<div class="gmail_quote">Answers inline.</div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 1:42 PM, kick willemse <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:k.willemse@diginotar.nl">k.willemse@diginotar.nl</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Dear candidates, I have three questions:<br>
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1. Responsible for a 300K user insurance portal, give me three main business reasons to go for openid and convince my board.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>I, too, would need to know more about your circumstances and goals, but I could offer you at least a few questions and answers to help approach the problem:</div>
<div><br></div><div>0. Are you using any existing SSO/identity management technology?</div><div><br></div><div>To better understand your needs, I think the first step is to look at what you're already doing (or not) and whether it's working. If it's broken, arguments can be crafted on how OpenID could be used to "fix it"; if it's believed to be working, then you might talk about how OpenID can supplement or improve your existing solution.</div>
<div><br></div><div>1. Who is your audience? </div><div><br></div><div>OpenID seems targeted at users who use many online services. If your members, for some reason, only use your portal and don't have any other accounts on the web, OpenID might not be the right solution for you.</div>
<div><br></div><div>It's also true that OpenID, today, is not as user-friendly as it could be. Until some of the usability issues are worked out, it might not make sense for a technophobic or tin-foil-hat wearing audience.</div>
<div><br></div><div>2. Would your audience likely reuse their identifiers on other websites?</div><div><br></div><div>On the other hand, many people are experiencing both registration fatigue and frustration with having to remember an increasing number of passwords for all the different sites they use.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Still other people would like to be able to publicly identify themselves with a verified identifier such as their URL. In a community setting, enabling people to host their identity elsewhere, or on a service that they use regularly, enables them to bring portions of their social capital with them -- by linking to an offsite profile that they're more likely to maintain.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Put another way, if someone spends a lot of time and energy pruning their MySpace page or their blog, and they also use that URL as their OpenID, other members of the network benefit from learning more about that individual without burdening that individual with having to maintain, again, an increasing number of redundant profiles across the web.</div>
<div><br></div><div>3. Is your portal centralized on one website and one platform or is it made up of multiple websites, platforms and affiliated destinations?</div><div><br></div><div>Though it's not always the best solution for SSO, if you're dealing with a hybrid system, making use of platforms like WordPress and Drupal that might be managed by separate groups, it can be convenient to have a unique way of identifying your members. OpenID and OAuth is a dual mechanism to enable cross-domain account consolidation.</div>
<div><br></div><div>As well, as you add new pieces to your architecture, OpenID will enable the reuse of durable identifiers leading to long term relationships with your customers (that is, if you add a new destination, let's say, you could enable users to import their existing profiles/activities/etc).</div>
<div><br></div><div>4. How much are you spending in support on account management, password resets, email verification and the like?</div><div><br></div><div>One benefit of OpenID (taking for granted that you've implemented it flawlessly) is that it pushes account management out to the OpenID providers, absolving you, as an RP, from having to deal with trying to get your email verifications through spam filters or dealing with users who forget their passwords or give them away to untrusted third parties.</div>
<div><br></div><div>It also means that OpenID users can choose to use stronger methods of authentication without costing you anything.</div><div><br></div><div>Finally, from a user-centric perspective, it means that a user will be able to use a familiar process and interface to manage their account -- rather than having to learn yours. Ultimately I think this will mean that users will become more confidant in managing and securing their accounts since they'll only have to do it from one place, rather than across a distributed array of incompatible or different interaction flows.</div>
<div><br></div><div>5. Have you implemented support for OpenSocial or Google Friend Connect yet? Do such social platforms interest your audience/board?</div><div><br></div><div>If yes, then getting on board with OpenID now should prepare you for the day when OpenID truly is the best way to improve customer retention, increase sign ups and decrease account management costs.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Over time, I think people will change their expectations of web sites — as they have with commercial transactions at the mall. I can't imagine a store that would make it today if it didn't accept credit cards. Cash and checks only? Hardly. Someday having your own island of a user account system will look just as antiquated and inconvenient. Should you jump on the trend now, it seems to me, you'd be able to participate in bringing about an ideal user experience which will work for your particular use case and customer base.</div>
<div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">2. I see openid as a network product like gsm,water, adsl, atm or e-mail. What is your relevant experience in these type of projects to come to a turning point and bring openid to the mass</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>I'm not sure I entirely agree with that.</div><div><br></div><div>I think OpenID should become a brand more like Blu-Ray, Bluetooth or Visa or Mastercard, where the logo comes to represent to a lay-audience the ability to do something you couldn't before. It should be conceived of less as a transport protocol and more of enabling feature: either you accept it or you don't, but if you do, those who are aware of it stand to gain from both convenience and consistency.</div>
<div><br></div><div>We have a long way to go, but someday, we should be able to say "OpenID, it's everywhere YOU want to [have an account]."</div><div><br></div><div>In terms of my relevant experience, my background is actually in communication design. In other words, I'm not a developer, but I have experience with branding and with developing strong messaging that works on the web.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I helped launch the Firefox community marketing project called Spread Firefox and lead the design of the two-page New York Times ad: <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-12-15.html">http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-12-15.html</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>I also co-founded the Flock web browser and did much of the initial (controversial) branding, messaging, design and outlining the vision. <a href="http://flock.com">http://flock.com</a></div><div><br></div>
<div>I have been a long-time active member of the microformats community. I've worked to convince various parties to adopt them, including Twitter.</div><div><br></div><div>I co-founded BarCamp, a worldwide decentralized organization of open-space conferences. <a href="http://barcamp.org">http://barcamp.org</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>I helped found the coworking movement, a community dedicated to establishing a network of physical, shared collaborative environments, which now counts around 200 spaces around the world (an effort that began just over two years ago). <a href="http://coworking.pbwiki.com">http://coworking.pbwiki.com</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>I kicked off the OAuth project with Larry Halff of Ma.gnolia and Blaine Cook of Twitter, among others. I did the design of the logo, the website, helped to maintain the wiki and source repository. <a href="http://oauth.net">http://oauth.net</a><br>
</div><div><br></div><div>I'm now working on the DiSo Project, a small effort intended to facilitate the development of the building blocks of the Open Stack. I have worked with Joseph Smarr on getting the Portable Contacts community off the ground and am now attempting to develop a format for expressing activities in a portable way.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I've also long been involved with advocating for the adoption of OpenID. In fact, one day and one year ago I published my OpenID Hitlist:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/12/09/my-openid-shitlist-hitlist-and-wishlist-for-2008/">http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/12/09/my-openid-shitlist-hitlist-and-wishlist-for-2008/</a><br>
</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><br>
3. What candidate would you like to have in your team and why.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Frankly, I think we've been given a great slate of potential candidates and I'm eager to continue working with all of them on eeking out the future of OpenID, whether I'm on the board or not.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I will say that I'm disappointed that we didn't have ANY female candidates — and that we didn't have more representation from the international community. I realize that we're still early in this community and open source projects tend to attract a white-male demographic, but I think we need to do much better, and seriously make an effort here.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I'm currently at a Drupal conference and though it's certainly not a 50-50 split, I'm impressed by the percentage of female attendees here. If OpenID is going to succeed, it's got to be something that appeals to the widest possible demographics; the board that will be elected, given the candidates on the slate, unfortunately does not represent that kind of demographic.</div>
<div><br></div><div>So, to answer your questions, among the many other issues we must confront, I'd like to work with others who recognize this issue and take very seriously the need for the OpenID community to expand the diversity of its constituents.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div><br></div><div>Chris</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br>-- <br>Chris Messina<br>Citizen-Participant &<br> Open Technology Advocate-at-Large<br><a href="http://factoryjoe.com">factoryjoe.com</a> # <a href="http://diso-project.org">diso-project.org</a><br>
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