Your Online Identity Defines Your Role in the Crowd
Identity Woman builds networks of trust, face-to-face and through Internet Identity
Johannes Kuhn interviews Kaliya Hamlin, aka Identity Woman
Kaliya Hamlin, aka Identity Woman is a "freelance evangelist for open standards in user-centric digital identity." In other words, she advocates a "digital identifier," a single identity that a user can use across the entire Internet, to replace separate individual authentication with each website. She is the co-producer and facilitator of Internet Identity Workshop, a series of meetings to discuss Internet Identity, and the main face-to-face gathering of the Identity Commons.
Hamlin has also been involved in various other "unconferences" as a facilitator, and is an expert in their techniques. She helped grow identity community for the past three years. Yet her passion and heart are really with Internet Identity Worshop and how it is changing the web for the better.
Johannes Kuhn: You are involved in various unconferences, such as the Internet Identity Workshop, Mashup Camp, Startup Camp, the Supernova Open Space Workshop and Online Community Camp. Based on these experiences, are crowds really wise?
Kaliya Hamlin: When I hear the word "crowd," I think of being in a public space with random people—they can be intelligent to a certain degree, but I have people specifically drawn to certain things. If you use the wisdom of people that gather for certain intentions, and you make them participate with a conscious intent because you invited them, then you are really using their “wisdom.”
But, to answer the question: Yes, there is deep wisdom in communities, and the best to me is the Identity Commons Community that gathers at Internet Identity Workshop which I lead.
Q: You speak about invitations, but that also can include making people pay. Why pay for admission to an unconference?
A: Whenever someone contacts me about running an unconference, I strongly recommend that they charge something, because it tends to be that people do not value things they get for free. If you say we are putting on a free event for 600 people, they sign up and say “We are coming,” and then 300 people show up. That is frustrating. It denies the 600 to 900 people the ability to come because you turned them away and it means you bought a bunch of food for people who did not show.
What happens is it is too easy to say, “I am coming,” if you do not charge something a psychological contract between the organizers and attendees does not form. Having even a small fee helps make the attendees a commitment to coming. It is not about making money, but making a contract assuring people will come. You increase the attendance to 90 percent of the people turning up.
Q: How has the whole unconference phenomenon changed in the past couple of years?
A: I think the difference is three years ago there wasn’t a recognizable brand for unconferences; in the last two years, the tech communities have embraced this technology. When I facilitate an event like this, I use open space technology 80 percent of the time; 20 percent, I use large-group participation exercises: spectograms, fishbowl, speed geeking, et cetera.
Open space technology is not new; it has been around for 20 years. I first participated in open space in 2002 at a conference in Seattle. It is very California tech-style to say “we invented it,” but it is not a new process.
Q: What is the difference between *camp and open space technology, or OST?
A: In OST you have a blank wall in front of you, but the sessions you write on it are not fixed; you write them on a piece of paper so you can move them around. In *camps, you normally don’t do this. In OST you have someone facilitating: They make sure that the shy people feel comfortable to contribute and make up sessions.
What I saw happening at FooCamps was the agenda walls were brought up, and literally it was an alpha male stampede trying to get their name on board and once their session was written on the board it couldn’t be moved.
At BarCamp the session wall was up and those who go there first put their session on the wall. There was no shared time/space agenda creation time. This is the critical difference. This is not a space for shy people to have a shy sessions: you have to hear quiet voices, too. Open space technology creates a welcoming space. In OST you put a lot of work into the invitation and creating a welcoming environment for all people coming. It is about "creating space" for community interaction.
OST uses the four principles of open space and the Law of Two Feet to support people negotiating their time together. They create a certain amount of empathy for everyone.
Q: Why do unconferences work?
A: Well, the thing is, you do not need a common background, a common shared interest area, a shared set of values or community bonds. What’s your goal and why are you going together? That determines everything.
Q: Are they better for brainstorming or solving problems?
A: I’d say both: There are unconference methodologies being used inside companies to figure out what to do next. For example, I will do an AOL internal developer unconference in June. Then there are people interested in a startup—and they might use the model for brainstorming. There is something really challenging to bring together a community who can solve all kinds problems. And that’s great.
Q: You are also an advocate of Internet Identity—can you explain why?
A: I am really interested in it because I understand the value of persistence, how it would help people to move around the Web more like in a face-to-face world. Normally you can recognize their body; on the Web, you can’t do that because we don’t have bodies—unless you do have an identifier that moves with you. The implication is to have people communicating better.
Trust comes with relationship and interaction over a time—and if I have an identifier it is possible to build those networks of trust much more easily across contexts.
Q: How would that be needed for crowdsourcing?
A: Crowdsourcing means to have a large group of people talking, interacting. And groups of people who have connections, who can collaborate based on trust, have a closer link than people with no identity. It is not that random crowd wisdom would all work by itself; there is more needed to figure out how to make this model of collaboration work.
Q: But it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable to be followed around the Web, to leave traces everywhere…
A: What if I want to be followed around? One example: I want to go to the Super Identity blog to make a comment. If I have an identifier, they know it is me. Of course the data they have about me is not to be shared, and we are very conscious that there have to be technical and legal ways to protect people from being followed around.
Q: In what way will this end the anonymity factor of the Internet?
A: Anonymity is definitely an important feature to maintain. It is a freedom that is really valuable. But there also has to be the freedom to aggregate, not to be forced into using a hundred different passwords. But until we reach it, there is some way to go: There are intellectual hurdles, code hurdles. A certain degree of trust has to be established between large companies and communities. There are also legal and social issues. A good place to look is the Identity Commons wiki.
We started a workshop two years ago, and today we have Open ID, we have the panel project which is working on the whole subject – all of these things are happening.
Q: What's really new about crowdsourcing? And where is it going next?
A: The Internet is ideal for collective actions, but I think innovations and intellectual property rights and copyright issues that make it easier to do crowdsourcing are necessary—like open source licenses, software, Creative Commons—this is all needed so the content world really allows collective action. I think identity on the Web will help crowdsourcing, as it will make it a lot easier to address complex problems.
A: Is there money to be made with crowdsourcing? If so, why will some people work free so that others can profit?
A: Doc Searls is a leader of an identity community I work with. And he used to say, “You make money because of something, not with it.” Look at Linux: people make money because they use it, not with it. Google makes money because of Linux, not with it. People make money because of crowdsourcing, not with it.
Q: What surprised you the most with your project?
A: As far as Internet Identity Workshop is concerned, I am surprised how fast solutions to problems emerge. And, even more, I am surprised about the level of commitment of people to work through and find those solutions.
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(Edited by Kevin Lerner)
