I just got back from Internet Identity Workshop 2006A (the “A” because a second one is planned later this year). I want to echo the praises others (Phil Windley, Kim Cameron) have heaped on it. In particular, Kaliya was amazing. You want to do an unconference? She’s the one to call. The whole unconference format showed just how effective it can be to let a motivated audience self-organize.

Following are a few highlights from the sessions which I was able to attend (my only complaint was that there were so many I couldn’t attend ’cause there just wasn’t enough time!)

• The i-tags session, wonderfully blogged by Christine Herron, produced some excellent ideas and feedback about the third draft spec. Ben Laurie had some great suggestions too. It’s finally time to ramp up a mailing list, which we’ll be doing shortly.
• The identity rights agreements session, which I’d been anticipating for several months now, was every bit as fascinating as I thought it would be. Again, see Christine’s post for a summary. The biggest frustration was that after an hour and fifteen minutes we were just really getting started – we needed a good half-day on the subject. But we agreed to begin moving the work forward on the Identity Rights wiki and mailing list. I’m also planning another blog post inspired by the final part of the discussion.
• Dale Olds of Novell led an eye-opening session on all the open source projects related to digital identity. See this blog post by Phil for more info.
• Phil did a great session on the reputation system he and his BYU students have created. It shows just how difficult reputation can be — and how valuable if we get it right.
• The XRI and SAML Single Sign-On (ISSO) session given by Peter Davis produced excellent feedback on the draft spec (to be posted on the XDI.org wiki as soon as Peter can deal with some formatting issues) from such SAML experts as Bob Morgan, Eve Maler, Jeff Hodges, and Nick Ragouzis.
• A testiment to just how densely packed the sessions were was the fact that I missed the session on Identity Commons 2.0! But reports from those who made it are that the ball moved further forward and the necessary organizational steps are already underway.
• The final highlight — which we couldn’t even squeeze in until after the conference was over — was being able to get in front of a whiteboard with Paul Trevithick and Andy Dale and produce a picture of how Higgins and XDI fit together (captured by Phil when he and Doc and Kaliya joined us). The conclusions we reached were a real eye-opener, one for which I’m going to do a separate post to do it justice.

Net net: as Phil Becker summed up in the Digital ID World newsletter (as quoted by Kim):

“…it was, in my opinion, a tremendously significant moment in the evolution of the identity conversation, and one that will have many significant ramifications going forward – though these will likely take another year to become clear to those not paying close attention.”