I am happy to announce the first panel discussion series on Digital Wallets - Thinking Locally and Globally for Digital Wallets and Identification. Digital Wallets and Identification are a critical element of a future digital native world. Around the globe governments are investing and trialing different concepts while setting defining the public policy around these capabilities.

The challenge, to come up with language that describes the value that is enabled through the technical standards that comprise what is known as IDTech (also known as Self-Sovereign Identity or the Decentralized Identity stack).  This is independent of the different variations within the technology stack, and more importantly is meant for the vast majority of the business? population that have never heard of different standards bodies, protocols or tech stacks, and who quite frankly don’t care and will never exert the effort to learn about them.  In many cases these are the exact people who make the final investment go/no-go decision.

In July Vienna Digital Identity hosted a fire side chat with Ingo Ruebe and Mark Cachia on KILT Protocol's role in providing digital identity in the Polkadot ecosystem.

At the end of 2020, the Sovrin Foundation published the 12 Principles of SSI, https://sovrin.org/principles-of-ssi/ . Building on the earlier works from Kim Cameron, and Christopher Allen, these principles layout what must be foundational principles around any self-sovereign identity system. The evolution of the Principles of SSI came about through the need to differentiate what is ‘true’ SSI versus marketing forces twisting the concept. This market driven motivator can bring cultish overtones to the process.

Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials are starting to make their way into the world of IoT. There are many ongoing research projects funded by EU and private sector organizations as well as an increasing number of DLT based IoT projects that are including DIDs and VCs as a core component of their solutions.

For the 22nd Vienna Digital Identity Meetup* we hosted three of the lead researchers from the EU H2020 funded The SOFIE Project.

On March 9, The Vienna Digital Identity Meetup* hosted presentations from Xavier Vale, Product Manager for Validated ID and Dr. Ignacio Alamillo, Director of Astrea on eIDAS and Self Sovereign Identity. The presentations covered the technical, legal and business dimensions of bridging between eIDAS and SSI concepts and increasing the value and usability of digital identity in the European model.

Monday, December 14th the 18th Vienna Digital Identity Meetup* was held with a presentation from Jason Burnett, Director of Products from Digital Trust. Digital Trust is working on the new GADI specification and is a central member of The DID Alliance….

On Monday, November 23rd the Vienna Digital Identity Meetup* held its 17th event, the focus of this event was on Guardianship and SSI. Our presenter was Philippe Page of The Human Colossus Foundation and is a current member of the Sovrin Foundation Guardianship Working Group….

How to enable the Enterprise to move from existing centralized or federated identity access management systems to a decentralized model was the topic in the 15th Vienna Digital Identity Meetup*. In both the private and public sector the capital investments in IAMs runs into the billions of dollars, for decentralized identity models to make serious inroads in this sector providing a of roadmap or transition journey that both educates and enables the enterprise to make the move is required.

On Monday, September 28 the 14th Vienna Digital Identity Meetup* (link) hosted a focused session on digital identifiers and verifiable credentials in education. We have two great updates from Kim Hamilton Duffy (Architect Digital Credentials Consortium, Chair of the W3C CCG and Verifiable Credentials for Education Task Force) and Lluis Arińo (convenor of Diplomas Use Case at European Blockchain Service Infrastructure and CIO Rovira i Virgili University, Spain.

Hackathon’s are curious events; they are occasions where a diverse group of people come together to create something new in a 48 hour period.  They are a strong argument as indicators of a latent desire of many persons to create something new and to experience the energy and risk that come with innovation.  

‘What’s your exit strategy?’  I was recently asked this question by an attorney while talking about the formation of a new business.  While this may be ‘de rigeur’ for tech entrepreneurs, for many in the non-tech world, this question is puzzling.