[Community] IDCommons Marketing: My Answers

[Drummond Reed]

Chris et al,

I note that this list has been quiet for a while, and few if any list
members answered your post when you sent it. I'm wondering if that isn't
because most of the energy at Identity Commons is now within the working
groups. In other words, I'm a member of at least a half-dozen IC working
groups (OSIS, VRM, Identity Schemas, XDI Commons) and some of those are very
active. That's where I'm spending all my IC time.

That doesn't mean the community list should be silent, of course, nor that
the Stewards Council has nothing to do. But realistically, IC is designed as
an upside down umbrella, so the energy SHOULD be in the WGs.

So it was the ability for a set of self-organizing WGs to cooperate to solve
the problems of an Internet identity and data sharing layer that drew me to
IC, and now I feel that's what's happening. The collaborative nature tends
to peak every six months at IIW as the "community event" and then flow back
out into the WGs in a regular cycle, but that seems healthy and pretty
productive.

Hope that helps - I'm looking forward to seeing you and everyone at the next
IIW coming up soon.

=Drummond 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: community-bounces at idcommons.net [mailto:community-
> bounces at idcommons.net] On Behalf Of Christopher Allen
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 11:32 PM
> To: community at idcommons.net
> Subject: [Community] IDCommons Marketing: My Answers
> 
> In my previous post I asked people to answer some questions to help
> the Identity Commons Evangelism & Marketing Working Group
> http://wiki.idcommons.net/index.php/IC_Evangelism_%26_Marketing_Charter
> -- here are my answers:
> 
> * Why did you and/or your organization(s) join Identity Commons and
> what are your goals?
> 
> I originally joined Identity Commons very early on because of my
> concerns regarding the how increasingly our personal identity and
> brand is controlled by someone else. I also liked the more human
> centered values of the people that were involved.
> 
> Though I participated for a while, the organization became a bit too
> "out there" for a while -- I was much more interested in *using* tools
> of open identity which were taking far too long to develop, rather
> then becoming an identity toolsmith myself.
> 
> Now that OpenID 2.0 is out, as well as oAuth 1.0, the technologies are
> finally approaching the point where I can start building social
> software with them. My interest helping Identity Commons is that I
> still feel the human centered ideas of open identity have not
> solidified and still need promotion.
> 
> * What you think of when you say "open identity"
> 
> For me, open identity is more about who controls your identity. I
> should be able have control over who and what is done with my personal
> information and reputation, and I should be able to choose the best
> service to help we with that, and if they don't serve my needs, I
> should be able to move it to a new service without any loss of
> information or reputation.
> 
> * what challenges are you facing when it comes to offering your vision
> of open identity at your company?
> 
> The main challenge has been a lack of usable tools that have
> sufficient critical mass of users. OpenID 2.0 and oAuth 1.0 have
> satisfied me this regard, so we are even considering building some
> social software that has no local profiles -- everything is done with
> OpenID and oAuth.
> 
> Another challenge is legacy -- how do I transition 300K users at one
> of my web sites that are currently using legacy community software?
> 
> * what are the greatest benefits of open identity?
> 
> There is a balancing act in trust between privacy and openness, and I
> should be able to choose where to balance them, not someone else. The
> more I can trust the services on the net to let me "own" my own data
> and identity, the more I can ask these services to do things on my
> behalf, allowing me to do more with less effort because the system
> knows me and I can trust the system not to abuse that knowledge.
> 
> * what are you doing (if anything) to promote and advance the
> principles of open identity within your organization?
> 
> I have been working hard to educate our internal developers on the
> value of OpenID and oAth.
> 
> * what technologies have you implemented (or plan to implement in the
> next six months) in support of open identity?
> 
> All future projects will be OpenID centric -- harder questions are
> what to do about legacy. Initially, we will probably have to be an
> OpenID provider so that people can use their profiles elsewhere.
> Harder problem is making the legacy software allow OpenID from outside
> -- there are interesting problems in moderation and managing
> communities that have yet to be solved with OpenID.
> 
> -- Christopher Allen
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