The Liberty Alliance, which does great work in the world of federated identity technology standards, policies, guidelines etc, has succumbed to the 2.0 bug. On the 22nd January it will be holding the “Liberty 2.0″ workshop but don’t let that put you off. The excellent line-up of speakers (and I am talking from experience) will be covering the Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF) which, as I discussed here, addresses user-centric as opposed to enterprise-centric federation scenarios.
ID-WSF is not the only user-centric identity initiative in town, though, so I hope the press release lives up to its promise and will feature experts in OpenID, which is rapidly becoming a significant force. Without interoperability, user-centric identity is a non-starter. In that regard, it’s encouraging to note that the Higgins project (see here, here and here) has a slot on the agenda.
If I wasn’t in the UK I think it would be worth a day of my time.
Have you noticed that all of the speakers at the upcoming Liberty Alliance event work for software vendors? It was originally started as a way for enterprises who primary business isn’t technology to have a say. They are a lost cause..
Your comments re the participation of technology adopters in the definition of standards is well made and something we have commented on before:
http://www.mwdadvisors.com/blog/2006/11/with-standards-do-we-get-what-we.html
I think you are being a little unfair on the Liberty Alliance as adopters have (and as far as I am aware continue) played a role since the founding of the project.
In the case of the Liberty 2.0 workshop, John Kemp is actually from Nokia which, in this context at least, I would argue is closer to an adopter of software rather than a purveyor.
My only other observation is that is still early days in the whole user-centric identity space and I think it might be a little early for organisations to explain how they are using it (although I have spoken to at least one organisation in the UK that is making great strides with InfoCard).
That being said, one would hope that as adoption takes hold, we see some real world experience discussed at this type of event