Great technology is being developed in identity land. However, the conversation has been largely limited to hard-core techies. That's what I'd like to change ...

So, calling all marketers and business-minded folks, for two hours (or so) of discussion the week after next,

Topic: "The Business of Identity"
Wednesday, May 16th, 10:00 am
Mountain View, CA
at the Computer History Museum
during the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW)

to talk about subjects such as:

• what are the business benefits for enterprises adopting user-centric identity using technologies such as OpenID and CardSpace? Are there any pitfalls?
• are there any differences for on-line businesses vs. other organizations?
• what are the benefits for identity interoperability across vendor boundaries? Which customers/users will first experience those, and which won't?
• what are the adoption patterns for user-centric identity, and what we can do to remove obstacles?
• what does the "identity" whole product look like?

It will be an open discussion in line with the "open space" principles of the extremely successful IIW event, now taking place for the 4th time. I don't intend to bring slides or let anybody formally present anything ;-) Instead, it would be my hope that an event like this one can help us move this market forward, just like similar sessions across vendor and competitive boundaries have brought the technology forward substantially since the first IIW in 2005. Why can't we do this for the business end? And it won't hurt any of us if we could grow the market as a whole by doing this...

P.S. If you are a technologist and read this, please forward to your product or marketing folks. Tell them they are free to contact me with questions any time.