Andre Durand - Federated Identity Management : Life

One of my best friends, Eric Norlin, co-founder of Ping and Digital ID World has started a new conference, Defrag. It's taking place in Denver early November, and he's got quite the line-up of people attending. I can't wait, and since I've already paid, he can't accuse me of lobbyconning.

Andre Durand and Jaime (a Columbian language student) at top of Grays

Saturday I completed one of my 2007 goals as my cousin and a few friends climbed Grays peak here in Colorado. This climb was supposedly the easiest of the fourteeners, with a total round trip of only 8 miles. I must admit it was definitely harder than I had expected. Even though this was only a class 1 climb (basically a hiking trail to the top), I was simply out of shape. Two of the guys with us nearly ran up the trail, and did both peaks (see the peak in the background) and returned to the car before we were able to bang out one and return.

I was looking forward to eating an MRE I had hiked up there (spaghetti), but the weather moved in and we high-tailed it down the mountain to snow flakes as we hit the bottom. While at the top, we got a special treat and saw Erik Weihenmayer, the guy who climbed Everest blind. Having now done a measly 14k mountain, I have a whole new respect for 29k.

I received a holiday photo-card from an acquaintance who from the photo, I discovered has four children. My wife and I are thinking of expanding the Durand family, so I emailed him back, and discovered that he not only has four children, but his wife ran a full marathon 3 months pregnant, a half marathon at 6 months, and a 10k less than 24 hours before going into delivery.

I was so impressed; I forwarded the email to my wife. Her response, "I only plan on running if I am being chased by someone and I believe I can't kick their ass."

The Declaration of Independence -- Let fly a few centuries plus 10 years of Internet, and I find myself intrigued with how outdated this title of one of our country's most important manifestos now seems. What's changed? It's importance was, to the time, central.

I believe it's the weight in which we emphasize the "I" in ‘independence’ and also now ‘identity’ that throws us off the mark in 2006. Not that "I" isn't central or important, but I believe many default perspectives are biased perhaps towards overemphasizing it's true importance in relation to others and the world. Like anything which can be defined via fractals, it's the resolution we choose to look at things which makes all the difference.

I love America, and I’m not dissing one of this country’s most profound artifacts, but I am saying that independence is not perhaps the goal in 2006. Does any person, company or nation really believe it can improve the quality of life for its constituents by becoming more independent?

For the most part, we enter the world alone and independent, but we exit the world intertwined, networked and connected as humans, as companies, as countries. In this regard at least, we can measure the richness of our lives by the depth and number of the relationships that are developed in the interim, our ‘interconnectedness’.

This is more than a symbiotic way of thinking -- its mutuality.

Enlightenment in this context is more than a realization that we are 'inter' dependent, but indeed a longing to be so, and all that this entails with regards putting our ego in context. While efficiencies are always gained through the process of networking (think "globalization", "extended enterprise", "outsourcing"), to consider ‘efficiency gained’ the end-goal would be to diminish in some immeasurable way, the less objective benefits that we receive in knowing that we all either swim or sink together.

We now live in the age of interdependence, yet no declaration is necessary, as networking, like life, simply happens, and it’s this very realization that makes the networking of identity so vital, so fundamental to our future as individuals, as organizations and as societies.

If you didn’t catch it, here’s the Cluetrain shortcode -- Identity is useless until used in an interaction with another identity, and the very act of using it then shifts the resolution of value to US. It’s the relationship between WE where I-dentity finds it's utility (thanks Doc).

From a company point of view, this quote captures the shear inevitability of our march towards interdependency, but you could likely change the resolution to any level, and find this to be a true statement for all of life:

"Today P&G has to look at the biosciences, we have to look at nanotechnology, we have to use cutting-edge software and computing. How can we build all of the scientific capabilities we need by ourselves? The answer, of course, is that we can’t. Not even a company as big and rich as P&G can afford a do-it-yourself approach to innovation not in a world where thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of well trained researchers are working in labs in Russia, China and India on all kinds of innovations that are relevant to the company’s huge assortment of brands.

P&G must look outside the walls of its celebrated research labs, and beyond the breakthroughs of its full-time scientists, to tap the brainpower o fthe whole world. Even though P&G employs many of the smartest scientists and engineers in their fields, the company's vice president of innovation understand that nobody is smarter than everybody -- and not everybody can work for P&G." Mavericks at Work.

You always see and hear about Asian pop culture dressing Western, but when's the last time you heard about the reverse? My wife met a United flight attendant who travels to China quite often, and returns with clothing for friends. Needless to say, the Durand's have a growing wardrobe of oriental clothing, and 3 out of 4 of us wore it to a recent party this past Saturday. It's interesting to see how the growing fascination with China, especially as it relates to their clothing, is working it's way in reverse to the US.