tried doing She’s Geeky with it – ended up messaging people up to 4 times – In She’s Geeky FB group, In event specific group, in my last years attendee e-mail list, in my signed up for this year e-mail list). The ability for me to manage my public yet different persona’s for different audiences is completely lacking (my kindergarten friends don’t care about my identity work, my identity friends don’t care that much about my facilitator work, my water polo friends might want an occasional personal update).

Maybe I am wrong – my fears will be unfounded. I am glad they are joining the conversation more explicitly.

From Naked Jen’s Blog:

Facebook obliterated Nakedjen.

Obliterated. Deleted. Made me disappear.

And they did it without any warning or even a simple email telling me that I had done something wrong.

My email to them asking what I might have done to cause such a brutal outcome was just met with an automatic reply telling me that I must be in violation of the TOS and to read it carefully.

Which I did. Every single word. Carefully. There is absolutely no term or stipulation that I even came close to violating other than that my name is Nakedjen. However, as I mentioned, that is MY name. And it has been my name on Facebook since day one. The email that I used for the service is even nakedjen@nakedjen.com Could I be more clear or obvious? I don’t think so.

What I also learned, while reading each and every word carefully, is that my account on Facebook is at will and can be terminated by Facebook at any time for any reason they deem “reasonable.” Basically, our accounts are being hosted for free on their servers. So this actually does make sense. If someone in their offices wakes up today and decides that the word Naked is pornographic or even just decides that my photo of Buddha wearing a ski cap is offensive, that person can just hit the delete button and bye bye Nakedjen.

From Scoble’s Blog:

OK, I’m on the phone with Joel Comm right now. He’s been doing business online since 1995. He’s the co-creator of Yahoo Games. He wrote the Adsense Code, which got onto New York Times best selling list. He hosted and produced the first Internet reality show called the Next Internet Millionaire. He was the guy who came up with iFart, which got to be the #1 iPhone app on the iTunes store for three weeks. He also has “Twitter Power,” a book about Twitter coming out next month. You can find Joel on Twitter here.

Translation: he’s not a “nobody” on the Internet who is a spammer.

But, Facebook had a problem with him and kicked him off. Just like Facebook did to me just about a year ago. Why did this happen?

Well, he like me, has 4,999 friends which is the maximum allowed by Facebook. That’s not what got him in trouble. “So, Scoble, why you writing about him?”

Here’s why: he has 900 people who want to be his friend on Facebook. So, since he can’t add them to his social graph he sends them an a nice individual note, customized each time. He would look at each person’s profile and send them a nice note. What did the notes say? Something like “nice seeing you at XYZ conference, I can’t add you as a friend because Facebook doesn’t let me add more than 4,999 friends so could you please join me over on my fan page?” Sometimes also he’d send them over to his book page, or his Twitter page. Again, he customized each message to the person who was asking. Nothing automatic.

But yesterday Facebook disabled his account and removed his account from the public social graph. “I am the invisible man.” Facebook did exactly the same thing to me a year ago.

You still can get to his fan page, but he can’t administer it any longer (he has 734 fans). He also has a group on Facebook, which has more than 2,000 members. Fifty people have already joined a group to petition to have Joel added back to Facebook.

I am heading out to the east coast tomorrow. I thought while I was there it would be fun to have dinner with the Boston and NYC identity community folks.

We have set up an free EventBrite to just RSVP for the dinners.

Boston, Monday Feb 9th at Mifune in Arlington, drinks at 6:30 dinner at 7:00.

NYC, Thursday Feb 12th at Katz’s Deli - drinks at 6:30 dinner at 7:00

We will likely do a round of introductions – just so people know who each other and basically talk, network and have a good time. Lots is going on in the community so it will be good to share information amongst different efforts. I think that as travel budget’s shink taking advantage of when people are in different people are in town to connect.

I will also be in DC on Feb 17-18 and maybe could do a lunch or a breakfast on the 18th. Let me know.

One of the women coming to She’s Geeky pointed me to this article that she wrote about Digital Tatoo’s. I think it is a good metaphor for all the stuff we put out there online particularly when we are younger. Interestingly although I was “on” the internet from 1995 when I started college I never had any web presence until 2001 when I did my first ever public talk that ended up on the web. By then I was ready for my web identity to be formed but up until then I was quite conscious of not talking in any public forums or posting things online.

It is a good read and highlights where her thinking went after reading Clay Shriky’s Gin, Television and Social Surplus (I haven’t read it I heard him talk about it on a podcast).

On a more serious note, the generation coming up now is the first one to have the ability to publicly record whatever they feel like recording. While this is wonderful, it also gives me pause. This upcoming generation will be the first to cut it’s teeth on this issue and frankly I don’t envy them. There are a few things (aw come on, we all have ‘em) that I might have written about, or been passionate about at 18 that I might not want publicly available at 35, or 50. Much of our growth as people and thinkers comes from trying out new ideas and making some mistakes. For most of us, this growth is preserved only in the memories of those close to us, or in letters, and diaries boxed up in the garage. What we publish digitally though is again like a tattoo, it sticks around, publicly, forever. There is a reason most of us are discouraged from getting tattoos until we reach adulthood. The tattoo of our favorite cartoon character might have been awesome at 19, but not so awesome later.

I hope that the web encourages a plethora of public thought and expression. It also behooves us to have an awareness of the public nature and longevity of what we put out there lest we are left with the digital equivalent of that tattoo we thought we wanted, but didn’t.

I wrote this to highlight all the amazing women that are playing critical leadership roles in our community. It includes Mary Rundle, Eve Maler, Mary Ruddy, Pam Dingle, Adrian Lukas, Danese Tayloe, Joi Podgorny.

Kim finally wrote about to “recent” about a year ago hires of MSFT of Pete Rowley and Mark Wahl. They attended RSA last year both with MSFT on their badges and both had moved their families to the Seattle area which to mean meant MSFT was serious about hiring smart good people to work on their identity products. Neither would talk about what projects they were working on though – it is nice to finally know know.

Pete is “working on evolving the Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM)”. Ironically enough Pete’s blog was called Open Pete Rowley but he hasn’t bloged since RSA last year.

“Mark is now applying his creativity to evolving the vision, roadmap and architecture for the convergence of identity and security lifecycle management products”