Adventures of an Eternal Optimist

As you may have already heard, the Information Card Foundation has finally been made public.  As a community board member, I’ve been mostly a spectator in the formation of this foundation, watching as an intense amount of legal work, diplomacy, recruitment, and PR work sped by.   It has been a real eye opener to see this entity come to exist,  and to see the huge commitment that has been necessary to attain organizational escape velocity.

To me, the ICF is about enablement.  We now have a place where interested parties can collaborate to create value; a place with a well-defined legal context, and the ability to allocate funds to achieve community goals.

I believe that we have a good mix of people contributing to the ICF at the governance level – we have zealots & skeptics, dreamers & realists, Enterprise representation as well as Consumer representation, protocol people & implementers, big business and grassroots organizations.  I think this kind of diversity will keep us from drowning in our own self-made koolaid ;)

Actions speak louder than words, of course.  I look forward to letting our actions do the speaking as soon as possible.  In the meantime, I want to send many thanks and kudos to the Executive Director of the ICF, Charles Andres, for his work as orchestra conductor and primary cat-herder in getting things off the ground.

I’m off to Catalyst tomorrow!

I’m really excited about attending Catalyst with no responsibilities this year :)  Last year, as exciting as it was to be working on the OSIS interop and presenting,  I felt like the whole week was a blur.  I look forward to relaxing, learning, and maybe asking a few pointed questions this year :-D

Over the last year or so, I’ve seen some trends in the Enterprise Identity world that worry me.  I’m very interested to see whether these trends are reflected in conference material or not. We shall see…

I’ve just upgraded to Firefox 3 – and I’m really glad to see that the developers have made the ceremony around suspicious certificates both more informative, and much more strongly worded.

I love to see this kind of progress. Server names deleted to protect the innocent.

If I buy a retail version of Vista, I pay several hundred dollars for the DVD set, but really the value is in the license.

If I buy a machine with Vista on it, I theoretically get a “deal” because the computer arrives pre-installed. I have a license — I have paid for the right to use the software.

However, if my disk dies, taking with it the operating system that never actually ran particularly well AND the recovery partition that took up 10gb of the disk space that was marketed as usable space when I bought the machine, and which sat there doing nothing until the day I was desperate to access it, the same day it became inaccessible to me (dim bulbs, the engineers that thought up this recovery strategy), SUDDENLY THE MEDIA MATTERS. And it isn’t ANY installation DVD, oh no, I can’t borrow my buddy’s Vista Ultimate installation disc that he paid for, oh no. I have to have the OEM version. For another $160.00 $200.00 CAD. I swear I’ve aged 10 years in the last 3 days. And I still am not able to run the Operating system I theoretically paid for.

Have you guys out there making these licensing deals ever heard of KISS? Keep It Simple Stupid.

No, I guess not.

Anyone in the consulting biz will tell you that there times when, despite your best efforts to explain things to your clients and understand in return, communications break down.

Finally I’ve found the perfect link with which to express those moments…

I love the internet.

Update: apparently I have not inspired everyone enough to click the link… so here is the link again, with the domainname showing (I suggest you check it out): http://heresabunnywithapancakeonitshead.com

Twitter is the bomb. It just explodes all the time.

– Craig Burton ( via boring ol’ IM )

Whenever things are this quiet, you can be sure that there is a lot of work going on beneath the surface. Just in case you don’t believe me, check out the latest version of the Bandit DigitalMe Selector: I *love* the yellow band that displays the hostname of the Relying Party you are trying to interact with, it’s a great addition. Nice work Andy!

Congratulations to the London Heathrow Airport Security Team on busting the dangerous character who had the AUDACITY to wear a tshirt depicting a picture of a fictional superhero holding a fictional gun. Who knows — perhaps that character could have jumped right out of fiction-land into reality and hijacked a plane.

I had no idea about this very serious threat to national security! I will heretofore make the sacrifice of leaving my Jessica Rabbit t-shirt at home from now on. I sure do wish my own country’s airport security crew was as observant and as quick to act upon credible security dangers; I admit I feel like I’m at risk in Canadian airports, where the security personnel would laugh heartily at the idea of a cartoon posing a risk to air flight. In fact, I won’t feel safe until we develop technology that can scan passengers to make sure they aren’t wearing Boba Fett Underoos…