Internet Identity Workshop

Internet Identity Workshop
Name	Internet Identity Workshop
Genre	Conference
Frequency	Biennial / Annual
Location	Mountain View, California; other venues
Established	2005
Founders	Phil Windley; Kaliya Young; Mary Ruddy

Internet Identity Workshop is a recurring convening focused on decentralized identity, digital identity, authentication, privacy, and standards. The workshop gathers technologists, designers, policymakers, advocates, entrepreneurs, and researchers from diverse organizations to collaborate on interoperable identity systems, cryptography, user-centric models, and open standards. It serves as a forum where participants from major technology companies, standards bodies, academic institutions, startups, and civil society groups prototype solutions and influence projects across the identity ecosystem.

History

The workshop emerged in 2005 amid conversations involving leaders from Mozilla Foundation, OASIS (organization), World Wide Web Consortium, Internet Engineering Task Force, Internet Society, Identity Commons, and groups connected to OpenID and OAuth (protocol). Early gatherings featured contributors linked to MIT Media Lab, Stanford University, Harvard University, Berkeley (California), and Silicon Valley organizations such as Sun Microsystems, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. Over successive meetings, attendees included representatives from FIDO Alliance, Linux Foundation, Internet Architecture Board, European Commission, National Institute of Standards and Technology, United Nations Development Programme, and civil society NGOs like Electronic Frontier Foundation and Privacy International. The workshop influenced the development of projects associated with Sovrin Foundation, Hyperledger, DIF (Decentralized Identity Foundation), W3C Credentials Community Group, DID (Decentralized Identifiers), Verifiable Credentials, and standards work involving JSON-LD, TLS, and OAuth 2.0. Notable figures appearing in early programs included engineers and advocates connected to Phil Windley, Kaliya Young, Kim Cameron, Eve Maler, Nat Sakimura, and others active in identity standards.

Purpose and Themes

The event focuses on interoperability and practical deployment of identity technologies championed by organizations like Microsoft, Google, Apple Inc., IBM, and Amazon (company), alongside startups from incubators such as Y Combinator and 500 Startups. Technical themes frequently intersect with standards work at the World Wide Web Consortium, cryptographic research from IETF, governance discussions involving OECD, privacy law analysis linked to European Court of Justice, and social impact assessments tied to United Nations initiatives. Recurring topics include decentralized identifiers advocated by Sovrin Foundation and Decentralized Identity Foundation, verifiable credentials modeled with contributors from MIT, Stanford University, Cornell University, and applied pilots by World Bank and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Sessions explore authentication models inspired by FIDO Alliance specifications, access control patterns used at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and identity wallets influenced by Google Wallet and Apple Wallet.

Events and Format

Workshops are organized with unconference sessions, pop-up working groups, demonstrations, and sprint sessions, drawing participants from DEF CON, RSA Conference, SXSW, TED, Web Summit, and academic conferences such as IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy and ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. The format emphasizes hands-on interoperability testing with implementations from Hyperledger Indy, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Zcash, and other ledger technologies. Sessions utilize collaboration tools popularized by GitHub, GitLab, Slack (software), IRC, and documentation conventions from RFCs and W3C Working Groups. Workshops have taken place in venues connected to Microsoft Research, Googleplex, Mozilla HQ, and university campuses including Stanford University and UC Berkeley (University of California, Berkeley).

Participants and Community

The participant base includes engineers from Google, Microsoft, Apple Inc., IBM, Amazon (company), designers from IDEO, academics from MIT, Stanford University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, legal scholars from Harvard Law School and Yale Law School, policymakers from European Commission and US Department of Commerce, privacy advocates from Electronic Frontier Foundation and Privacy International, entrepreneurs from Y Combinator and Techstars, and nonprofit actors such as Mozilla Foundation and OpenID Foundation. Professional identities represented range from cryptographers associated with RSA Security to standards experts linked to W3C, IETF, and ISO (International Organization for Standardization). Community culture mirrors open-source communities like those surrounding Linux and Apache Software Foundation, with collaboration patterns similar to OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia.

Notable Projects and Outcomes

Workshops have catalyzed engineering and standards outcomes including interoperability proofs-of-concept for OpenID Connect, extensions to OAuth (protocol), demonstrations combining DID (Decentralized Identifiers) with Verifiable Credentials, pilots integrating Hyperledger Indy with wallet implementations, and workstreams that informed specifications at W3C and guidance from NIST. Collaborations produced cross-industry pilots involving World Bank identity programs, humanitarian identity efforts linked to International Committee of the Red Cross, and financial inclusion pilots supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Mastercard. Startups incubated or accelerated through workshop networks have engaged with Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Accel Partners for funding and partnership. Technical artifacts from sessions influenced implementations in projects like Sovrin, uPort, Civic, NuID, and integrations with enterprise platforms from Salesforce and Oracle Corporation.

Organizational Structure and Funding

The event has historically been organized by a coordination team including founders and volunteer organizers associated with Identity Commons and partner organizations such as Evernym, Digital Bazaar, and Auth0. Funding and sponsorship have come from a mixture of corporate sponsors (including Google, Microsoft, Amazon (company), IBM), foundations (including Ford Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), standards bodies (W3C, IETF), and university hosts (Stanford University, UC Berkeley (University of California, Berkeley)). Organizational governance reflects practices from nonprofit entities like Mozilla Foundation and Linux Foundation, with community code-of-conduct norms similar to PyCon and Apache Software Foundation events. Venue, travel scholarships, and project sprints have been supported by grants and sponsor-backed fellowships drawing on networks tied to Open Technology Fund, Knight Foundation, and corporate research labs such as Microsoft Research and Google Research.

Category:Technology conferences