Internet Identity Workshop 2007, Day One

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Quick thoughts from day one of the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW):    (M9G)

  • This is the fourth IIW. The first one was in October 2005. Amazing. It feels like we’ve been doing these for at least five years.    (M9H)
  • Over half of the participants were there for the first time.    (M9I)
  • I opened the conference with an introduction to Identity Commons. Got some good feedback, and great support from others who have been active in the rebirth of Identity Commons. My big goal is to get the community to think of Identity Commons as “we,” not “they.” We’ll see how successful we are at the end of this workshop.    (M9J)
  • We participated in a nice exercise where folks got into small groups and surfaced questions. It got people interacting, and as Phil Windley noted afterwards, people stayed in small groups chatting away well after the day had ended.    (M9K)
  • One thing that struck me about the group exercise: I heard no new questions. A common characteristic of Wicked Problems is not knowing what the questions are. A good number of us seemed to have successfully identified most of the key questions a long time ago. This is both a sign of progress and of concern. We as a community are starting to face growing pains, and community memory is becoming more and more of an issue. Doc Searls suggested that in addition to surfacing the questions, we should have asked, “Okay, who has the answers?” I think some variation of that would have made an excellent complementary exercise.    (M9M)
  • I like Pibb, JanRain‘s Web-based real-time group chat tool that uses OpenID. (Think IRC on the Web with OpenID for identities.) But I also agree with Chris Messina; Pibb needs permalinks — granular as well as thread-level.    (M9N)
  • We had a series of lightning presentations following the group exercise. They were all well done. Remarkably, they were all about basically the same thing, only told from different angles, something that Mary Hodder also observed. I think this is a good sign. It shows the ongoing convergence of our community. There was also a lot of Spotlight On Others — folks referring to each other’s work, even borrowing slides from each other — another sign of a healthy community.    (M9O)
  • There wasn’t anything new conceptually, but there were many more implementations, yet another sign of progress. Speed Geeking basically consisted of 15 different implementations of Single Sign-On, which doesn’t make good fodder for demos, but which is great for the community.    (M9P)
  • Two Speed Geeking projects stood out: Vidoop and Sxipper. Vidoop is user authentication via image recognition and categorization, which in and of itself is interesting. But what got people buzzing was its business model: sponsoring images that would be displayed to users for authentication. I don’t know if it’s viable, but it’s definitely creative. Sxipper is a Firefox plugin that handles account registration and login. What’s really interesting is what’s happening beneath the covers: It’s essentially an OpenID Identity Broker running from your browser. It looked very slick; I’m looking forward to playing with it.    (M9Q)
  • Doc Searls gave his traditional day one closing talk. I’ve heard bits and pieces of this talk many times, but I never tire of listening to him speak. He’s just a fantastic storyteller, and he’s always on point.    (M9R)
  • I carpooled with Fen Labalme, and as we were discussing our takeaways on the way back, he said, “I’m glad I didn’t sit with you at dinner.” He wasn’t joking, and I wasn’t offended! I felt the same way! One of the really special things about this community is that there are no snobs. We all like to hang out with each other, but we all also really value quality time with folks we don’t know. You could really see this at dinner. I didn’t see any cliques, and there was plenty of mixing.    (M9S)

OpenID 2.0 Developer Day, August 10

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Two important OpenID developments to announce. First, there are a bunch of $5K bounties available for folks who integrate OpenID into Open Source projects. You heard me right — you can get some cash for doing something you probably want to do anyway. Second, Kaliya Hamlin announced an OpenID developer day in Berkeley next Thursday, August 10, from 6-9pm. The lineup includes David Recordon, Andy Dale, Mary Hodder, and Scott Kveton. I’m going to try to show, and I hope many of you do the same.    (KWN)

Identity Commons Sessions Summary (June 21, 2006)

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

There were two sessions on Identity Commons on the Open Space day (June 21, 2006) at the Identity Mashup at the MIT Media Lab last week. The first session was an open status meeting for the community at large. We described Identity Commons‘s purpose, told the history of the organization, then explained how the organization could serve the community today and why the existing organizational structure wasn’t adequate. We then announced that the current trustees had authorized a brand transfer, assuming that the new organization adopted purposes and principles consistent with the current purposes and principles.    (KQL)

Both sessions were well-attended, and there were a number of new faces. Interest in participation seemed strong.    (KQM)

In brief:    (KQN)

  • There are a number of grassroots community projects that involve multiple stakeholders and that are happening independently of any centralized direction.    (KQO)
  • These decentralized efforts could all benefit from some shared infrastructure, which could be as simple as a shared, neutral brand (i.e. “Identity Commons“) or as complicated as a set of rules that help ensure fair participation and governance among multiple parties.    (KQP)
  • Our strategy is to build an organization organically that addresses the needs of these different community projects.    (KQQ)

Current projects/interests (and stewards) include:    (KQR)

These projects could benefit from things like:    (KR1)

  • Shared name. The importance of this can’t be understated. It demonstrates solidarity, implicit community cooperation, which is particularly important for this community. There’s also an implicit reputation (hopefully positive) associated with a shared name that encourages participation in the community.    (KR2)
  • Bank account. Several of these projects need a bank account. A great example of this are the various community gatherings, which need the ability to accept registrations and spend money on things like space rental and food.    (KR3)
  • Online community space. Many of these groups are already using mailing lists and Wikis for discussion and group authoring. It would simplify things for new groups if these resources were easily available to those who wanted them. It would also benefit the community at large if some of these groups had their discussions on a shared space as opposed to separate silos.    (KR4)
  • Governance and process. Some fundamental guidelines can help all groups facilitate cooperation and participation from all stakeholders.    (KR5)

Eventually, what we’re currently calling “Identity Commons 2.0” will need:    (KR6)

  • legal entity w/ bylaws and membership criteria    (KR7)
  • financial model    (KR8)
  • intellectual property agreement (potentially using Apache Software Foundation as a model)    (KR9)

Our strategy for addressing these needs is to attack the low-hanging fruit first and to let the projects drive the priorities of the organization. We will start by forming an organizational working group consisting of the stewards of each of the working groups described above as well as anyone else from the community who wants to join. Its first meeting is a teleconference tentatively scheduled for next Thursday, July 6 at 9am PT, pending confirmation from the different stewards. (Details to be announced on the community mailing list.)    (KRA)

Organizational policy should be as lightweight as possible, giving each working group the option of customizing them to fit their needs.    (KRB)

We will use the community mailing list for discussion. We will also setup a Wiki, leveraging the work Jon Ramer did for Identity Mashup. We will look into merging some of the other Wikis, such as Identity Gang, into this new Wiki.    (KRC)

Who will decide what working groups form or what collaborative tools we’ll use? In general, if someone wants to propose something that’s consistent with the purposes and principles, the answer is “yes” — provided someone is going to steward the proposal.    (KRD)

Distributed Flickr

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

I recently upgraded my Flickr account to Pro and started using it wholeheartedly. I’ve even invited a few folks to join, which is something I’ve never done with any of the Social Networking sites I’m on. Okay, so the digerati who follow this blog are probably yawning right now. (If this includes you, then be patient. I guarantee you’ll find the latter part of this post interesting.) Obviously, Flickr’s been a phenomenon for a long time. But my reasons for jumping on the Flickr bandwagon may interest some, and if not, my thoughts on distributed photo sharing hopefully will interest the rest of you.    (KKP)

Why did it take so long for me to embrace Flickr? Mainly because I’ve got a hacker mentality. I’m also not crazy about my personal data being stored on someone else’s machine. I’d rather hack and host myself if I can help it.    (KKQ)

This mentality has changed over the years, largely due to lack of time and shifting priorities and philosophy. But what really sold me was:    (KKR)

  • I like the basic Flickr information architecture, namely, the notion that every picture has a single unique ID. This simple premise enables you to layer all kinds of organization on top of your pictures, from collections to tags. Moreover, it also enables a photolog view of your life. I haven’t found any gallery software that uses this architecture and hence, that offers these features. Gallery, for example, offers per-album RSS feeds, but not a site-wide RSS feed. Plus, if you want to share a picture across multiple albums, you need to duplicate it.    (KKS)
  • I like the Flickr UI (yes, even the new gamma version).    (KKT)
  • I haven’t been doing a good job of sharing my photos with others, and Flickr is the best service for doing that right now.    (KKU)
  • Everybody’s using it. Usually, the fact that a lot of people are on the bandwagon is enough to drive me away from it. But at some point, pragmatism trumps the curmudgeon in me.    (KKV)

We’re still using Gallery at Blue Oxen Associates, largely due to some special needs. Which leads me to my big gripe about Flickr. Why can’t I use Flickr to share pictures hosted elsewhere? In other words, if I have an image somewhere on the web I want to share, why can’t I “bookmark” it on Flickr a la del.icio.us?    (KKW)

This idea emerged from Greg Elin‘s participation at the first FLOSS Usability Sprint. Greg’s team, which included Mary Hodder and Matt Mullenweg, was discussing Fotonotes‘s needs. At some point, Matt brought up the idea of a bookmarking service for photos, and the team started running with it. These discussions helped inspire and influence Mary’s startup, Dabble, which allows you to bookmark video hosted elsewhere.    (KKX)

I’m totally psyched to see Mary take this idea to fruition, but I’d still like to see something similar for pictures.    (KKY)

The Unjoy of Panels

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

I’m a veteran panel moderator. I’ve been doing it since high school, and I think I’m pretty good at it. But I’m thinking about retiring from the business.    (JKL)

Last week, I moderated the SofTECH / SDForum July meeting on “Architecting Community and Collaboration Solutions.” Tony Christopher had suggested me to Ron Lichty, the meeting producer. Ron and I, as it turned out, had met a few years earlier at a GivingSpace workshop. Ron explained to me his goals for the panel, told me who the panelists would be, and I said, “Sign me up!”    (JKM)

The panel went well. The panelists — Tony Christopher, Zack Rosen, Sylvia Marino, and Scott Wilder — were great. Everyone told lots of great stories, but also respected the other panelists, and no one tried to dominate the floor, which made my job incredibly easy. More importantly, the audience was engaged with the topic and the panelists. Ron was great also. He had done a masterful job of organizing the event and preengaging the panel.    (JKN)

The problem was that the panel format was wrong. Panels work best when they emerge as entertaining and informative roundtable discussions. As good as our panelists were, that was not going to happen, because the format did not optimally align with our goal — educating the audience. A panel format can achieve this goal — and ours did — but only in a broadcast model, which does not maximize group potential.    (JKO)

It was clear from an informal poll I took at the beginning of the panel and the number of faces I recognized that we had a lot of expertise in the audience itself. It would have been far more engaging and educational for all involved had we done a more interactive format, where we spent an hour in break-outs, possibly followed by a moderated plenary discussion. The panelists, in this scenario, would have been co-participants with the rest of the audience.    (JKP)

I moderated two panels and gave a talk at last June’s Collaborative Technologies Conference. One panel was in a traditional format for reasons largely out of my control, but I decided to play with the other two formats. In both of those cases, I turned the tables on the audience, rearranging the stage format into a circle, and basically played discussion moderator rather than panel moderator. Several people had already camped out in the back with their laptops open — almost assuredly planning to check email rather than listen to the talk — and a look of fear and shock came over their eyes when I told them to join me in the circle.    (JKQ)

Several people approached me afterwards and praised the format. (My favorite moment was one night at dinner, when I introduced myself to Stowe Boyd, who wrote a great essay on panels. Upon hearing my name, Stowe said, “I want to thank you.” I was completely baffled by this, as we had never met, and Stowe had not attended any of my talks. Apparently, he had heard about my panels — probably from Arieanna Foley — and he was grateful that someone had tried something different.) These folks were clearly suffering from panel fatigue, and just the fact that we were doing something different and engaging improved the experience wildly for them. I guarantee that the circle format was also more informative for the audience as a whole, because it addressed their specific concerns and it introduced a set of viewpoints far more rich than just mine or a panel’s.    (JKR)

As much as people respond to these more interactive formats, they are mere baby steps. Kindergarteners get in circles, for pete’s sake. Pre-school can be fun, but once you’ve been in kindergarten, you don’t want to go back. Facilitation techniques like Conversation Cafe and Open Space are at the first grade level, Aspiration is at second grade, and MGTaylor is at third. The latter techniques augmented with cutting edge collaborative tools is at least the fourth grade level, and we’ve only scratched the surface as to what’s possible. It’s just sad that the vast majority of conferences are at the pre-school level.    (JKS)

There are situations where panels work well as a format, but they are vastly overdone. In any case, don’t let this post prevent you from inviting me to moderate a panel. Just expect me to make some strong demands concerning format.    (JKT)

(See also Mary Hodder‘s excellent panel diatribe.)    (JKU)