Internet Identity Workshop Report
Last week was the 36th Internet Identity Workshop. Almost 300 people from around the world called 160 sessions. The energy was high and I enjoyed seeing so many people working on identity talking with each other and sharing their ideas. The topics were diverse but I think it's fair to say that verifiable credentials were a hot topic. And while there were plenty of discussions about technical implementations, I think those were overshadowed by sessions discussing credential business models, use cases, and adoption. We should have the book of proceedings completed in about a month and you'll be able to get the details of sessions there. You can view past Book of Proceedings here.
As I said, there were attendees from all over the world as you can see by the pins in the map at the top of this post. Not surprisingly, most of the attendees were from the US (219), followed by Canada (20). Germany, the UK, and Switzerland rounded out the top five with 8, 7, and 6 attendees respectively. The next five, Australia (5), South Korea (3), Japan (3), Indonesia (3), and Columbia (3) showed the diversity with attendees from APAC and South America. Sadly, there were no attendees from Africa this time. Please remember we offer scholarships for people from underrepresented areas, so if you'd like to come to IIW37, please let us know.
In terms of states and provinces, California was, unsurprisingly, first with 101. New York (17), Washington (16), Utah (15), and British Columbia (11) rounded out the top five. Victoria was the source of BC's strong Canadian showing coming in fifth in cities with 8 attendees after San Jose (15), San Francisco( 13), Seattle (12), and New York (10).
The week was fabulous. I can't begin to recount the many important, interesting, and timely conversations I had. I heard from many others that they had a similar experience. IIW37 will be held Oct 10-12, 2023 at the Computer History Museum. We'll have tickets available soon. I hope you'll be able to join us.