I just realized that I had written, not didn’t post, the following article. It is still worth posting.

A couple of events at Digital ID World reminded me how small the Digital Identity world really is. The first happened when I happened to walk into the DIDW Novell booth and came face to face with Steve Carter, a Novell Distinguished Engineer who is one of the leading architects of Identity Management for Novell. Steve and I were hired in April, 1977, by a small company in Provo, UT, named Eyring Research. We worked side by side at the company for twelve years. I had exchanged occasional emails with Steve over the past few years, but hadn’t seen him for probably 15 years. It took a chance meeting at DIDW to re-unite us in person.

The second event showed me that others share small world experiences as well. At a Sun customer reception the first night of DIDW, I was introduced to a Sun ISV partner who had some some interesting concepts to discuss in the area of strong authentication. As an aside, he asked, “Do you know Nimish Radia? Sun is a huge company, but I had to ask. He’s my cousin.”

“Why of course,” I replied. “I talked to him on the phone this morning!”

So, out of 30,000 Sun employees, I know a cousin of an Identity guy I met at DIDW!

Much has been said in our industry about the importance of Identity relationships. It turns out that meeting together as Identity professionals now and then both strengthens old personal relationships and kindles new ones in unique and wonderful ways.

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I love serendipity. Yesterday, as I was travelling on BART to attend the Digital ID World conference, I was listening to Steve Covey’s book, “The Eighth Habit,” on my iPod. He quoted the authors (incuding Doc Searls) of the “Cluetrain Manifesto” as he stressed the fact that all humans have choice, that they are not “things” to be exploited by the business practices of the Industrial Age.

The second keynote speaker of DIDW on Monday was none other than Doc Searls, addressing the topic “Managing the Decentralization of Identity.” What did he stress? That people are not things to be “managed” by vendors.I really enjoyed statements Doc made, like (somewhat paraphrased):

• “We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings – and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.”
• “What does Identity have to do with Independence? Use it to build the opposite of a CRM prison. CRM is about customer control. It tends to dictate way customers can relate to the seller. It sees customers as data, not people.”
• “Facebook is a highly managed walled-garden. If their “confirm your friendship” process is so inane, how can they be trusted to be a universal Identity provider?”
• “About advertising: Your attention is sold to the advertiser. We are the plankton that is fed to them.”
• “Markets are: conversations, transactions, relationships. Of these, relationships are key.”
• “VRM doesn’t exist yet, but it will.”

Thanks, Doc, for an informative, inspiring talk. Plus, you look dapper in a coat and tie!

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As the first keynote speaker at Digital Identity World, Phil Becker proposed that we will soon enter a “Third wave of Digital Identity, driven by the demand for:

• Promiscuous interconnectivity and user empowerment (self service)
• Large scale, that reveals the need to modularize solutions and have interoperability standards
• The need to interconnect and network Identity systems

He predicated that managing the decentralization of Identity would be a key part of this wave:

• The natural state of Identity is decentralized
• The concept that we can centralize identity data on any large scale has been found wanting
• How can we manage and leverage identity while respecting its decentralized nature?

Phil further proposed that Identity Tomorrow will be characterized by two major trends:

• Greatly increased networking between Identity Management domains
• Emergence of compelling Identity based user experience driven applications

This trend towards Identity-based, user-experience-focused applications will be a realization of a trend that Phil explained earlier in the session, that we are in the midst of a transformation of the prevailing information security paradigm from “Keep out Unauthorized” to “Allow Access by Authorized.” Reminds me of a blog I posted several months ago: “Use Identity Brakes to go Fast.”

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Good morning! I am sitting in the general session area for Digital ID World in San Francisco waiting for the event to start. I will post my observations and musings about this conference as it proceeds.

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I heard a song on the radio today that aptly illustrates the stark difference between Identity reality and Identity fantasy acted out on line by many people. The protagonist in Brad Paisley’s hit son Online admits, “I’m 5 foot 3 and overweight … And I’ve never been to second base. But there’s whole ‘nother me that you need to see. Go checkout MySpace. ‘Cause online I’m out in Hollywood. I’m 6 foot 5 and I look d*** good. I drive a Maserati. I’m a black-belt in karate … So much cooler online.”

It sounds like the guy in Brad’s song is fairly harmless, but too many participants on the Internet hide behind a mask of anonymity, presenting themselves as someone they are are not. There are too many predators out there posturing as harmless friends, sometimes just lurking, sometimes actively seeking to lure innocents into a web of deceit and destruction. I understand and accept a few valid reasons for anonymity on line, but the deliberate deception practiced by far too many casts a sordid shadow across cyberspace.

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Terry Gardner, one of the outstanding directory services experts at Sun with whom I have the privilege of working, has been doing some significant work with a large Sun customer in the area of Directory Server Monitoring. Rather that keep all this valuable information to himself, Terry, who is a passionate advocate of active collaboration, has begun to post the results of his work on his new wikis.sun.com site.

When I mentioned to Terry that I would post this blog, he asked me to “Please encourage folks to help us out and add good, referenceable material” to the wiki.

So, there it is … you get access to Terry’s immense experience, and an opportunity to contribute to a growing body of thought in this area. The Participation Age at work!

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Adding to my comments yesterday that “I find it fascinating to see which plug-in applications different people choose,” a colleague today commented that “much of the appeal of Facebook comes from the plug in applications that are available to extend Facebook functionality.” This profound comment really defines an important reality in the Participation age. Not only can people participate in cyberspace through blogs and wikis – they can plug in active value to platforms like Facebook without duplicating the foundation. Excellent stuff.

My personal favorite application? BasketballFan.

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I don’t know if it is happening to everyone, but I am experiencing an acceleration of interest in connecting to people via Facebook. My Facebook account had been quite dormant for the past several months, but a few weeks ago, I noticed a definite uptick in the number of people who were requesting to connect as “Facebook friends.” The rate of requests is up to at least one per day.

I have been a long time participant in the LinkedIn social network. I have 581 LinkedIn connections at last count. But to call LinkedIn “social” is a bit of a stretch. It is a large and useful network of business and technical people, but the personality of each participant is largely hidden, and the LinkedIn application really doesn’t foster social interaction.

On the other hand, my recent experience with Facebook is quite the contrary – it is very social. The varied personalities of different facebook participants really shine through. I find it fascinating to see which plug-in applications differnt people choose and which users add photos and other information that reveals attributes of their unique identities.

From a personality standpoint, it appears that I am a virtual stick-in-the-mud compared to many facebook users. Yet the rich Facebook user interface reveals some of the things I like just because of what applications I have chosen and which friends I am connected to. I find it facscinating, perhaps addicting, to explore Facebook and the people who subscribe.

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It was heartening to learn last week and see the announcement today, that Sun is in the leader’s quadrant for User Provisioning for the second straight year. In fact, Sun leads all competitors in “ability to execute,” which is were the rubber meets the road for Identity Management projects.

Back in April, a colleague posed the question, “Is the Sun Setting on IdM?”, suggesting that Sun’s leadership in this market was fading away. I think today’s announcement is evidence to the contrary. While several people who joined Sun from Waveset have indeed left for other adventures, I am heartened by the emergence of new, solid folks who are in the saddle going the right direction.

Stay tuned for more!

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I am pleased to announce that good friend and colleague Terry Sigle was named US Software Practice Systems Engineer of the Year at Sun’s Software Practice FY08 Kickoff awards dinner this week. The following was read as a tribute to Terry’s accomplishments during the past fiscal year (edited slightly for public consumption):

We are pleased to presesent Terry Sigle as SE of the year for FY07. Terry has set the standard of performance for SE’s in the US Software Practice by his consistent superior performance, customer services and contribution to the SE community. He has demonstrated his mastery of all three product categories in the Identity Management product suite through active leadership in multiple sales opportunities. He earned the respect of those whom he serves through community building, intellectual property creation and sharing of his knowledge and capabilities with customers, partners and fellow Sun employees.

Specific examples of his superior performance include:

• Presales leadership in multiple, large communications market accounts.
• Leadership of the multiple-month Subscriber Profile Consolidation (SPC) project.
• Authorship of Directory Server Enterprise Edition (DSEE) 6.0: 400+ Million Entry Benchmark white paper which documented the leading edge benchmark performed for the SPC project.
• Successful completion of the Sun Engineering Enrichment & Development (SEED) mentoring program
• Leadership in developing the Identity Management major for Sun’s Software Genius University
• Leadership in establishing Identity Management curriculum for the FY08 Software Kickoff
• Leadership in the Directory Collaboration Community for Sun and partner systems engineers
• Co-authorship of the Integrated SE demo

Terry was a speaker at the following major forums during FY07:

• LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit (Feb, 2007)
• JavaOne 2007 – Java University (May, 2007)

Terry is an active participant in the following OpenSource projects:

• OpenDS
• OpenSSO
• OpenLiberty
• OpenSolaris
• SLAMD Benchmarking Tool

With all of these technical accomplishments, Terry remains very approachable, humble, and willing to support anyone who requests his services. He is a shining example of what Sun SE’s should be.

Congratulations, Terry!

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Terry Sigle