DIF at #IIW31

Whether, why, and how to attend the biannual conference along with DIF

The Internet Identity Workshop is an interactive “un-conference” that has convened various kinds of researchers, identity technology companies, and thinkers since 2005. It brings together a wide swath of people working towards great control of the digital representations of themselves, incorporating theoretical, market-building, research, and policy-oriented projects. This coming month, the 31st edition will be held entirely only on the Qiqochat platform, like the 30th edition before it.

The Storied History of IIW

Kaliya Young, Doc Searls and Phil Windley founded the conference in 2005. At the time, all three were active in a group known as “the Identity Gang”. They had been discussing identity technology concepts in detail on a mailing list since meeting each other at Digital Identity World in the fall of 2004; after a year of passionate discussions, there came a point where an in-person meeting felt necessary. The first meeting was in Berkeley, California, and ever since it has been hosted at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. It has moved online-only since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020.

In 2005, many in the community were blogging and writing about identity and related themes. Some had made broad and widely acclaimed pronouncements like Kim Cameron, most known in this regard for his essay, The Seven Laws of Identity. One early collaboration within the community was a Lexicon that has aged well. Many were also writing code and founding projects to realize their various visions. At the first IIW, eight different projects gave structured presentations on the first day, while the second day was devoted to a more open-ended and collaborative synthesis, facilitated by Kaliya Young using Open Space Technology.

At that first event, several of the projects focused on using URLs as identifiers for individuals, who could authenticate against these as they moved around the early Web 2.0, commenting on different sites. Conversations at the event were formative on the OpenID protocols and the OpenID Foundation. Since then, many different protocols have been conceived and/or nested at the conference, including OAuth, OpenID Connect, SCIM, Information Cards, XRI, XDI, Web Finger, Salmon, and PubSubHubbub, among others.

The event attracts people from all over the world and continues to be the “biggest tent” for collaboration and ideation across the various user-centric identity spheres and communities, particularly for what is now called “decentralized identity” or “self-sovereign identity”. You can see the book of proceedings from most of the IIWs for the last 15 years, refined and edited in the month after each organic and self-organizing event.

The Decentralized Identity Foundation at IIW

IIW has always been a neutral venue where diverse groups across the community focused on the decentralized identity, that often work in parallel between IIWs, come together to report out and understand each other’s projects. Furthermore, many attendees come from established sectors of the software industry, such as Enterprise Identity and Access Management (EIAM), Cybersecurity, or Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM). This creates a healthy mix of specialists, professionals, activists, and novices, balancing the “bikeshedding” of technology specifics with societal conversations and industry-wide trends and roadmaps. The open culture of DIF and its commitment to integrations with today’s identity technologies thrive in this environment, and many key DIF collaborations have begun or successfully recruited new participants at IIW.

Anyone who attends from any of the myriad organizations in the space can put agenda/discussion topics forward, which also makes it a very generative place for researchers, innovators, and market-watchers. Many of the DIF working groups present their latest work at the event for technical or business review, and it is a key venue for soliciting insightful feedback from related organizations and industry stakeholders. Sometimes projects in early stages of development, specification, or scoping even do requirements gathering or technical sanity-checks at the event.

Historically, the DIF has hosted a one-day face-to-face meeting immediately before or after the IIW conference proper to take advantage of the geographic co-location of so many key players. This time around, however, DIF is experimenting with a more spaced-out approach to allow for a period of processing of the IIW sessions to allow for a more complementary role 5 or 6 weeks after the fact. Stay tuned for more details about design or development sprints to take place bookended by the two events.

Hot Topics across #IIW30 and #IIW31

At the last IIW, DIF working groups put forward these sessions:

• The internal governance group shared its new Code of Conduct and the Glossary Group also gave a presentation on its methodology and results
• There were four different sessions presenting and gathering feedback on four different aspects of the KERI project.
• Similarly, there were multiple presentations on the BBS+ signature suite at the heart of both the Aries AnonCreds2 system for verifiable presentations and a novel JSON-LD-based system, development of which continues to be lead by Mattr Global.
• The DIDComm WG gave a progress report, which was particularly important to many stakeholders in the Aries community not involved in the autonomous research & development project. A separate session was held on the JSON Web Messaging (JWM) proposal that the DIDComm WG submitted to the IETF.
• Similarly, there was a well-attended joint progress report on the SideTree Protocol / Element DID and Friends , as well as an update from the XYZ project to iterate the OAuth protocol.
• A breakthrough panel (which was recorded — see previous link) explored the potential interaction or combination of the complementary browser-based CHAPI communications/transport protocol and the more browser-independent work of the DIDComm WG
• Frameworks and ecosystem maps were presented by the new Trust-over-IP foundation, the Operators project of MyData Global; certification programs were announced and outlined by the Me2B Alliance and the ID2020 project.
• For a more detailed overview of highlights, see Juan Caballero’s detailed recap for the company blog of DIF member organization, Spherity GmbH
• For the complete, edited notes from all sessions, see the Proceedings Book (sponsored by DIF member organization, Jolocom GmbH)

Heading into the 31st IIW, we can expect significant interest and attendance at sessions on these topics:

• A progress report on the alignment of the browser-native Presentation Exchange DIF specification and the relevant Aries RFCs and libraries
• Moving KERI from prototype to actual implementations (and integrations!), as well as Drummond Reed’s less-technical introduction entitled “KERI for Mere Mortals”
• Cross-method interoperability and portability, within and beyond Indy networks (which are proliferating quickly in Europe!)
• Test Suites and a process to incentivize (or even fund?) revisions of major specifications to include more explicit test vectors
• Lessons from the mid-2020 DID-Core sprint and PING W3C Security Review
• Updates on OIDC-DID bridging work, OAuth & GNAP, and fast-moving regulatory changes in Europe and North America

Making your IIW plan

DIF has had great success presenting work at IIW — and increasingly, it is becoming an important aspect of our educational and outreach efforts to post recordings of these presentations on our youtube channel. We’re hoping this tradition will build more momentum at the upcoming IIW!

The event is a great opportunity for those who are already very active in the community working on standards and code related to decentralized identity. It is also a great opportunity for those who are very new to get up to speed quickly via what language professors call “deep immersion.” It is very welcoming and friendly, and since each session includes experts from different fields, there are few assumptions and much level-setting. DIF leadership attends the event and encourages its membership to actively participate.

For those already planning to attend, please note that a skeletal structure is already posted. The most important sessions to attend are each day’s “agenda creation” sessions; the “demo hour” sessions for live demos of new products and prototypes, and the “closing circle” readouts from each day’s events are close seconds. Cordoning off those timeslots in your calendar weeks in advance is highly recommended, as a way of keeping those timeslots free of conflicts in your home time zone!