The OpenID Foundation and Information Card Foundation are pleased to jointly sponsor the Monday night dinner at the Spring 2009 Internet Identity Workshop (happening May 18-20) because this event is the where the core collaborative work of the user-centric identity community really happens. OpenID and Information Cards are both key pieces of this puzzle, and bringing our members together at the Internet Identity Workshop is a key way that each of our respective foundations can achieve our mission.

- Don Thibeau, Executive Director of the OpenID Foundation & Drummond Reed Executive Director of the Information Card Foundation

OASIS IDTrust is a sponsor

We are pleased to annouce that the OASIS IDTrust group headed by Dee Shur is once again sponsoring a break at IIW.

OUNO is on board as sponsor

OUNO is a great little company in the identity community that is sponsoring IIW for the second workshop in a row. This year they are supporting the notes taking in the documentation center for a day.

I really enjoyed talking with Nika the founder at the last workghop the company using the XRI standard to build a service to support simplified contact both in the digital realm and I think also with physical mail.  They are currently accepting people into their limted beta that you are welcome to sign up for.

Yahoo! sponsors IIW

We are pleased that Yahoo! Developer Network is on board as a sponsor of a break at IIW.

Many thanks to Eran Hammer-Lahva for working with us on this sponsorship.

Over 80 people signed up for IIW

I am really pleased to announce that we have had success with our early registration drive.  We had a goal of 75 sign ups by April One and we have over 80 people registered.

I didn’t realize it but we had a cap on the number of independents tickets – because of this I am leaving the lower independent rate up for another 48 hours to the end of day April 3 pacific time so those of you who went to register yesturday and found out that “tickets were sold out” can still get the low rate.   (Also those inspired to get involved at Web 2.0 Expo can sign up)

Doc on IIW + Early Bird Registraion ends today

Doc Searls one of the co-producers of IIW posted this yesturday on his blog:

The Internet Identity Workshop , aka IIW, started as the Identity Gang way back in ‘05, and has since grown to become a fixture event in the calendars of many developers and other folks supportive of development work toward working user-driven identity systems. (These today include… (lists the long list of projects in the sidebar)

What’s cool about IIW is that we have a large bunch of individuals and outfits working in converging directions, creating and/or mashing up solutions to problems faced by individuals needing to control and assert their identity information in the digital world. For all the activity going on here, the whole field is still brand new, with lots of work left to be done before it’s ready for Prime Time, which has been going on in any case since the commercial Web was born 1.5 decades ago. More importantly, much effort is made by everybody involved not to foreclose progress or lock out other solutions where development vectors converge or cross. it’s the only thing like it I know.

What also rocks is that progress happens at every single IIW, sometimes a great deal of it. The whole thing is about doing. We have participants, not just attendees.

There is, however, urgency. Making sure we get our usual space at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View depends on getting enough registrants today.