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An end-of-year update

As Future Identity completes its first year, it’s the obvious opportunity to do a quick round-up of some of the year’s highlights.

First, “collateral”… on the website (under Portfolio/Resources) you can find three white papers and a couple of slide decks, all on the theme of digital identity, privacy and related topics.

The most recent white paper is one I wrote for the ISTR (Information Security Technical Report); it looks at the difficulty Privacy Enhancing Technologies seem to have had in taking off, and suggests a “maturity model” for working out what the inhibitors might be. The version on the website is a pre-print copy; for the published one, you need to go to Elsevier (who hold the copyright of the version which went to print).

I’ve also got a book chapter coming out in “Financial Cryptography” early next year, on the more general topic of identity management. I’ll post again when that is published.

Second, lots of people kindly comment that I need to get out more ;^) so I have done my best to keep visible and spread the word. It’s ironic how visible you have to be if you want to be a privacy advocate.

It’s a little invidious to pick out specific events for mention, but I’m going to do so anyway. The ones which leap to mind from the last 12 months are:

  • the GENI workshop at UC Davis, California: many thanks to Chip Elliott and Matt Bishop for making it possible for me to attend that so early in Future Identity’s existence;
  • the last Liberty plenaries, in Santa Clara… but also the first Kantara plenaries in Las Vegas;
  • the Burton Group Catalyst conference in San Diego: thanks to Gerry, Bob and Ian for all their help and support with that – here’s to Catalyst EU 2010, in Prague in April;
  • the NetID conference in Berlin;
  • the EU e-Government conference in Malmø
  • and the TERENA and JISC events in Rome and Cardiff… for being such a fun bunch of people to work with…

And third, the people. It’s been fascinating moving from the corporate environment (where, by and large, your colleagues have to work with you) to the consulting world, where people have to want to work with you. With that in mind, I’d just like to thank some of the many people who have been so important to Future Identity in its first year of life:

Toby Stevens, Brett McDowell, Jim Purves, Gus Hosein, Edgar Whitley, Dervla O’Reilly, Britta Glade, Ian Glazer, Bob Blakley, Dave Birch, Trent Adams, Lucy Lynch, William Heath, Adriana Lukas, Sverre Bauck, Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Iain Henderson, Nicole Harris, Alan Stevens… and more others than I can sensibly mention.

Thank you to all of you – and here’s to 2010.