Internet Identity Workshop December 4, 2006

The Internet Identity Workshop is about moving user-centric identity ideas and technologies forward. User-centric identity starts with the individual, and his or her needs. It does not start with enterprise or technology vendors, although plenty of those have been involved in user-centric conversations and development projects form the beginning.

User-centric identity is about working relationships and services between individuals and retailers, employers, membership bodies, and organizations of any kind. It is not about a centralized solution, or anybody's silo. As such it solves different problems than the familiar ones of providing authentication and authorization services within a single organization, or federation between different organizations.

User-centric identity is an extremely active and growing conversation involving many converging development efforts -- by open source communities, by vendors large and small, and by customers of all sizes. Internet Identity Workshops are where Mozilla, Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Liberty Alliance, WS*, Verisign, Red Hat, SixApart and many other projects and companies meet to work toward common goals and real solutions. They are joined by customers of all sizes as well. You won't find a higher ratio anywhere of real productivity to idle chat and marketing BS that are typical to many conferences.

Internet Identity Workshops are informal and purpose-driven. In every IIW so far, a high degree of progress has been made, within and between separate development efforts. IIWs also serve as the main forums for face-to-face meeting of the whole user-centric identity community.

The workshops are organized by a working group within Identity Commons, and are run on Open Space practices and principles*. There are no formal presentations, no keynotes, no panels. Instead, topics are vetted and chosen by participants when the workshop convenes, and open meetings are organized and scheduled for the day that follows. Given the paths of various development projects, however, we expect the following to come up at the workshop:

* Technical protocols, frameworks and proposals such as: OpenID (Sxip, LID, i-names, XRI, Yadis), SAML, Identity metasystem, CardSpace, i-cards, Open Source Identity Selector (OSIS), XDI, itags, Identity Schemas and the Higgins Project.

* The nitty gritty of how to do implementation for startups, large existing customer bases, political campaigns and nonprofit adopters.

* The user experiences of identity systems - what do we know? what do we need to learn more about?

* Legal and social issues like identity rights agreements, reputation, privacy, anonymity, etc.

* Exploring emerging use cases for an identity layer in markets such as user generated video, innovative economic networks, attention and intention brokering, lead generation, user-driven preferences, and social networking.

Still wondering if it will be good or not? Read what folks said about the May 2006 conference. http://iiw.windley.com/wiki/What_is_GREAT%21

Official Website: http://www.windley.com/events/iiw2006b/announcement