Identity is about relationships

Digital ID World 2007 Recap:  It's about relationships...

There were some great things out of Digital ID World.  The keynotes, especially the opening day (Monday 24 Sept. 2007) provided some deja vu moments for me.

I found that Doc Searls keynote put forward very new thinking in Digital Identity Management (DIdM).  Doc is working on something he calls Vendor Relationship Management, and through this VRM he has come to the same conclusion about DIdM that those of us in the KM space have know for years; it is about relationships/trust.  Do I have a relationship with this company/person/persona (digital identity) and or do I trust this company/person/persona (digital identity).

My first thought was, "Finally someone in DIDM gets it!"  That really isn't fair, because until recently there were not a lot of people thinking or talking about how digital identity and knowledge management interact.An additional, and I think unnoticed outcome from this years DIDW was how several keynote speakers (Doc Searls, Kim Cameron) were talking about Value Networks without apparently understanding that they were doing so.  Hopefully there will be more to report on this in the future as DIdM and KM converge.