This week is the fifth semi-annual Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View, Calif., (there was only one session in 2005), a gathering that's just about the exact opposite of the Gartner ID Summit I discussed last week. Whereas the Garner event is aimed at business managers (who might have to drag IT types there), the IIW is, essentially, a developers' conference. Or, perhaps, an innovators' conference. Marketing types and other "suits" will be in short supply at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View – quite a contrast with Gartner's venue of the Century City Hyatt in Hollywood! Still, both venues have a definite role to play in the grand scheme of identity technology.

IIW is best known as the birthplace of OpenID, and the place where OpenID, Microsoft CardSpace and the Liberty Alliance sat down, conversed and found common ground. OpenID itself finally got a mention at the Gartner event, where business managers were told to think about it for internal or corporate use (perhaps similar to Sun’s experiment). The lesson is, though, that if you want to be on the cutting edge of ID technology, then IIW is the place to be.

You should even drag along your marketing and business people, at least for the first day’s sessions that are filled with introductory tutorial and information sessions for people who have not before attended IIW (or an “Identity Open Space,” IOS, usually put on in conjunction with another event). It includes written and oral presentations (all short and concise) by those groups which are active in the space so that people who are new to this technology niche can get the most out of, as well as make informed contributions to the following two days workshops.

I expect to learn quite a bit over the next couple of days; I always do at the IIW. In the coming weeks I’ll be telling you more about what it is that I’ve learned. For now, though, just be ready to sign up for the next session, next May most likely. But I’ll be sure to tell you the exact dates as soon as I know.

The event calendar is a little sparse for the next couple of months. There’s the Webinar “Remote Access and Strong Authentication – Joined at the Hip” taking place on Wed., Dec. 5.

Then nothing until the Directory Experts Conference in March. Surely there’s something happening in January and February – drop me a line and let me know.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.