In Eric Norlin’s Digital Identity World Recap #2 (1 and 3 coming soon) the writes that
Jonathan Penn (of Forrester) declined to be on a panel because he thought he’d get more value by being in the audience (and he said I could quote him).
I have heard and read other people say that some conferences are valuable simply for the hallway conversations.
So my question:
What are the top five most valuable conferences simply due to the quality of the hallway conversations?
Eric Norlin in his post Pushing back on Google’s identity silo identifies the biggest barrier to an attention economy.
the fundamental problem at the heart of all of this “identity 2.0” stuff that I’ve been talking about: the existing silos (Google, Yahoo!, eBay, etc.) have *no* immediate business reason for opening their identity silos (at least, not that they can see).
Today all the big players have no incentive to open up. The best incentive to open their identity silos, will be the fear of being isolated from a broader economy. We have to create an economy around their silos and that economy requires a reliable and reputable identity mechanism, all economies do. Without an Internet scale identity system, the attention economy will fall pray to the same gaming that we see with links, comments and Pay Per Click advertising.
Identity enables Property, Mobility, Economy and Transparency. An Internet scale identity system will not guarantee the success of the attention economy. The lack of an Internet scale identity system will ensure the failure of the attention economy.
Link Summary:
Eric Norlin’s RSS Feed via Digital ID World
Pushing back on Google’s identity silo
Dick Hardt and Eric Norlin have both commented on the new Account Authentication Proxy from Google. Dick and Eric both clearly see Google as creating a ever growing silo. Eric provides a comparison of Google’s Service to Microsoft’s Passport efforts. Eric points out that Microsoft has moved to make their service interoperable after learning from their earlier mistakes.
I agree completely with the deepening silo perspective. I really think though Google understands that it must have an reliable and ubiquitous identity service, if they are going to take advantage of the Cognitive economy.
So I ask myself, Does Google want to maintain its lead in delivering on the cognitive economy and should it wait for the community to deliver a proper identity solution? I think the answer is yes they want to maintain their lead and no they shouldn’t wait. As a business they are obligated to make progress but they must understand without the support of the community they will fail.
I think Google will continue to make progress in developing their identity and reputation platforms and services , while contributing to and inter-operating with the rest of the community. So, Google will deepen their silo then increase their openness and interoperability over time as their customer base and the cognitive economy demands. So as Google Customers we need to demand they increase their openness and interoperability. Just my two cents
Go and check out the posts by Dick Hardt and Eric Norlin, both are worth reading.
Links:
Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.0 RSS Feed
Google Account Authentication: two steps forward, one step back
Eric Norlin’s Digital ID World RSS Feed
Google’s authentication vs. Microsoft’s Live ID
Tom The Architect 