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Welcome to the Identity Commons Wiki

We are a community of groups working on addressing the social, legal and technical issues that arise with the emerging, identity, data and social layer of the internet.

These include:

What are the open standards to make it work? (identity and semantic)
What are technical implementations of those standards?
How do different standards and technical implementations interoperate?
What are the new social norms and legal constructs needed to make it work?
What tools are needed to make it usably secure for end-users?
What are the businesses cases / models that drive all this?

Identity Commons is the collection of groups where these conversations are happening.

All this takes time, and yes, interest is growing and movement is happening, but there is not 'one answer' or 'one blueprint.' As Doc Searls, one of the 'grandfathers' of this movement is fond of saying, it is a "market conversation."

We need a broad and diverse range of participants. This layer once implemented will be as world changing as the World Wide Web of documents was for the Internet.

The purpose of Identity Commons is to support, facilitate, and promote the creation of an open identity layer for the Internet -- one that maximizes control, convenience, and privacy for the individual while encouraging the development of healthy, interoperable communities.

Identity Commons is open, inclusive, and bottoms-up, community of groups. They share an agreement and agree to abide by a set of principles to help assure this. Membership resides in the Community Groups. There is a Stewards Council - with a representative from each group.

We provide a minimal structure for supporting community activities, and we hold space for the entire community to collaborate, and facilitate dialogue. You can learn more about our History and Background and organizational details Articles Of Incorporation, Bylaws, Identity Commons Brand Transfer.

Get Involved

Join one of the Community Groups - Identity Commons is organized as a set of distributed working groups.

If you are new to this topic and trying to get oriented to the subject there is group of Newbies supporting other Newbies - sharing resources, getting questions answered by the community - sense making of all this material.

Attend a community conference
- The 9th Internet Identity Workshop is happening Nov 3-5 in Mountain View
- The Kids Online Unconference - balancing Safety and Fun - October, 2009 San Francisco.

Subscribe to a mailing list
- IC Community Mailing List (Also known as the "Identity Gang").
- The Stewards Council mailing list is also public.
- Some of the Community Groups also have their own lists.

Participate in telecons - See Stewards Council Telecons for information about how to participate in our quarterly (and sometimes more) calls, which are open to everyone in the Identity Commons community.

Donate to ID Commons - Read How To Contribute to learn how to make a donation to Identity Commons to help cover basic operating expenses.

Edit the ID Commons Wiki - Use your OpenID URL or i-name to login, and follow the instructions. See [Wikimedia Help] for more information.

Learn More About the Organization

Working Groups - List of all Community Groups Working Group Descriptions are here.
Background - A brief history. A longer History
Purpose And Principles - The "core DNA" of the Identity Commons (IC).
Organizational Structure - A short explanation of how and why IC is structured as an "upside down umbrella".
Logo this explains the history of our logo.
Stewards Council - The coordinating body for IC working groups.
Facilitating Dialogue - Explains the role of IC in providing a space for shared conversation.
Community Streams of Activity
Working Group Agreement - The implied contract between a working group and IC as a whole.
Working Group Charter Template - The template any working group sponsor(s) can use to form a working group.
How We Collaborate - Information on how participants in IC work together.
Organizational Details Articles Of Incorporation, Bylaws, Identity Commons Brand Transfer.

Learn More about the Identity Space

Identity Landscape is a community-wide project to produce a living "map" of the Internet identity space, including efforts both inside and outside Identity Commons. All community members are invited to contribute.
The Identity Gang Working Group maintains a list of resources for the user-centric identity space.
Lexicon is a project of the Identity Gang to harmonize vocabulary for user-centric identity architecture.