Beyond Attributes

In developing SCUID, we’ve been taking a very deep look at how the very nature of online identity (mostly enterprise identity, but a lot of it extends equally well to the broader definition of online identity) is changing in terms of how it is managed and what it needs to support. And in addition to my own recent work (that I’ve been documenting on this blog and in my various talks), there has been a lot of interesting discussion on some fundamental rethinking of the construct of identity. I touched on some of this in the talks I gave at the Cloud Identity Summit, but really dove into it in the talk I gave at the 2013 Defrag conference. It took a while (time flies in the identity startup world), but I finally managed to get the talk recorded and posted to the Talking Identity channel. You can check out the recording (slides + audio) below.

The talk built on themes from my Defrag talk of the previous year as well as Ian’s excellent Killing Identity Management talk. The core premise establishes the need for the identity graph, and describes how using rich relationships between different types of identities and putting analytics on top of it allows for a more dynamic and agile digital space that spans personal and work applications. It is work that is at the heart of what we (among others) are building in SCUID – going beyond the “comma-based” world, as Ian put it.

The talk got a good reaction from folks in attendance, which I have captured in the storify below. I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please share in the comments or on Twitter.