Next week, I will sit on a panel with Mike Jones of Microsoft and David Recordon of VeriSign. This panel will be a part of day spent on the subject of the Concordia Project.
One might ask, "What's Concordia?" and I, of course, would respond that that's a good question. My recollection (questionable, I know) of the sequence of how we got to where we are is as follows: The name originated in an earlier internal project at the Liberty Alliance where a number of us were examining potential paths towards convergence with the other technologies/protocols in the identity and web services space. Eve Maler can be blamed for the name as she brought it up given that Concordia was the Roman goddess of agreement, understanding, and marital harmony (not that any of us were getting married to each other) -- which, theoretically, is what convergence is about.
Anyway, as we moved forward on the project we eventually figured out that doing this ourselves would likely be a waste of time (why would anyone else listen to us). If we really wanted to talk about convergence we needed to bring the other players to the table. That led to more deep thinking (and perhaps a few visits to the neighborhood psychologist) and the eventual realization that many of the differences in the current approaches had to do with different use cases and with looking at the problem from different points of view.
So, here we are. Trying to organize an effort to bring together people interested in this space so that we can discuss our respective use cases and understand the problems that need to be solved. Liberty has tried to be very careful and very clear that this isn't a Liberty effort, but an industry effort (which Liberty supports). My hope is that we can use this common understanding to drive towards common protocols, features and capabilities so that those trying to use our stuff will have an easier time integrating with the rest of the world.
So come join us for the Concordia day at the Burton Catalyst Conference. At the minimum, it should be fun (though without Dick Hardt on the panel, I won't have someone to pick on :-)). The Concordia sessions are free, you just need to register here.
I look forward to seeing you all there!
Tags : identity / Liberty / Liberty Alliance / Microsoft / Verisign / Burton Catalyst / Concordia
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