Why Now?
The web is on the cusp of a new layer emerging to support individuals and organizations interacting in new ways. They provide alternatives to the current federation technology that phones home to the issuers of credentials – like we have with login with Facebook or Google. These decentralized identity technologies have great potential to transform how people and organizations connect and exchange information. Potentially on much more equal and fair terms enabled by the architecture.
New open standards have been formally under development at the World Wide Web Consortium and in a network of other fora surrounding them have been working on proto-standards including the Credentials Community Group, Decentralized Identity Foundation, Hyperledger, Sovrin, MyData, Kantara Initiative, Me2B Alliance.
Just like the web is made up of many standards the same is true of this emerging layer. There are interesting dynamics emerging and the playing field is still open as things continue to evolve.
Diversity is needed
Now the time to imagine the tools and systems that can be built on top of these emerging architectures and to consider risks and potential pathways of harm that can and should be mitigated for before everything is “complete” and “can’t be changed”.
It is critical to broaden and diversify the range of people involved in the community and to really listen to the perspectives of those who have not yet been actively welcome or participating.
Collaboration
Collaboration is two or more people working together in pursuit of a shared bounded goal.
Teams will form around proposed goals for the event and work together in groups to achieve them together. There is a role for fast pace interaction in an event like the Internet Identity Workshop and there is also a place for deeper co-creative work that is this event.
We believe that now is a time to accelerate interoperability and we will be encouraging interop-sprints to get key features and products from different companies working together.
We believe in the power of intellectual artifacts to concretize and move the industry forward. This includes technical white papers, specifications and policy white papers.
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