• How far has technology altered prevailing notions of identity?
• What new technologies are emerging and what might be their impacts?
• To what extent is it possible to inscribe legal requirements into technologies of identity, and with what results?

This looks like a good place to present the work on digital identity patterns that was started at the Eduserv digital identity event, focusing on the pattern elicitation methodology and elaborating one or two of the patterns for comment and feedback.

The important dates are:
Submission of papers (4000-6000 words): 9 April 2009
Notification to authors: 1 May 2009
Identity in the Information Society Workshop: 5 June 2009
And there is the possibility of publication in the IDIS journal:
Submission of revised papers to IDIS Journal: 6th July 2009
Publication in IDIS Journal from January 2010

It was decided to host an event where projects do not simply talk at their audience – but rather an active day that is fundamentally about the participants and their experiences. We have chosen a workshop format that is driven by the Planet methodology for pattern language development, an approach that has resonance with the narrative inquiry methodology being adopted by the Rhizome project. The Planet approach is straightforward, taking participants through a number of predefined steps from shared cases to seed patterns. The morning session focuses on storytelling in small groups, and uncovering common themes within shared narratives. In the afternoon these common themes – composed of a problem, solution and associated forces – are used to build the patterns – what Christopher Alexander (1977) defined as:

“a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice”

The key to the success of the workshop is making sure that relevant stories (or cases) are collected in the Planet Xwiki database in advance of the day. To help guide authors, a template is used to organize each narrative – you can view a blogged case here that uses the STARR template:

http://www.margaperez.com/2008/12/im-also-a-starr-tell-me-whom-you-walk-with-and-ill-tell-you-who-you-are/

Further details of the workshop, including cases and patterns developed from other workshops, are available here on the Planet Xwiki site at http://icanhaz.com/planet-digital-identities.

This first event is by invitation only but we will be holding more follow-up workshops. The next is likely to be in late March/early April. So if you are interested in participating then please do contact us.

References
Alexander, C. with S. Ishikawa, M. Silverstein, M. Jacobson, I. Fiksdahl-King, S. Angel (1977) A Pattern Language. Oxford University Press, New York, 1977
See also: http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/ca.htm