It’s that DIDW time of the year

The annual Digital ID World conference is coming up (September 8 – 10) in Anaheim. DIDW is usually a blast, as a number of folks from the identity arena show up at the conference to connect, exchange ideas and move the business of identity forward. And this is the first conference I’ll be attending in Anaheim, so I welcome the change of venue (I was getting to know some of the bars in San Francisco way too well).

While DIDW (like any conference) tends to have its share of vendor sales pitches, it is always good for a few sessions to inspire me and give my gray cells something to work on. My biggest problem tends to be figuring out how to divide my time, because unlike Burton Catalyst, where I know which track to just plant myself in, every session on the agenda here is related to identity. Looking at this years agenda, I see some interesting sessions planned.

Oracle will obviously have a big presence there. Besides being a Platinum sponsor, there will be a few folks from Oracle speaking:

• Eric Leach will be talking on “Next Generation Access Management Solutions” [Sept 9 from 12:20 - 1:10pm]
• Phil Hunt will be talking about the Identity Governance Framework [Sept 10 from 3 - 3:50pm]

And some of our customers will be on panels discussing lessons learnt in tackling some thorny identity issues:

• Brenda Hughes from Cisco on “Successful Compliance Deployments” [Sept 10 from 11:25am - 12:15pm]
• Vikas Mahajan from AARP and Divya Sundaram from Motorola on “Successful Virtual Directory Deployments” [Sept 10 from 11:25am - 12:15pm]

(Hmm, too bad both the panels are at the same time)

I know a lot of folks that will be making it out to DIDW, so I look forward to some interesting conversations over food and libations (drinks are always a good way to get the tongues wagging). An attempt I made on Twitter at organizing a tweetup at DIDW didn’t really take off, probably because it was too early for people’s plans to be made. But if you are going to be there, let me know and I would love to meet up. And I will be spending some time at the demogrounds earning my keep, so stop by if you just want to have a chat.