Great to see old friends and new in SF this week for DIDW. Full credit goes to Phil Becker and Eric Norlin and others for fostering what now feels like a community working together to sort out difficult problems. Kim Cameron and Scot Cantor took home the official awards at this years banquet (both very well deserved!!). I thought I would share some of my awards from the show:
Best Semantic Transformation: Kim Cameron swapping "reify" for "thingify"
Best Linguistic Distinction: Unnamed industry honcho relating the difference between "doers" and "goers" in the tech community. Hint: goers can generally be found at conferences and meetings eating fine meals - while doers are back at HQ adding value.
Best Vendor Speak: John Shewchuk answering a question about whether MS will be supplying non-.Net code samples for WS-Trust: "Absolutely!!...well let me clarify what I mean by absolutely."
Best PowerPoint Animation: Andre Durand's STS goggles in action.
Theme to be Reckoned With: Metasystems. STS, claim transformation, and federation seemed to be the topics that piqued interest at the show - all involve the introduction of meta-layers into identity architectures.
Other Theme to be Reckoned With: Microsoft is not as controversial as in years past and it bodes well for moving identity in the right direction. This is what I see as the Kim Cameron effect. The level of sincere engagement (and raw attendance) at his talk on the Laws was astounding. I guess humility and openness are good ways to approach a market - who knew.
Most Predictable Vendor Behavior: Awkwardly inserting the recent Identity Theft instances into product and company pitches - for products and companies that do not provide technology that would have prevented any of the examples cited.
On a personal note, my talk on Federated Identity and Web Services was well attended, seemed to be well received, and has been blogged by Mark and James. It is always fascinating to read how people interpret a presentation. It really drives home the way communication works - the listener, not the speaker, is always the most important side of a conversation.
