IIW: A First Timers Perspective
Last week the Spaceman ID technical team made the trip to Silicon Valley to participate in the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW), a bi-anual conference that has been going on for over a decade. It’s mission is create conversations between all those interested in, and actively working on, online identity management and how it works. Being somewhat new to the space we came into the conference not knowing what to expect. We came out of the conference in awe.
Every IIW moves topics, code and projects downfield. Name an identity topic and it’s likely that more substantial discussion and work has been done at IIW than any other conference!
If you or your company is involved in any semblance of what could be interpreted as online identity, or you are simply interested in learning about the great work that is being done to make our online presence more secure and verbose; then do yourself a huge favor and make sure you attend IIW at least once. Take it from us, you will be hooked and will want to attend every consecutive IIW from there on out. We know we will.
IIW takes everyone that is working on improving online identity, puts them all in one conference hall for three days and then just lets them loose to see what happens, and it is fantastic.
Your IIW experience will be unique. And when I say this I don’t mean it as some cheesy line to get you interested in going. By design IIW is setup such that every attendee will have a self catered unique experience.
IIW is at its heart a participatory conference, it is an Open Space Un-Conference. It has no keynotes or panels, so it’s about getting stuff done!
This is achieved by IIW’s use of the un-conference model in which instead of having a set agenda with a set of per-selected speakers, the conference sessions are hosted by the attendees themselves. Every morning anyone who wants to host a session can post it on the agenda bulletin board, and once this is done attendees can then select which talks they want to attend at each session. IIW takes everyone that is working on improving online identity, puts them all in one conference hall for three days and then just lets them loose to see what happens, and it is fantastic.
Some talks are there to teach the basics. Some are highly technical talks about the work being done on a certain tech stack and how the community can get involved. Some talks are focused on the business side of identity management platforms. Some are focused on the tech side for developers. Some talks focus on the ethics of the work being done. Some are about how to expand the community. Some are focused on creating universal standards so we don’t keep re-inventing the same solutions in different ways. All are there to help improve online identities.
You see the tangible evidence of the progress IIW stimulates in the space.
One of the most palpable things that you experience during the conference is how everyone involved is totally invested in the goal of improving how we manage our information online, trying to make the internet better and more secure for users. In this conference you see industry competitors work together on the common goal that is continually improving online identity. Further, you will see industry competitors working on making their solutions compatible with one another so that the new form of identity management can be adopted by all. IIW takes place in the heart of Silicon Valley, a place known for the cut throat tactics of tech giants, yet here we see a community focused on moving the industry forward for the cause of a better Internet, a refreshing experience in the tech world.
Not only will you learn a whole lot during IIW, but during the demo period of the conference you also get to see the products being built, whether it’s new tech stacks or consumer / business facing products. You see the tangible evidence of the progress IIW stimulates in the space. There was not enough time to get through them all but the one’s we did get to see were quite impressive.
Needless to say IIW was an invaluable experience for our team, much of which we are already working to implementing into our own solution. How online identity works is undergoing a massive and much needed rework. Truly an online revolution, and most of the work that will get us through that will have started in, or in some part influenced by, the conversations had at IIW.
We will definitely be back in the fall for IIW XXIX, so keep a lookout for the Spaceman ID demo next time around.
