Photo: Ben Buchanan

The Presentation

The awesome team of Diana Mounter and Reem Abdelaty from the LGwebnetwork asked if I would deliver the closing keynote for their first ever web conference, WE Believe in Community. I was honoured to accept.

I wanted to show people what I see in the web. What I see happening. Where I think everything is going. But I’m a firm believer in showing people techniques and technologies they can use right now. All of which made it very easy for me to talk about the Open Web. There’s an entire blog post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time about that, so we won’t get into it here. This is just to post my slides and to say that video and a podcast will be forthcoming at some point in the future. (I hear end of the week.) Update: Video is now available.

The conference

Put together in only a few months to meet a pressing need for stronger networking and more formal professional development for local government web workers, the entire experience was amazing. Both Reem and Diana radiate energy and passion and they communicated this to every attendee. There was a huge buzz of engagement and involvement. It was a real privilege to be a part of it!

The other big win of the two days was the outstanding quality of the content. John Allsopp delivered a stirring opening keynote of what constitutes the web and how you can expect to access it going forward. He delivered some concepts I’m going to be thinking about for a long time. I particularly enjoyed these quotes too:

• “the web just connects stuff together, do you really think you need a screen?”; and
• “local government should be be building the networks, they’re the sewers of the 21st century”.

Another presentation that I really enjoyed was Matthew Hodgson on the death and rebirth of intranets. He had a clever premise and great solid content that intertwined really well. He also managed to record himself, so he has audio up already! Unfortunately, I missed Ruth Ellison’s as she was just before me (and I was in the tea room doing the obsessive compulsive slide check), but she has her (and Adrian’s) slides up already along with a great summation of each presentation she saw. There were lots of other great speakers, so hopefully they’ll be putting their slides up soon too.

Photo: Ruth Ellison

All up, a fantastic couple of days. Thanks to all the great new people I met for arguing with me over drinks about the open web and why it’s important. And thanks again to Diana and Reem for creating such a charged event! Not to mention the incredibly generous gift thanking speakers &emdash; a customised iPod Shuffle.

See more photos and tweets on the Open Web.

I hear lots of paranoid mutterings about OpenID from geeky folks. I get that. They’re still hurting from the fiasco formerly known as Passport. It’s understandble, but it’s time to let it go.

People have valid concerns about any scheme purporting to represent their identity (or identities, given we’re talking about the web). It’s hard to get to the bottom of those with OpenID, because, as has been raised on the mailing lists, it’s very obscure niche topic with bugger all in the way of plain language explanations. It takes too long to get into it and understand it, and not everybody has that time. This is for those who are willing to trust that I took the time.

The next five points are for all my geeky friends who can’t be stuffed delving into esoterica:

OpenID is good for you.

You can stop using usernames and passwords for every site that supports it.

OpenID saves you stress

You don’t have remember which of the 3 different passwords you’ve used since high school is the right one for this site. You don’t have remember which of your 47 different usernames you gave it.

OpenID saves you time

You don’t have to trawl your browser password storage to find the right one when you haven’t visited the site since you last cleared your cookies.

OpenID is safe

Hardcore security freaks can go read the specs, get involved in the community and determine this for themselves, but for the rest of us, it’s enough to know that a bunch of very smart hardcore security freaks have already done this.

The defence rests

There you have it, folks, the completely non-scientific (and non-scary) explanation of OpenID. No grand justifications. No confusing diagrams.

What now?

Just 3 simple things to do:

1. Go get one today;

   I recommend ClaimID because those guys are fucking smart, but lots of people like myOpenId too;

2. Make sure you delegate your OpenID to your own site using Tim Lucas’s handy instructions so you have control of your identity; and

3. Tell your all friends - if you want the revolution, you’d better start lighting fires.

Party on, people. The fight isn’t over yet.