Identity on the mind
Last week the Burton Group Catalyst conference focused on an identity management, from enterprise single sign-on to user-centric identity. This week the "identorati" are gathered together for the Identity Mashup Conference hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Mark Dixon has a good summary (here and here) of Catalyst discussions and presentations on identity. Eric Norlin also has some coverage.
Catalyst dentity panel: Michael Graves (Verisign), Kim Cameron (Microsoft), Jamie Lewis (Burton Group), Eve Maler (Sun Microsystems), Dick Hardt (Sxip)
The major debate at both conferences concerns the development of a platform (an identity layer/identity meta-system), open and secure, for managing personal and organization identities. The Holy Grail is connecting disparate identity systems and empowering users with a degree of control over identity transactions and with a consistent user experience across identity systems, according to Mike Neuenschwander of the Burton Group.
During a session this morning at Identity Mashup, Microsoft's identity guru Kim Cameron identified a key phase for establishing a new identity platform as getting relying parties such Amazon, eBay, Google and other major destinations, as well as the various blogging platforms, to get on board. But first, the various identity players need to agree, more or less, on a platform standard that can be widely deployed and allow them to compete on implementation rather than a standard. Johannes Ernst of NetMesh said that three things can happen. One, a single approach takes over the world like HTTP did; two, nothing happens and we continue to deal with handfuls of passwords and centralized facilitation; three, a pluralistic approach where different parts fit into one overarching architecture.
John Clippinger, Senior Fellow at the Berkman Center moderating the Identity Mashup panel, "Towards Open Identity and Security: The Interface of Technology and Law" (Photo: Doc Searls)
The Identity Mashup Conference is being Webcast live. David will be at Identity Mashup this week and posting his thoughts as well as others. Stay tuned...