So, here we are. I'm sitting at the back of the room (orders, if you have a laptop, speakers don't like the tapping..) listening to Esther Dyson open up today's session, "Who owns your information?".
I'll summarise what we've found so far. It's Day Two, and yesterday was more or less entirely technologically skewed. It was good, interesting, the best bit was that we've clearly done our homework so there was little there that was a shock or new as such... but we couldn't help but feel that in fact what's going on here is this (guesstimates): the conference is mostly US folk, probably 60-40 vendor-purchaser, and again I'd say that at least 40% of the people here already know each other. There are a total of 250 people here.
It's tiny. It's huge, while tiny - the first conference on Digital Identity, and everyone agrees that Digital Identity is a behemoth, the next internet standard, currently missing, that needs to be established. "Identity is the central thread that will enable security, control, manageability and accountability in a fully distributed network". Yet only 250 people! It's fascinating. Everyone's talking protocols, and SAML, distribution, security, PKI, authentication, biometrics. They're the brains of the method, the folk who will figure out how the hell you get to a global industry standard (open source seems to already be the nod of the heads), that will ensure the user owns their data..
but no-one so far is thinking beyond that instance of the user.
What about representation? The psychology, the sociology, the physiology of the digital identity? That's what I'm hoping someone'll start mentioning soon. If not, we'll have to bring it in next year :)
The other key thing is amusing. Everyone, but everyone we've spoken to, asks the same question: "So, like, why is the BBC here?".
Out here, the BBC is definitely still just a broadcaster. Within the same question, one guy moved smoothly onto the merits of Blackadder.. I'd bet he's never heard of BBCi. So, we've been doing some educating. The organisers asked Lorna if we'd like to maybe talk about interactive TV, as they really aren't covering it at all here, nor even necessarily thinking about it. Once told about it, they get 'Connect' completely. Instantly. They're pretty fascinated about the UK industry, and you can see the neurons working. For instance.. from the Open Source and Identity panel, we got “Can there ever be a trusted, central ‘holder’ of Digital ID that isn’t the government?”. From Trusted Computing, we get the statistic that 84% of US folk polled would pay 25 dollars for ‘trusted identity storage”.
Trust is something that people here are regarding as the holy grail.Thought-provoking for us, hm?
Over and out, the only other person here under 30 (ahem) is on the stage.