Ignite Deux Seattle

Ignite Deux

No, it's not another French post from Jackson. Tonight I did something a bit different. I headed over to the Capital Hill Art Center in downtown Seattle to watch Ignite Deux. There were 21 speakers scheduled including Scott Kveton the CEO of JanRain the folks behind OpenID. As you probably know, my buddy Kim Cameron is the man behind the curtain for Microsoft's CardSpace initiative ( I guess I should stop calling it an initiative - it is actually part of Vista now) and at the RSA conference Microsoft announced that CardSpace would be interoperable with OpenID.

I thought since Scott was going to present I might as well go over and see what all the hub-bub was about. The format of the evening was interesting in itself. Presenters had 5 minutes - only - to present their 20 slides! That's 15 seconds a slide. Scott was third presenter in the first volley of speakers. The first talk was from Matthew Maclaurin of Microsoft Research on Programming for Fun/Children/Hobbyists/Hackers. The second was from Elisabeth Freeman (Author in the Head First Series, Works at Disney Internet Group) on The Science Behind the Head First Books: or how to write a technical book that doesn’t put your readers to sleep. Then Scott was to speak.

First, I was shocked to walk into this "art space" that was packed to the rafters with people. Was I in the wrong place? Apparently not. On the website they stated the space would hold 400 people and it was jam packed. I had this vision of a few people sitting around some tables chatting. Not so! It was pretty cool; folksy; kinda out there but very engaging. Second, what was I going to get out of a 5 minute talk? Well, the speakers kind of had the pressure on them to make their points. The ones that I saw all got to the point quickly and they all engaged the with the audience, did their thing and got off.

Check out my photos on Picasa if you want to see the shots I took which included many from Scott's talk. So, what did I learn from Scott's talk?

• OpenID is single sign-on for the web
• Simple, light-weight, easy-to-use, open development process
• Decentralized
• Lots of companies are already using it or have pledged support
• 12-15M users have OpenIDs; 1000+ OpenID enabled sites
• 10-15 new OpenID sites added each day
• 7% growth every week in sites

Scott predicts that in 2007 there will be 100M users, 7,500 sites, big players adopt OpenID and that OpenID services emerge. Bold predictions but something that is viral, like OpenID has a shot at it.

I have to say I was impressed. Scott finished up with a call to action that included learning more about OpenID at openidenabled.com. I'm definitely heading over there to learn more.

I'll report back.

p.s. Here's an interesting read: Five Key Takeaways From Microsoft, OpenID Announcement

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igniteseattle, identity management, CardSpace, OpenID, Microsoft, Kim Cameron