The big news from last week was the coming IPO of Facebook and the release of how the NSTIC Pilots will work [PDF]. They are going to grant 10 million dollars and the first deadline is March 7th.

So this coming month is quiet until the 3rd week. Then there is the Personal Archiving conference and an event about a new reputation system.

ID Collaboration Day is happening February 27th the Monday of RSA week. We are expecting a good group from a range of organizations. We are in the same venue as last year Blacklight Ventures at Mission and South Van Ness. IIW/Identity Commons is collaborating with Kantara Initiative and OASIS IDTrust. I suspect that NSTIC will be a major topic of conversation.

Ping Identity is having its major party on Monday evening at the ROE Night club upstairs lounge at 651 Howard starting at 9pm.

Strata is also this week - O'Reilly's data conference. I spoke at their online conference in the summer on personal data running a good panel with a highly relevant introduction and well faciltiated panel on personal data that I helped pull together. I submitted several different proposals touching on different aspects of data and people and the technologies developing in the ecosystem. Apparently non-qualified but then O'Reilly and company are still trying to find women speakers who are qualified for their events (they talked about it at two events I facilitated/attended in January the Community Leadership Summit West and She's Geeky in January).  I am honestly confused and didn't submit any proposals to OSCON in part for this reason.

Then it is SXSW. I am flying out on Wednesday with my long time friend Axil who is getting of an airplane form Asia that day.  I will be there until Sunday. Saturday Mike Shwartz from Gluu is hosting what look to be good community connecting events.

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Personal Data Lightning Round

Date: Saturday March 10 from 1pm - 3pm

Lunch will be served at this informal lightning round. If you want to present your product, service or project in 5 minutes, stop by and drop your name in the hat. 12-15 lucky individuals, selected at random, will get the spotlight from 1:30 - 3:00. Topics must be personal data or identity related. If you go over 5 minutes you'll be pelted by the audience with foam icosahedron stress balls.

Identity Biergarten

Date: Saturday March 10 from 6:00pm - 8:00pm

German inspired malted beverages and other refreshments from local producers will be served at this informal identity and personal data networking event. Date: Saturday March 10 from 6:00pm - 8:00pm

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Sunday I fly to London for the Gartner Identity and Access Management Conference where I will be keynoting Monday the 12th at the end of the day.  My talk is going to cover the Identity Spectrum and how Personal Data tools and services can reduce the toxic issues for companies storing personal data about people.

I fly to DC on the 13th and attend the 2nd day of the NIST-IDTrust conference on the 14th. Then the OASIS IDTrust Steering Committe has a face to face meeting on the 15th and I fly back to my home in the Bay Area.

On the 16th Friday I fly to Australia and land on the 18th Sunday in the morning. My cousin's (my dad's sister's kids will pick me up and I am taking the family photos I have from our shared grandparents house down with me). I am speaking at Digital Identity World Australia on the 20th and working with Steve Wilson on an IIW like conference either on the 19th or 22nd. I am flying back on the 23rd to SFO (I so wish I could stay longer).

There is "tiger team day" just before the STL-Partners New Digital Economics event that should be a good event covering the emerging ecosystem.

Between now and then we will publish two more Personal Data Frontiers (we are thinking about changing the name to Journal) and I am working on a jointly published report with STL-Partners on the Personal Data Ecosystem Landscape.

Then...its April and the Nonprofit Technology Conference   a talk for Nuestar in a speakers series they have and I will be watching the European Identity & the Cloud Conference with interest.

IIW #14 is happening May 1-3 - early bird registration is Open. 

Google’s no-opt-out privacy changes and the end of the anonymous Internet

Google announced Tuesday its plans to integrate data from all its services with your profile for logged-in Google+ users.

She makes this assertion in the early part of the article.

The Internet, nowadays, is overwhelmingly dominated by fora in which you hang out as your actual self. Facebook. Twitter. And now, Google.

Tie actions online to our real identities, and suddenly online activity has real-world consequences.

First you are discouraged from changing your name and limited to the frequency you can do so. You have to click "change name" to do anything.

Then my Name doesn't meet their Names Policy (at least they dropped the name violation language).

I clicked on the "Click here" to submit an appeal

More are you sure....

Really sure you know what your name is....

Now you can fill out the form....

I put my e-mail address as Kaliya@identitywoman.net (yes I have that one).

I linked to my blog, twitter and a Read Write Web news article that refrences me that way.

For extra documents I uploaded the Laws of Identity that lists me in the opening paragraph amongst all my professional colleagues as "Identity Woman Kaliya." You know if you having your name listed in the thankyous of the Laws of Identity as your profile name on google - I don't know what will qualify.

Andrew Nash the head of Identity at Google is friends with a bunch of us in case you need to know the context Googlers - googling the laws to confirm my/their legitimacy.

Then you get this lovely confirmation....

We shall see...

UPDATE:

Not hearing anything at the e-mail address I submitted to them as my e-mail address. I re-appealed. And of course had to do extra cognitive work to not  hit the very attractive blue "cancel" button along the way.  This then appeared inside my profile page.

So we shall see....

We understand that your identity on Google+ is important to you, and our Name Policy may not be for everyone at this time.

Kinda sounds like the owners of stores in the south who said their stores were not for everyone especially black people who didn't have skin color they liked. It is a fundamentally discriminatory policy.  If we don't have the freedom to choose our own names in digital space and the freedom to maintain different identifiers across different social spaces we will end up in a very creepy world...Here is my TEDxBrussels talk.

You can find all my previous posts about my Google+ saga and the NymWars here. 

I wrote this poem on my way back from Europe. 

Occupy Your Identity!

-----------------

For those of you coming from the Mercury News story on the NymWars exploding...

I STILL have my Google+ profile suspended for using a  [  .  ] as my last name.  Prior to that I had "Identity Woman" as my last name and prior to that... before I ever got a G+ profile and since I started using Gmail and Google Profiles I had a   [  *   ]as my last name. [see the complete list of posts about this whole saga below]

It is my right to choose my own name online and how I express it.  Names and identities are socially constructed AND contextual... and without the freedom to choose our own names, and the freedom to have different names (and identifiers) across different contexts we will end up with a social reality that I don't want to live in: Participatory Totalitarianism.

The last names that I have had during my life are Young, and currently Hamlin (my soon-to-be ex-husband's last name). I plan to have a last name of my own, different from either of those, within the next few years.  I do not choose to "promote" this last name as the HEADLINE of my profile in Google - that is a representation of my professional self online.  Yes, people walk up to me IRL (In Real Life) and say "Yeah! You're Identity Woman, aren't you" - yep .  It is, believe it or not, a "common" name for me as the G+ "requirements" call for. Just like it is common for BotGirl Questi to be called that when she is in that persona online. Botgirl has the best collection of articles on the web about #nymwars  and amazing art protesting what happened to her and all of us who have been suspended - comic book covers, songs re-written with new lyrics, impassioned monologs.

In the digital world "identifiers" are totally linkable across contexts - that is, different communities and contexts that would never meet In Real Life cross online with common identifiers. So if you don't have the freedom to choose which identifiers (name, e-mail address, phone number, physical address,) you don't have the freedom to keep identifiers in different contexts separate, and if you can't keep them separate, that means they are linkable.  Without that freedom, you can't explore or be a part of niche communities of interest that are not mainstream or not appropriate for some other context you also belong to. Here are some examples:

• the gambler at church,
• the "crazy" ferret lady at work
• the gardening gun lover
• being part of a minority sexual community
• proactive environmental activist working at a logging company
• being a Buddhist in a part of the country where everyone goes to church on Sunday and doesn't talk about religion because they would be ostracized  OR the other way around being a very devout christian in a part of the country where when they do inter-religious services they include everyone except christianity...and you just would rather your faith not be "public"
• going out in the woods every few weekends dressed up like knights and ladies, while being in the Army Reserve on other ones.

This freedom to have multiple personas for multiple contexts, just like the right to vote for our government in a secret ballot box, is essential for a free society. If we do not fight for and maintain these rights, we will end up with Participatory Totalitarianism.

Google+ and my "real" name: Yes, I'm Identity Woman  My first post on Google+ surprise to find my profile suspended.... I think this will all be over very soon.

Nymwars: IRL on Google Lawns. My idea to "occupy" the lawn of Google with a colourful range of folks who want the right to choose their names.  I wrote this after I figured out a week into this that it wasn't going to end, and they hadn't just made a mistake.

danah boyd writes a very good post on How to design for social norms (and avoid angry mobs) all about the nymwars and what is/was going on. 

August 8th Google Suspension Update - they now think I should wait for business accounts.

August 27th Let's try going with the Mononym for Google+

August 28th  Google+ says your name is "Toby" NOT "Kunta Kinte"

This post was written after watching Tim O'Reilly talk to Bradley Horowitz the manager for social at Google. In it, Tim calls users asking for the right to choose their own name self-righteous and strident.  I make a link to a classic American story, Roots, where Kunta Kinte, a man stolen from his village in Africa, taken to the United States, and sold into slavery refuses to take the name his slaveowner gives him, Toby - he is whipped until he accepts this name.  I asked Tim and Brad if Kunta Kinte was self righteous for standing up for his own name... Tim said no, but that is a self-righteous question to ask.... well, that was on Twitter and a very interesting conversation followed with several tweeters, that resulted in Tim framing what was happening as a lynch mob against Google.... you can see that in this post.

August 29th - Is Google+ is being lynched by out-spoken users upset by real names policy?

Please also check out this post about "Tone and Silencing" to understand what the underlying dynamics are in this conversation and speaking up to the powers that be.

"Bonus suppression" Google runs YouTube and they took the clip of the movie scene down for "inappropriate nudity or sexual" - it has neither, it just made a dramatic point and made them look bad. In the clip Kunta Kinte is facing the camera with part of his chest showing being whipped from behind by a white man who is working for the slaveowner until he breaks. After repeating his name is Kunta Kinte when asked what his name is, he finally says... it is Toby. 

August 30sh - One Month of the Gag by Google.

September 5th - Mononym officially not accepted. I am Kaliya - Google, Get a clue.

Posted Sept 9th.

Potential Future: Google-Zon

Relevant background

Who is Harmed by Real Names Policies developed by the Geek Feminism Community... prophetically I included in the response I gave to the Notice of Inquiry about governance of the Identity Ecosystem as outlined in the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace that I wrote, before I myself was affected.

As a bonus, the whole topic of Personal Data got coverage in AdAge yesterday mentioning both Personal and Reputation.com in an article:

Why Your Personal Data Is The New Oil

I think the biggest thing Personal has going for it its focus on design and usability.  Wire protocols (the technical bits of moving data and formatting it) are easy compared to how people can easily understand, interact with and manipulate the vast range of personal data they have, that is information which is personal TO them - not their tweets and photos that they proactively share, but all the "stuff" they should have a record of somewhere. Their car serial number, passport number, codes to garage doors for baby sitters and the kids allergies that need to be shared with playdates, school and the soccer team.

They are using OAuth, a key open standard, in their connectors linking information you have at one site to your personal vault in their store.

It is pretty simple when you get started.

1) You can add empty gems and fill them out.

2) You can share them with others... and also revoke permissions.

Anyone who sees a gem you have given access to has to agree to your "control" of the data and that when it is revoked they don't keep a copy of it. They also can't share it with others without your permission (you would give that other party access to your gem if you wanted to share with them). 

3) You can look for gems that have already been created by others about things they own or preferences/needs they have.

4) And get the mobile app.

Now that they have launched, I am going to dive in and start playing with gems and sharing relevant ones with friends and colleagues.

Other key items to note are the coming anonymity features they are planning on rolling out.

We believe strongly in your right to remain anonymous when you choose. At present, we only support remaining anonymous when publishing community gems, but will be rolling out new anonymity features in the very near future.

1/2 the day is an unconference that I am helping to facilitate. If you can make it I highly recomend it - it was a great event last year and should prove to be again this year.

Digital Death Day is happening November 11th in Amsterdam. http://www.digitaldeathday.com

It is a super ineteresting topic - What happens to your Data After you Die?

Please spread the word about this event it is totally grassroots, and the conversations in this are are really amazing...if still not yet a mainstream part of the digital identity community.

I will be speaking about the Personal Data Ecosystem ( you will be happy to know there are 6 startups from Europe in the Startup Circle) at the STL Partners New Digital Economics event in London on November 10th that will be the only time I am in the UK.
I am looking for interesting things to do and people/ places to visit between November 12th and November 21st on the contenent. Drop me a line if you have ideas or invitations - kaliya@identitywoman.net.

I end my trip speaking at TEDx Brussels on November 22nd about a "day deep in the future" still trying to figure out what I will say but I am contemplating...open to community ideas actually as I am focused on getting a clear vision of the talk in the next week.

He asked me to be a part of the project as an advisor particularly around identity issues and technology options for identity.  He is taking my advice and coming to IIW this coming week.  Its an honor to be amongst other distinguished advisors like Brewster Kahle,  John Perry Barlow,  Mark Surman and others..

He has been working on a development plan and has a solid on one in place.  He has launched a Kickstarter Campaign and  stars in the video that articulates the vision of the project.  If you are inspired by the vision I encourage you to contribute.

Below are versions with english text and a version without english text.

I would request that presentation of the image include a translated version of the english text.

When sharing please link to the original blog post where they appeared. - http://www.identitywoman.net/personal-anchors-on-the-web-for-digital-identities

If you use the image you send a copy/link to your version with your language text - I will post it on this page and link to you.

The point of the image is NOT an attack on Facebook. Facebook is in the image but is just emblematic of the overall issue because MySpace, MSN, Google or Yahoo also have their own "large steam boats" that people are "anchoring" themselves to.

--------------

The new term that has emerged for me this week is "anchor on the web"... as in Where is your anchor on the web? or People have an anchor on the web - this is there "identity" - the question is do they control (owning a domain name) it or is it controlled by the company that does.

I link this metaphor because it evokes the image of a boat that is you and an anchor that is linking you to somewhere - do you want this to land in a stable place that you have control over? Likely yes - if you anchor to someone else's ship (have your name in their domain space) you are literally tied to them. Rather then being able to visit them on your own terms and leave if you like.

You can get copies of these images under CC license here.

In my last post I talked about facebook URLs and people getting their own domain name along with the contrast of usability with each. Chris Messina also wrote about facebook URLs and correctly points out that this is a battle over your digital identity.

I got a comment today from IWantMyName.com (they also have a blog) saying I was absolutely right about usability issues that domain registrars have.

You are absolutely right. It’s a common problem of domain registrars / hosting providers. They’re too focused on up-selling other services and the secondary market instead of serving the actual internet user. We’re watching the identity community closely with iWantMyName and will definitely provide identity management features in the future. For now, we already made the domain registration process easy and are helping users setting up apps like Gmail, Tumblr, Posterous etc.

Coincidently - today at SemTech the CEO of Nombray presented as part of Chris Saad's talk about DataPortability. They let you very easily create a website under your own domain name that aggregates your information from around the web. I haven't paid the $10 yet but I was very impressed with the usability of the sign up process and you can see my the 1/2 working site here.

There is of course Chi.mp too - but some how it feels a bit more like being tied to somewhere then actually owning your own domain (paying for it) and setting up the services under it.

The next level of interoperability and user-empowerment will be the way these systems map/document your online life and how they give you the data in a standard way when you leave their service to go to a different one.

I am hopeful these sites are the basis of what will become personal data stores that project VRM has brainstormed about and people/companies are developing.

UpDate: Wow and that was Post: 1000 for this blog!

Here’s another way to put it. When you look at Techmeme and see all the tech bloggers yammering on about the latest cool things, the way they were this week about Facebook’s new URLs that are coming out tomorrow, or Apple’s new iPhone, do they look backward and think about the average businessperson? Not in my experience. We don’t have an industry conversation about how to actually use all this cool stuff to improve lives, make businesses stronger and closer to their customers, and have some fun.

A few people here and there are trying. I watch what Chris Messina, David Recordon, Marc Canter, Joseph Smarr, Kaliya Hamlin, and a group of others are trying to do by pushing a more open web. Those are the kinds of efforts that inspire me and are inspiring Building43. Can we build on what they are trying to do and take it to main street?

This actually impresses me cause I thought Scoble had just become an internet micro-celebrety for its own sake. I look forward to contributing to the conversation about the future of what is becoming a very social web where peoples identity online matters deeply.

Here is where I have been since my last post.

Since Social Web Foo Camp and posting the 80% complete article about communities context and online life. I haven't blogged. I have been very busy though.   

Immediately following I attended the "identity day" at RSA on Monday April 20th -  talks were given from the front of the room for a day. Liberty Alliance put the day together along with the Information Card Foundation- The Kantara Initiative was "launched". I am not clear that the format of the day actually provided greater understanding by those outside our community that are confused by all the activity.

The exciting thing that happened leading up to this day was the launch of the new Information Card Foundation Website - I gave some feedback that was included in the core language and messaging. It has great Flash animation explaining the cards along with featured projects including the GSA Demo.

RSA was fun - I didn't spend to much time in sessions mostly talking to people in the community. I led a peer-to-peer session on Business Models for Claims Based Identity. A good group attended however the room layout was cold and stale. (I will be writing about it on my unconference blog shortly).

Penguin Day followed on April 25th. This is a super fun day facilitated by Allen Gunn focused on Non-Profits and Open Source. I learned more about TikiWiki as a content management system (I am considering it as the platform for She's Geeky). I also was impressed by how much CiviCRM had improved. I also talked to a college registrar very interested in how information card technology might play a roll in getting them out of paper based management of student records and certification.

The Nonprofit Technology Conference followed - they had a large exhibit hall and I talked to many of the vendors there about OpenID and Information Cards - about 1/2 had heard about OpenID and almost none about Information Cards. It was great to talk to my friends in the industry (I have been attending this conference since 2004). Social Actions is progressing and is creating a way to aggregate action information for social good.

I flew to NYC to facilitate the Creative Unconference on May 7-8 put on by the One Club for Art and Copy collaborating with the Society for Digital Agencies.  This was during Creative Week. The One Club gives out bronze, sliver and gold pencil's - some of the most prestigious awards in the advertising business. They attended their interactive awards on Friday night - I brought Robert Tolmach along as a guest and he told me about his new project - Class Wish.

I went to DC and spent the day at the Sex 2.0 conference at the intersection of social media, feminism and sexuality. I was particularly interested in how this community was thinking thinking about and dealing identity online and off. Many people had names they went by within the community that were different from their "every day" names. Several presenters talked about having two facebook profiles (one for their sex life and one for regular life) I pointed out that this against facebook policy and they were surprised - it seemed very natural to have two persona's. Other presenters talked about being fully "out" completely linking their sex life.

I attended the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology Women of Vision Awards. It was a very inspiring evening. Padmashree Warrior the CTO of Cisco was the key note speaker - she was super inspiring and gave ideas about how to connect to the community 2.0 audience.

I spoke at Community 2.0 about identity technologies. I covered OpenID, OAuth and Information Cards and at the end mentioned project VRM for those who were very forward looking. It was a relatively small conference and I spent a lot of time preparing for the talk with my speech coach. My issue has been having to much to say - I can talk about identity for hours and in great detail. Lura helped me figure out what to say. I did a good job clearly communicating and had several people say they enjoyed my talk and it gave them some practical information not just social media guru hype.

I went to the first day of the VRM workshop and was totally impressed by the quality of projects and companies working in the space. Several attendees didn't know about IIW and a few signed up to attend.

The Internet Identity Workshop was AMAZING. We had the same number of attendees as we usually do. I am going to write some more posts about the event soon. The next IIW is November 3-5 in Mountain View.

I went to the Maker Faire on Sunday the 31st of May - it was fun to see all the stuff people are making. I also got a LiveScribe Pen. I will be using it for diagrams on this blog in the coming months.

June 1 was CommunityOne where i saw Jono Bacon talk about Community there were 10 people to see him speak in an auditorium that held 1000.

I flew to Boston and met with Fabio Carara of the Venice Project Center and Venice 2.0 - they are considering how to leverage 20 years worth of geo-data. We are discussing building a community including a few unconferences.   

I had dinner with Mary Ruddy and we continued progress on Identity Commons infrastructure - particularly our new blog/website.

I facilitated the Mass Technology Leadership Council Spring Meeting that asked the question "What is the future of Software and the Internet" I lead a session on identity - they asked good questions and were impressed by all the activity in the space.

I flew to San Francisco - to make it back for the 2nd Scala Lift Off. Scala is a programming language - some describe as Java++, Lift is a web framework. This is a great programming language community with an healthy online community life. I work supporting them in community building when the meet face-to-face.

Yesterday I was working with Forum One facilitating the 4th Online Community Unconference. This is a great community of online community managers (the folks who moderate online community), platform providers (software providers) and hosts (companies that have online communities). I presented a session about OpenID, OAuth and Information Cards - I even got a bottle of wine during the closing from one of the attendees thanking me for the quality of information that I shared.

Today it is the Building 43 party at Tech Crunch and next week is SemWeb in San Jose - I will likely make it to the Personal Democracy Forum. The next "identity" event is Burton Group Catalyst at the end of July in San Diego.

I look forward engaging in this medium again with a post every few days.  

Community Contexts and Weaving the Social Web

It is an EARLY version - like 80% done. The diagrams will be improved - I threw in what was on the white board yesturday after our conversation. I am hoping with some feedback to complete it by the end of this month.

The schedule has got a bit more detail in it - if you want to edit it ping me and I can set up an account. I am having e-mail conversations with a few folks about different things.

I was going to sign up at:
https://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2009/user/account/signup/attendee#
and saw a Sign up with an OpenID option. Since I'm interested in OpenID, I thought I'd try to use an OpenID associated with one of my Yahoo or Google accounts, but this is proving more difficult than I expected.
I did manage to find Yahoo's page for turning on OpenID support for my Yahoo account and did this, getting response:

Feeling geeky?

When you log in to a website that supports OpenID login we'll send your OpenID identifier to the website so it can identify you.

To make things easy, we have generated this identifier for you:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/T_HpXDQkssQpI_sR..........................

You don't need to save this identifier. While logging in to websites, you can simply look for a Yahoo! button or typeyahoo.com in the OpenID text field. You can also choose additional custom identifiers for your Yahoo! account below.

Not geeky enough, apparently, as pasting the Yahoo-provided identifiers into your OpenID box gives errors:
Unable to find OpenID server for 'https://me.yahoo.com/a/T_HpXDQkssQpI_sR.........................'Unable to find OpenID server for 'http://www.flickr.com/photos/josephboyle'
Help! What am I doing wrong? Thanks, Joseph Boyle

Mary Hodder is a good friend and someone I admire a lot for her courage in doing a video startup Dabble as a lone woman founder. She has taught me a lot about technology and has been a good friend for many years.

In the Identity World I am grateful for the other women who have contributed to the field and have been good friends while at conferences - Mary Ruddy and Pam Dingle also both have their own consultancies now.   

Eve Maler is a big inspiration for me - I actually found her blog Pushing String and told Drummond who I was working with at the time he had to meet her. I loved the weaving of cross stitch with XML on that blog - the title says it all. It would be a year or two before we finally met - her URL is also cool - XMLGrrl - another "identity super hero"

I love women who work in tech - one of the reasons I founded She's Geeky. We are looking ahead to our next conference April 18th in Northern Virginia (DC Area) that I won't be facilitating because of an invite to an even here in California that has to do with identity.

I remember when I first met Pam at the very end of the first DIDW that I went to in the fall of 2004. I really got to know her when we were attending the Burton Group catalyst conference in 2005.

She has been a great friend to me in the community and now when we go to conferences we are often roomies.

Congratulations Pam!

"The video can't be embedded apparently so you have to click over to it (I am already "unhappy" about that)" - ok inside joke related to the video.

In the wake of the hugely depressing shutdown of the Rocky and the Seattle P.I., and with recent death threats to the SF Chronicle and what looks to be a savage year indeed for print newspapers everywhere, these big guns have all stepped away from their normal discussions of deep tech arcania and turned their attention to a 500-year-old technology undergoing its first epic, bloody revolution.

I know people who have been working and building the emerging web who have been trying to dialogue with those in the news industry for the last 9 years about what was happening and coming.

The grand upshot? They don't really have any idea. But they have some curious, slippery, hopeful, but ultimately disappointing theories. Theories that, to my mind, consistently miss the mark, in at least one or two vital ways.

The dismissiveness tone of the article just sort of proves thew whole issue.

From Clay's Shirky's blogs Newspapers Think the Unthinkable:

The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several. One was to partner with companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service that was less chaotic than the open internet. Another plan was to educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. Alternatively, they could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: sue copyright infringers directly, making an example of them.

It is as if when the web people say "i told you so" and "we tried to help" they plug their ears and continue to make noise so they just can't "hear".

continued from Clay's essay.... The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!”

No technologists who are on the cutting edge of technology don't know what is next - there are things people are working on in different corners - we are working on identity over here...Sem Web folks are working on their things. WE STILL DON'T KNOW but we do know it will arise out of the communities we are participating in and the emergent effect of the tools we use. The Newspaper people didn't really roll up their sleeves and dive in to learn about the web and how to do what they do but in more interesting web ways (like linking in their articles that are online). Clay sites Craigs List as an example - of "we didn't know" twitter is another more recent one.

Last year I worked with folks bringing the Journalism that Matters conference to Silicon Valley. I was hired specifically for my expertise in facilitating unconferences in geeky communities. They didn't really want to hear what I had to say about what was needed in the event design to attract geeks (not that many came even though it was at Yahoo!). A month before the event happened they decided to just go ahead without further help/advice from me. I learned from this experience

• They don't understand web architecture (the first thing I told them was to get their online digital presence in order. - they had a different blog for each event, a bad late '90's site, they didn't get how to organize a wiki).
• Journalists work alone generally (making collaboartion with co-organizers on the conference a challenge).
• There is a higher normative level of conflict in the tech world compared to the journalism world.
• They are not experts in facilitating time/space for large groups of people (some how the agenda development was driven by the journalist's need to "let certain people speak")
• They are in deep morning and loss for the way of their profession and were unable to engage/look at the future - they would need a lot of "emotional clearing" before they could think in new ways about the future.

There is one asset that was developed that I am quite proud of it is a value network map of the newsroom and the new news ecology.

I think these says a lot about what is going on and how to think about things in new ways. One of the reasons these got developed is they kept talking about "the news room" and I challenged the assumption that eveyone would know what that was.

I decided it was worth it to spend week longer in London until the 11th and meet people, do some fun things, talk about identity etc.

Since I heard about Jeff Barr (an Amazon Evangelist) opening his schedule via wiki it seemed like it would make sense to do sometime. This trip is the time. It is also a good opportunity to use my personal wiki.

Here is the page about My Trip.

• I want to go to go see some cultural things.
• I am going to prepare a 30 min talk - Identity Tech 101 to talk about the current state of where things are - it will be non-technical with pointers to technical material for those who want to dive in.
• I am open to talking on if people want or just having a meal with a small group.
• • I am interested in talking to folks working on VRM stuff
  • I am interested in connecting with those exploring doing things with information cards
  • I am also exploring the intersection of SemWeb and identity things.
• Travel time and options need to be considered when scheduling me.

Unlike Jeff I don't have Amazon covering my hotel rooms. One friend has offered to put me up for the weekend of the 4th. I can't stay there all week - I am also looking to find a couch or too.

If you have questions or suggestions please e-mail me kaliya (at) mac (dot) com with the subject "London".

The next session that afternoon in the same room on Open Spec development was very entertaining and I will be writing about it more this week. Hash tag #sxswos

Yesterday after the She's Geeky Lunch I headed out to the Hula Hut for the OpenID lunch - I couldn't help but noticing when I arrived that i was the only woman at the table - it is one of the reasons I gave my blog its name - because in 2005 after working in the user-centric identity field for a year of going to meetings with the guys working on it I was the only woman I ever saw at a meeting about the topic.

Following that I hung out on the deck of the Hula Hut and talked with Dave Morin, David Recordon, Chris Messina, Josh Elman, Joseph Smarr, John McCrae the Gowally guy and others who were in and out.

While there Josh and I started talking about one of the things I blogged about the Facebook post I did from Day one of SXSW.

I am not sure if Facebook understands that having people use their “Real Names” is not actually what creates authenticity - the issue has been on the web is not “who you are in real life” but the inability to have online persona’s that are persistent over time and context. The investment into these and the ability to have them be useful has not been solved until recently.

It was decided this would be a good topic for Social Web TV so we recorded it on the spot.

I also got to invite folks to the Internet Identity Workshop happening May 18-20th in Mountain View.

our handles
@identitywoman
@bobblakley
@etelos
@jsmarr

Panel Outline

1) Brief Intro

2) CONTEXT - 15 min
5m - looking back - enterprise IdM 101 - Bob Blakley
5m - SaaS is happening - Danny Kolke
5m - OpenID and Oauth

3) Discussion - 15-20min

4) Questions

LUNCH AFTERWARDS
we are heading over to Austin Iron Works to continue the conversation

http://idsxsw.eventbrite.com/

The next community event
INTERNET IDENTITY WORKSHOP
www.internetidentityworkshop.com

When I was in my first year of university at UC Berkeley the web was just beginning to diffuse to widespread use in that context. We had LAND LINES then. I spent $300 a month on long distance to talk to friends back home in canada. I was not "socially" connected via electronic media back then. Some people from my "old lives" have found me in facebook but I don't feel "socially connected" to them in that I really don't think they care about what I am "doing now on the web" and I don't really have an ongoing social relationship with them so that i want to know "all" about what they are doing. They are NOT my "friends" but in facebook they "are". I don't want to be rude and unfriend them I am "interested" in their lives - like would be interested in hearing from them once every couple months but they are not in my social world.

I notice a real gap between myself and those 10 years younger then me who had facebook IN highschool and college - they love it cause it keeps them connected to their "friends". I wonder about this cultural social time divide.

Today I am hearing facebook talk again about how they have people's "real identities" with their "real names" and how important this is for authenticity. Dave Morin is going around convincing people to switch from their online personal handles in twitter to their "real" names. I thought about just being "Kaliya" in twitter but decided that my online twitter persona and voice would be that of my "professional" self - "IDENTITY WOMAN" I do talk about some personal things I do and mention opinions outside of "just my professional self" but it is not "me" there are ideas and opinions and things i do on the web that are not for everyone to see and I don't share them in twitter. What I don't like about facebook and the idea of facebook connect is that it feeds "everything you do" by default to "everyone you know" (within that system - they call these people "friends"). I want to present different selves to different audiences not because I want to "hide" but because I am connected to very diverse communities/friends and they all don't want to hear about everything I am going everywhere it is to much "social noise."

I am not sure if Facebook understands that having people use their "Real Names" is not actually what creates authenticity - the issue has been on the web is not "who you are in real life" but the inability to have online persona's that are persistent over time and context. The investment into these and the ability to have them be useful has not been solved until recently. Bob (his blog is Cesi n'est pas un Bob - a reference to the Rene Magritte painting Ceni n'est pas une pipe/This is not a pipe) and the folks at the Burton Group have been talking about the possibility of people creating Limited Liability Persona's to create persona's on the web that are linked to "you" if something goes wrong but is not linked.

The audience of mostly young men in their 20's and 30's many of them "developers" on the facebook platform cheered all that was announced today by Dave Morin. I was left wondering and wrote this post as a response.

I am a member of the bridge generation - between the hyper connected young "digital natives" and the digital immigrants. (I was on BBS's in Highschool (the local school board set one up just for kids within the city school system - that is where I hung out). My child hood home had a rotary telephone). while on vacation in Canada this summer I was struck by the conversations that I overheard by people older then me dabbling in facebook and being kind of freaked out by it. (In Canada Facebook has much higher penetration into the "general" population). The conversations I was having with highlevel leaders in the nonprofit and social business world at a retreat I was at about the dangers of building on closed silo's like facebook was just beginning to dawn on them - they now understood. I am also a woman and the conversation we had at She's Geeky regarding women and their presentation of self and identity online was really good. WE ARE DIFFERENT then dudes in their 20's in San Francisco.

So I wonder... Am I to "old" to get Facebook? - or do they not get it? "it" being the needs of older people and the ability to control in more fine grained ways what people see about me. "it" being the needs of women in social space online.

We shall see.

I am facilitating a panel on Sunday morning 11:30 - it should be a lively one. OpenID, Oauth, Data Portability and the Enterprise.

It will be moderated by me, Identity Woman and include these find panelists, Bob Blakely The Burton Group, Danny Kolke Etelos, Inc., Joseph Smarr Chief Platform Architect, Plaxo Inc

The debate over identity, data and authentication is gaining ground in the social networking world. The more difficult discussion regarding enterprises and Web 2.0 has yet to start. Businesses realize that they must protect the data of their company, employees and customers. Join brave leaders from several Web Application companies that are beginning the discussion, "Are OpenID and OAuth good for the enterprise?"

Following there will be a Lunch for all those who want to continue the conversation - you can RSVP here.

There is a Project VRM Breakfast on Saturday morning (we figured that at least that morning people would be able/willing to get up early).

Monday for lunch I am inviting women interested in learning more about She's Geeky to get together.

I will be tweeting away - and this is a good way to find me while I am there just DM me.

I will do some schedule browsing and post sessions related to identity tomorrow.

privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services,

At least it didn't open all documents up to everyone...

According to the notice, this sharing was limited to people “with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document”

I want to "know" the people I follow and all this week I have not turned on a twitter client cause my existing followers make to much noise. Having said this - I am going to be paying attention to and taking care of the @shesgeeky account more - so the women I am following there....I won't be following so much as IdentityWoman - my theory is that this way I will actually listen to both these accounts rather then "ignoring both" like i am doing now.

We have opened registration for the 8th Internet Identity Workshop! May 18-20th in Mountain View California.

There are a few things that are different this time around....

We have a shinny new website/blog!
Thanks to Mary Ruddy, Stas Zubalevich and Pam Dingle for helping make it happen.

We are using eventbrite to do registration - and we will be displaying the names of those who are registered.

We are asking questions as you register about what you hope accomplish /talk about at IIW and publishing them.

We have responded to the economic times and lowered the price for the first month of registration (a $50 discount for independents and a $75 for everyone else).

We have an early registration goal of 75 people by the end of the month.

We are starting on Monday morning with a hands on introduction to identity technologies and we will being participant generated sessions at 1pm on Monday.

Demo's - community sharing of projects and products will happen on Tuesday afternoon.

We are being we have a sub theme that we are promoting - "what are the business models for identity" this is so that "business" oriented folks will attend and hopefully get some where answering this. (we might have some other explicit sub-themes we name as the workshop approaches and community members give feedback on key topics that are arising/need attention)

We will have a different venue for Tuesday night dinner!

Travel is cheaper then ever (so even though your budgets are lower you should be able to make it here for less).

The blog will have guest posts by community members leading up to the conference. (if you want to say something here just let me know)

We will have had the ID-Legal conference in April and will have a cool map of the gap between identity technologies and different legal lenses.

The same....
* We have blog badges for you to use in your posts - put on your blogs.

* We will have Monday night dinner at Tied House

* We will give community awards open style at the end of Wednesday. (if you want to be the wine/other gift buyer or donor let us know)

* The Avante (our conference hotel) will Rock!

I am really pleased to announce that She's Geeky #4 is happening in Northern Virginia (DC Area) Saturday April 18th. Registration is Open.

It is at LMI's facilities in McLean (they donated the space). There is one drawback - it isn't on a metro We have a wiki up to help people coordinate rides. We plan to have an event in DC proper (on a metro line) before the end of the year (likely many months from now if not until the fall). By holding events both in and outside the city, we hope to bridge the gap between the two tech communities.

She's Geeky in Mountain View covered a really diverse range of toipcs all
* from beekeeping to gunshot detection
* from twitter use to hardware hacking
* from personal finance to government 2.O
* from tweeking wordpress to advanced coding in ruby

I expect the same fantastic range in DC with more women from fields that we have less of in the Bay Area - defense, intelligence, aerospace, nptech, government 2.0.

We are actively looking for sponsors and accepting donations so that we can give discount scholarships to students and unemployed women.

In Boston, Doc Searls, Mary Ruddy, Paul Trevithick and I called a dinner on February 8th and about 12 folks came out. It was great to connect and some new people joined us. We didn't take any pictures at that event though Attendees includedTrent Adams, Charles Andres, Gerald Beuchelt, Laura (Pistachio) Fitton, Jon Garfunkel, Chris Reynolds, Halley Suitt, Martin Sandren.

In New York City dinner was at Katz's Deli (this was Dean's Recommendation) on February 12th and it was a great group - including one infant. Isabell was there - who I met at OSCON in 2004 when she was working for SXIP. Other attendees included Sean Bohan, Eric Draghi, Adam Fields, Cem P, and Nicholas Givotovsky.

In Seattle a great cast of characters showed up from MSFT - Mark Wahl, Pete Rowley, Kim Cameron, Vittoria Bertocci, and Mike Jones. Andrew Nelson (a founder of IC(1)) came and shared a bit about the cool stuff he is implementing for LLLI,. Drummond Reed was there and invited Kevin Fink, Jason Jerome, Jeremy McKenzie also joined us. My friend Sarah Schacht arrived late and her presence meant that i was not the only woman there. She is working on a project Knowledge as Power that supports citizens being more effectively in their communication with legislators (this means they legislators need to know they live in their districts).

Other activities along the way included work on Identity Futures stuff with Nicholas Givotovsky and John Kelly in the Boston area.

The Online Community UConference in New York City produced by Forum One - this was a lot of fun and Mary Ruddy joined me there we got to talk about identity with a range of attendees. We speed geeked - I white boarded OpenID and Mary demo'ed information cards. I got to hang out with Pauline Ores at IBM and Susan Tenby - Gliteractica Cookie at Tech Soup. It was great to talk with both Denise Tayloe (in the picture) and Carol Altarescu from Privo were there as well.

In DC I met with the women who are connected and local about She's Geeky coming to the city. I learned that if it isn't on a METRO line it isn't "in" DC. We have a donated venue space
but in Northern Virginia and not on a metro - we are going to go with it for a one day event. Working on finding an "in" DC venue for later in the year. The goal is to get all the women who "never go into the city" to come to the Northern Virginia they will have such a good time they won't mind coming into DC when it happens there.

Last weekend in Portland I enjoyed myself at Recent Changes Camp. It was the 4th one I attended. During it I lead a session about identity - technologies and issues. The people attending had lots of good questions. Most knew about OpenID they were unfamiliar with information cards. It was interesting to hear people's deep concern about corporate involvement in the development of these standards - the three corporate names I mentioned in relationship to information cards seemed to raise particular ire - Microsfot, Novell and IBM. I invited all those concerned to join the community and meet the people working on this stuff themselves. I mentioned Higgins (the open source project) and talked about the standardization effort at OASIS. This didn't sway them much they "just distrusted" the corporate involvement.

I personally am very clear that corporate involvement is essential to getting an identity layer to happen. I was re-affirmed in this exchange in knowing that the corporate perspective is not enough and having a trusted space for critical conversations around issues that arise with identity need a commons for them to occur (that is a space where corporations do note have the ultimate veto about what groups are or are not allowed in the conversation). If a space like this does not exist to create a dialogue amongst diverse interests and perspectives then the risk of it not happening or not getting adoption by people.

I invited everyone throughout my travels to the Internet Identity Workshop May 18-20. Registration will be opening this week with a special recession early bird rate.

My next trip is to SXSW Interactive where I am moderating a panel on OpenID, Oauth and other identity technologies in the enterprise with Bob Blakely, Joseph Smarr and Danny Kolke - it is at 11:30 AM on Sunday.

As far as I’m concerned, one of the greatest opportunities to seize the future of web apps is to cement the necessity of diversity in our processes and in our thinking, not for the sake of diversity alone (deserving though it is) but because the technology that we produce is better for it, being more robust, more versatile and flexible, and ultimately, more humane.

The future of web apps — and the conferences that tell their stories — should not be gender-neutral or gender-blind — but gender-balanced. Today, as it was two years ago, we suffer from a severe imbalance. It is my hope that, in raising the specter of consequences of the lack of women in technology, we begin to make as much progress in stitching diversity into the fabric of our society as we are making in producing source code.

I actually invited participants at Gnomedex 2006 when I was the "MVP" (that is - i didn't have a schedulled speaking slot but the audience "voted" me on stage to fill a 15 min void for the MVP audience member) to think about these things.

I said that the app builders in the audience should get out of their boxes and start thinking about apps that socar mom's, and churches and other realms of social civic engagement that could really use some good apps. Places that are not brimming with white guys under the age of 30 (in San Francisco). The audience wasn't so sure about this idea.

I personally have been asked to speak at one conference this season - Community 2.0 in May. I am working with my speach coach on the talk and very much looking forward to redeeming myself. I worked with her on the last talk I gave at Net Squared in June that went 'ok' and I was thankful for that.

I think my story might be helpful in addressing this issue - which is why I am sharing it.

I was tapped by O'Reilly folks to speak at eTel and Web 2.0 in 2006. I didn't do that great at eTel - I had never given a 10 min speech. I didn't get any outside voice to help me and I should have but it didn't even occur to me that one might hire someone to help one in such a situation. I thought I had to do it all on my own.

After the talk they suggested I talk to a speech coach for my upcoming talk at Web 2.0 Expo that they had tapped me to do (that is I didn't go through the submission process they just asked me) that some of their own hosts of conferences had used - I figured this was a good recommendation. I listened to his advice but it actually failed me - he was not available to help (health issues) but was not clear about how limited his ability to help would be until to late. O'Reilly conferences were not clear with me what the composition of the audience would be (it was a CMP audience not an O'Reilly audience) so I gave the wrong kind of talk.

I was very nervous about the speech - didn't prep well for (speech coach sort of 1/2 helping (when if I had just been on my own it would have been better) he also encouraged me to push beyond what I had originally said I would cover in the talk - I didn't sleep that much the night before. I was visionary but that didn't match what was in the program. 1/2 the audience walked out and I was shaken to the core - basically had stage fright for a year. (here is my blog post following it). There was no talk with O'Reilly folks about what had gone wrong, what could have been better - just silence and never an invite back.

I was "on my own" it was "my responsibility" but I was also in a vacuum. YES it is up to women to take responsibility but if the whole industry is serious about changing who is "always on stage" it also takes a village of - encouragement, good advice, and support.

Women don't self-promote like the alpha dog's in the industry do. Sorry it is just true. Ask women in leadership hiring in the software industry. Men over promote their skill set by double when seeking employment (generally) and Women under promote their skill set by 1/2.

I am am getting much better as a speaker. I certainly know what I am talking about in the realm of user-centric digital identity having facilitated over 15 events in the field in the past 3.5 years, doing technical and non-technical evangelism and working on the subject matter for 5 years now. I don't run around telling conference organizers that I should be speaking at their conferences either. I did apply to RSA to be a Peer-to-peer discussion leader and was chosen to do so for the second year in a row. I also was tapped to facilitate a panel on OpenID, Oauth and the enterprise at SXSW. That is all the speaking I am doing so far this season.

I organized She's Geeky as a way to address the challenges that we face - both being small minorities at conferences and not many of the faces on stage. She's Geeky is the most diverse technology conference I have ever been to - it has the most non-white faces I have ever seen at a technology event. Please don't get me wrong like the woman on stage at FOWA - I love dudes. I don't think you last long in this industry if you don't like men, enjoy working with them and can get along in their culture. I also wish there was more women and have decided once in a while to have a women's only space to geek out in would be a fun thing to support.

I think it is also important to mention something else. As a woman putting yourself out there is risky. I watched what happened to Kathy Sierra - it was kinda freaky. I talked to a friend of mine - another prominent women in tech that week saying how deepy what happened to Kathy had shaken me. She said - well that is what happens if you become prominent enough - you get hate speech and death threats - basically this is what you signed up for if you chose this career path. It is another reason just go about doing my business - working on facilitating the identity community rather then "raising my profile" so conference organizers might tap me. I have had a mild case of a stalker around my work as identity woman a few years ago and I really don't want another one. Not something guys think about really when they do their day jobs in technology. The latent misogyny is apparently REAL in some corners of this community. We need to know that we have the support of community behind us and won't be attacked for speaking out against hate speech.

The issues are complex. I hope that as an industry we can continue to address them.

Data is the pollution of the information age. It's a natural byproduct of every computer-mediated interaction. It stays around forever, unless it's disposed of. It is valuable when reused, but it must be done carefully. Otherwise, its after effects are toxic.

And just as 100 years ago people ignored pollution in our rush to build the Industrial Age, today we're ignoring data in our rush to build the Information Age.

He highlights RFID's, Camera's face recognition tools for Identification, life logging recorders,

He makes an important point

Society works precisely because conversation is ephemeral; because people forget, and because people don't have to justify every word they utter.

Conversation is not the same thing as correspondence. Words uttered in haste over morning coffee, whether spoken in a coffee shop or thumbed on a BlackBerry, are not official correspondence. A data pattern indicating "terrorist tendencies" is no substitute for a real investigation. Being constantly scrutinized undermines our social norms; furthermore, it's creepy. Privacy isn't just about having something to hide; it's a basic right that has enormous value to democracy, liberty, and our humanity.

The first one will be about Internet Identity and Gabe Wachob will be "coaching" it.

Digital identity has always posed unique social and technical challenges centered around security, privacy, and convenience. The Internet has made these challenges even more complex. The good news is that a number of new technologies are creating new opportunities for creating a secure and private Internet, where individuals are in control of their own data. This is a win-win scenario, because it creates new opportunities for service providers. The challenge is that this area is complex and rapidly changing.

Our coach, Gabe Wachob, will help you navigate this space quickly and act on this information intelligently. He will:

* Help you understand the challenges unique to Internet-scale digital identity and how these new technologies fit into Web 2.0 and the enterprise.
* Walk you through the alphabet soup of Internet Identity (from OpenID to Information Cards to oAuth and XRD), including how these technologies are being used, how they’re evolving, and what their practical limitations are today.
* Give you insight and access into the community that is developing these technologies, and explain how you can influence their evolution.
* Work with you on the aspects of Internet Identity that are most relevant to you.

If you are struggling to figure this stuff out - I recommend this offering.

While there I am organizing an Identity Dinner - this time not a pot luck and hopefully it will not be snowed in either.

It will be in Bellevue (we will figure out exactly where by Saturday) on Tuesday at 6:30 for drinks and dinner at 7 - this give Seattle proper folks a chance to get there in less difficult traffic.

Please RSVP on the evnetbrite site.

This story strikes more close to home. I was, in my first career, an athlete competing at the Olympic level. In 1996 I was an "olympic year tournament" for Women's water polo (only the men competed in the olympics) in 1998 I played in the World Championships in Perth Australia and in 1999 I won a gold medal at the Pan American Games (an event run by the Olympic committees of countries in north and south america). I also retired following that event and the following year many of my friends on the National team and college team competed in the Olympic Games. (if you want to see some of what is on the web re: that time of life for me search "Kaliya Young" & "water polo" )

So with this caveat - we were very dedicated athletes - we trained hard, we never went out and partied while we in Montreal our training home base - (a notorious "party town"). After a big event - like any one of the tournaments listed above we would for a brief night or two - take a break - go out and yes many of on the team would get drunk. ((No one our team didn't have any pot heads on it but the difference between Pot and Alcohol is minimal.)) Some of us on those evening would do things that wouldn't be great to have posted on the internet for posterity. That is to say maybe 3 times a year many of our team would celebrate together out and get slightly inebriated.

In sports you get insulated - all you do is TRAIN - TRAIN - TRAIN. You don't party or socialize much at all. I spent 20 hours a week for years in the water at the peak of my training with no summer's off, no christmas' - maybe 10 days a year off to visit my family. Michael Phelps was probably spending 30-40 hours a week being an athlete. So once you win - and Phelps won big - you take a break - you go and do a few things in moderation that people your age do all the time every week. Give him a break.

In reading this quote the thing that I think the person who decided to break the veil of his privacy - to "out" his supposed indiscretion should be outed too....

Whoever it was who had the camera to hand to snap Phelps apparently smoking marijuana through a glass pipe, somewhat unfortunately called a bong, made a few quid, but, in those few seconds, Phelps lost his reputation, his aura and, possibly, tens of millions of dollars in earnings from sponsors.

It is our hope that we can take the success of Facebook Connect and work together with the community to build easy-to-use, safe, open and secure distributed identity frameworks for use across the Web. As a next step in that effort, we will be hosting an OpenID Design Summit next week here at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto.

I am not sure what to think about this. I had a post in the works called "facebook must be stopped" because if the NakedJen incident last week and the kicking off a developer who had to many friends. I am not convinced that Facebook isn't the borg.

User expericne is a good thing to improve - however the containers in which people are using the technology - the companies that have the power over the networks, their policies and practices - their power to 'be god' in the spaces the host online that needs to be looked at too.

The power and potential of OpenID was that ANYONE with a domain name could use it - now it seems more and more like just the big "brands" silo's are making it work for them and well maybe if you are a super hacker you could do your own (but we won't "trust" you). I am worried that the movement seems to be moving away from empowering everyone with a blog or even those without "blogs" establishing their own node in the the network.

People need the power to have their OWN nodes on the network and link them together sharing information - on their terms (See bob Blakley's relationship layer paper). If we are locked into proprietary silo's they have to much control. I think a big vision needs to be painted and built to much faster a truly open social network framework. I hope we can have a way for developers to commit to a values based choice about how they will conduct themselves in terms of users having power and control over their own online lives - in relationship with other.

I have several critiques of facebook the ability to organize communities and groups is really aweful - (I just tried doing She's Geeky with it - ended up messaging people up to 4 times - In She's Geeky FB group, In event specific group, in my last years attendee e-mail list, in my signed up for this year e-mail list). The ability for me to manage my public yet different persona's for different audiences is completely lacking (my kindergarten friends don't care about my identity work, my identity friends don't care that much about my facilitator work, my water polo friends might want an occasional personal update).

Maybe I am wrong - my fears will be unfounded. I am glad they are joining the conversation more explicitly.

From Naked Jen's Blog:

Facebook obliterated Nakedjen.

Obliterated. Deleted. Made me disappear.

And they did it without any warning or even a simple email telling me that I had done something wrong.

My email to them asking what I might have done to cause such a brutal outcome was just met with an automatic reply telling me that I must be in violation of the TOS and to read it carefully.

Which I did. Every single word. Carefully. There is absolutely no term or stipulation that I even came close to violating other than that my name is Nakedjen. However, as I mentioned, that is MY name. And it has been my name on Facebook since day one. The email that I used for the service is even nakedjen@nakedjen.com Could I be more clear or obvious? I don't think so.

What I also learned, while reading each and every word carefully, is that my account on Facebook is at will and can be terminated by Facebook at any time for any reason they deem "reasonable." Basically, our accounts are being hosted for free on their servers. So this actually does make sense. If someone in their offices wakes up today and decides that the word Naked is pornographic or even just decides that my photo of Buddha wearing a ski cap is offensive, that person can just hit the delete button and bye bye Nakedjen.

From Scoble's Blog:

OK, I’m on the phone with Joel Comm right now. He’s been doing business online since 1995. He’s the co-creator of Yahoo Games. He wrote the Adsense Code, which got onto New York Times best selling list. He hosted and produced the first Internet reality show called the Next Internet Millionaire. He was the guy who came up with iFart, which got to be the #1 iPhone app on the iTunes store for three weeks. He also has “Twitter Power,” a book about Twitter coming out next month. You can find Joel on Twitter here.

Translation: he’s not a “nobody” on the Internet who is a spammer.

But, Facebook had a problem with him and kicked him off. Just like Facebook did to me just about a year ago. Why did this happen?

Well, he like me, has 4,999 friends which is the maximum allowed by Facebook. That’s not what got him in trouble. “So, Scoble, why you writing about him?”

Here’s why: he has 900 people who want to be his friend on Facebook. So, since he can’t add them to his social graph he sends them an a nice individual note, customized each time. He would look at each person’s profile and send them a nice note. What did the notes say? Something like “nice seeing you at XYZ conference, I can’t add you as a friend because Facebook doesn’t let me add more than 4,999 friends so could you please join me over on my fan page?” Sometimes also he’d send them over to his book page, or his Twitter page. Again, he customized each message to the person who was asking. Nothing automatic.

But yesterday Facebook disabled his account and removed his account from the public social graph. “I am the invisible man.” Facebook did exactly the same thing to me a year ago.

You still can get to his fan page, but he can’t administer it any longer (he has 734 fans). He also has a group on Facebook, which has more than 2,000 members. Fifty people have already joined a group to petition to have Joel added back to Facebook.

We have set up an free EventBrite to just RSVP for the dinners.

Boston, Monday Feb 9th at Mifune in Arlington, drinks at 6:30 dinner at 7:00.

NYC, Thursday Feb 12th at Katz's Deli - drinks at 6:30 dinner at 7:00

We will likely do a round of introductions - just so people know who each other and basically talk, network and have a good time. Lots is going on in the community so it will be good to share information amongst different efforts. I think that as travel budget's shink taking advantage of when people are in different people are in town to connect.

I will also be in DC on Feb 17-18 and maybe could do a lunch or a breakfast on the 18th. Let me know.

It is a good read and highlights where her thinking went after reading Clay Shriky's Gin, Television and Social Surplus (I haven't read it I heard him talk about it on a podcast).

On a more serious note, the generation coming up now is the first one to have the ability to publicly record whatever they feel like recording. While this is wonderful, it also gives me pause. This upcoming generation will be the first to cut it’s teeth on this issue and frankly I don’t envy them. There are a few things (aw come on, we all have ‘em) that I might have written about, or been passionate about at 18 that I might not want publicly available at 35, or 50. Much of our growth as people and thinkers comes from trying out new ideas and making some mistakes. For most of us, this growth is preserved only in the memories of those close to us, or in letters, and diaries boxed up in the garage. What we publish digitally though is again like a tattoo, it sticks around, publicly, forever. There is a reason most of us are discouraged from getting tattoos until we reach adulthood. The tattoo of our favorite cartoon character might have been awesome at 19, but not so awesome later.

I hope that the web encourages a plethora of public thought and expression. It also behooves us to have an awareness of the public nature and longevity of what we put out there lest we are left with the digital equivalent of that tattoo we thought we wanted, but didn't.