Blogging the plaNetwork conference in San Francisco.

I think everyone is reacting to this presentation being really dry and not seeing any visuals or anything tangible. Ken just compared their situation to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young being at Woodstock and having not played together before. Yes, that analogy didn't really work for me either.

So, Ken asked folks about how techy they wanted the presentation to go. But, now he is reading again from the paper. I guess that is cool, since I didn't have time to read the whole paper. But, it does remind me of college, except now I have a laptop and wireless connection to the Internet and can easily distract myself.

Ken is now reading about online recommendations infrastructure, maybe automated and possibly through a brokerage service. I forgot to blog that Jan and Steve also talked about how they got into this, basically looking at online communities. Jan is talking again about how all these things are ultimately social problems, and technology (alone) can't solve these things. These things being, I would summarize, lack of freedom for sophisticated open trustable social interactions online.

Jan is talking about the IETF, OASIS, and the W3C. Now about Microsoft Passport / Hailstorm for identity, which terrified a lot of people and catalyzed a lot of people to do something open. Creation of the Liberty Alliance, to create a marketplace for identity.

Liberty being originated by commercial companies, but not government, then standards bodies and people with more social interests are involved.

(This is my first time doing extended typing with a laptop on my lap. I can't believe people do this all the time—what a weird and uncomfortable thing to have on your lap!)

Ken defining again social networks. Roll collaboration plays in social groups. The importance of information sharing and what people need to organize among themselves. ASN starts with the acknowledgement that social networks are key to democracy. How do do things on a global scale.

Jan is saying it clearly now: someone needs to step in and advocate for the public in the consideration of a global online identity system. That is what this is about!