Identity 2.0 shown using Presentation 3.0 skillz

A link to this keynote presentation by Dick Hardt of Sxip Identity at the 2005 O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) was forwarded to me by Guy Kawasaki's mailing list. I know Guy's name from the "old Mac" days when I used a Mac SE and read his columns in MacUser magazine. Now Guy is involved in a VC company he founded called Garage Technology Ventures and he is apparently quite a champion of entrepreneurial ventures.

This keynote presentation is great for two reasons:

1. It reveals a useful "why didn't I think of that?" epiphanic thought process for analyzing society's shift of information and resources from the "real" to the "virtual;" and
2. If that's not enough, the revelation is done in a compelling presentation style that you can't stop watching.

The main topic is "Identity 2.0" for our interactions on the Internet, or Intertron, as some have called it. The gist is that current interactions on the web with various web sites is fairly stilted and awkward because we have to authenticate ourselves individually with each site and few sites share individual identity authentication information at all, let alone in a way that users would be comfortable with. In short, our online identities are not user-centric the way they are in the physical world. Mr. Hardt proposes a solution (not wholly original, but he is actually implementing it and moving forward) and does a terrific job of explaining it in the video, as his company very well may have invented the Identity 2.0 moniker.

The epiphanic thought process I referred to above is quite simple. One merely looks at a real-world process and maps it on top of a virtual process to see what lines up and what doesn't. This can greatly simplify the discussion of Intertron processes by removing all of the "high tech" flibberty-floo to reveal real-world analogues that we already understand. It also helps to reveal "high tech" solutions in the virtual world that would be obvious in the more familiar "real" world.

"Presentation 3.0" is my creation arrived at thus:

• Presentation 1.0 - speaking in front of a group, as people have done throughout history;
• Presentation 2.0 - speaking in front of a group using an overhead projector and markers;
• Presentation 2.1 - speaking in front of a group using PowerPoint, generic clipart, bullet lists and frightening/annoying sound effects;
• Presentation 3.0 - speaking in front of a group using presentation software to incorporate text and graphics that convey an idea intuitively in an interesting and humorous way.

Sometimes bullet lists aren't so bad.

Sometimes.