Pete Rowley

Andre Durand has been blogging about the mash-up between user-centric identity and federated identity. His company, Ping Identity has put forward the idea of active versus passive federation. Active federation is essentially user-centric federation, and passive federation is the classic federation model where big business gets together and talks about us while we all watch the pretty pictures. In his recent presentation at Digital ID World, Ping CTO Patrick Harding had some great enterprise use cases where user-centric identity added the element of consent to the transaction, for example, access to a 401k account, or outsourced payroll services.

Now, while marketing must have its marketing phrases and there is nothing inherently wrong with active/passive federation, I think the rest of us might find the phrase consentual federation a little more descriptive. After all, consent is the major difference between the two. Oh, but what then to call the other type of federation… sneaky federation?

Near where I live there is a diner that serves general breakfast fare. I am not much of a shopper. Hunting for bargains is not my thing. I buy only what I need. I’m an engineer. So, this particular diner has a characteristic that appeals to both my problem solving tendencies and my shopping requirements. One of the first things I noticed was that the prices of the dishes and the side dishes didn’t make a whole lot of sense. You can order pretty much anything two or more ways e.g. 2 eggs and bacon with sausages on the side, or 2 eggs and sausages with bacon on the side. Two ways, but only one way gets you the best price - you save around 50c by having sausages on the side. Suppose you want 3 eggs with that though, same answer? Nope. This menu is a true mark of genius, the rubiks cube of breakfast dining.

Then we have the case of Digital Identity World on September 11-13th next month, with an Identity Open Space on the monday. If you have a look at the registration fee for DIDW you will see that you are in for a cool 2k to step over that particular threshold on those particular days, and $300 less if you registered early. However, if you were to pony up $25 to register to attend the IOS on the Monday of that week you are entitled to a little discount at the DIDW. In fact the cost to you, gov’ner, would be $995. That’s right, early birds, the Way of the Folding Menu strikes again.

As my mother would say, if she had a blog, cheap at half the price.