[OpenID] "OpenID" selected as the 3rd runner up in the 2008 IT Buzz Words in Japan.

Tue Jan 6 16:29:19 UTC 2009

Several cultural issues in the note.

Can make money.... Some view this as a commune, where nobody is supposed to be making money. Can folks formally resolve to remove this silly rule in the next board session? The commune rule out of date. It done its job, during the evangelism phase.

Saml and openid are just protocols, largely equivalent... Some view that assertion as a mission destroyer (since uci is "different to saml federations", by core control design goals). Need to resolve that openid *intends* its specs to serve medium assurance needs (including ecommerce payments) in the next board session. The sun view (openid is great but for "no value resources only") needs to be countered.

________________________________
From: Nat Sakimura <sakimura at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 3:18 AM
To: Drummond Reed <drummond.reed at cordance.net>
Cc: OpenID List <general at openid.net>
Subject: Re: [OpenID] "OpenID" selected as the 3rd runner up in the 2008 IT Buzz Words in Japan.

I think the process in Japan deserves better study by itself, but here are some of the points that we kept in mind.

1) We (drivers of OIDF-J collectively) made sure that we capitalize on the big bang the OIDF announcement and Yahoo! support of OpenID created: we continually fed the press etc. with news (every month!) so that the interest did not die out. Instead, it created snowball effect.

2) It is in a sense part of 1) but to make the steam going, we made sure that we achieve a balanced interest in all the sectores including government by visiting them and educating them, have the key players in each industry supports us.

3) To do 2), we had to show the value, so we have created business use cases, and made sure things get usecase driven. CX was one such case, and the sample implementation at JAL generated a lot of interest across the industries. We have shown them that with a bit of tweak, it can grow into HIGHER SECURITY protocol that can carry higher value transactions, and that it generates real money.

4) To remoeve the uncertainty from the technology buyer's perspective, we have promoted the notion of "Harmonization", that in the end, it would not matter whether you start from OpenID or SAML, that they should start implementing NOW with whichever the more suitable technology for his usecase.

So, in essence, we have been doing all the above in parallel, and that created  a virtuous cycle. e.g., the cycle reates a new good news that press will like, and that leads the implementers to implement, and that leads to another news ... etc. Even today, a very interesting news (at least to me) has come in, which I expect that it will create another round of press coverage later.

Now, to Drummond's question, "particular factors about the Japanese market".

Well, certainly, the founders of OIDF-J were pretty well connected to various sector. For example, Seki-san of SixApart was very well connected to the press and Web2.0 type companies, NRI is very well connected to the financial, retail, telcos, and government, and Verisign obivously to the security guys. However, the participation of other people from the other bodies were equally important. IdCon is a group of hackers who is interested in Identity, and we helped each other, and that does help the implementations move forward. Liberty Alliance was very helpful in organizing a big conference and tell about "Harmonization" to enterprises and governments. Certificate Authority people (not only Verisign but bunch of them including JPKI people) helped us by financing our conference etc. JAL let us implement the live system. etc. etc... There are much more than I could quote here. It is this "united front" that made this possible in Japan, I think.

Does this answer your question, Chris? I was not so sure about what you meant by "advocacy lead", so... If I am missing the sweet spot, I will try again so please let me know more about what you have in mind.

Cheers,

=nat

On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Nat Sakimura <sakimura at gmail.com<mailto:sakimura at gmail.com>> wrote:
Right. We have to do it.

I will try to write something up once my new year holiday ends... too much family obligations right now ;-)

=nat

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 11:54 AM, Drummond Reed <drummond.reed at cordance.net<mailto:drummond.reed at cordance.net>> wrote:

Congrats on this news, Nat. It's clear OpenID Japan is being highly successful in getting good buzz for OpenID in the Japanese market.

In addition to Chris' questions, are there particular factors about the Japanese market that you think are involved? What would be required for this to catch on elsewhere?

=Drummond

________________________________

From: general-bounces at openid.net<mailto:general-bounces at openid.net> [mailto:general-bounces at openid.net<mailto:general-bounces at openid.net>] On Behalf Of Chris Messina
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2008 9:06 PM
To: Nat Sakimura; david at sixapart.com<mailto:david at sixapart.com>
Cc: OpenID List
Subject: Re: [OpenID]"OpenID" selected as the 3rd runner up in the 2008 IT Buzz Words in Japan.

I'm wondering how we could repeat this success in the US and elsewhere.

Nat, can you point to any specific outreach/advocacy that lead to this?

Chris

On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 6:41 PM, David Recordon <drecordon at sixapart.com<mailto:drecordon at sixapart.com>> wrote:

This is great news!  It's really amazing to see how OpenID continues to take off in Japan.

--David

On Dec 27, 2008, at 7:51 PM, Nat Sakimura wrote:

On Dec. 22, Tokyo IT Newspaper published this year's buzz word ranking. (http://itnp.net/category_betsu/24/2167/)

The ranking is done in Sumo Ranking style and they are Ranked as "Yokozuna (Grand Champion)", "Ozeki (Champion, 2nd highest rank)", "Sekiwake (Junior Champion, 3rd highest rank)" etc.

This year, Yokozuna was iPhone, which was no surprise since it was the first year in Japan. Ozeki was Google Street View, which is no surprise either.

What surprised me though was the 3rd highest rank, Sekiwake, which turned out to be OpenID. It ranked higher than NetBooks (eePCs etc.) or Google Chrome, etc.

Anyhow, it is good to hear something that is assuring of our marketing activity.

For more details, see http://www.sakimura.org/en/modules/wordpress/index.php?p=68

--
Nat Sakimura (=nat)
http://www.sakimura.org/en/

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