Update, 5:00 p.m. Pacific: oops, partial post earlier, complete notes now here.

Doc Searls

Talks about the nTags. Even though you could anchor a boat with one, they make you feel like you're in a '50s sci-fi movie: "We greet each other and sometimes have sex with these."

None of us would be here if it weren't for Andre Durand. He turned the notion of identity management inside out, by putting the individual on the inside and everything else on the outside. Three tiers: 1) personal, me, myself and I, 2) assigned or corporate, 3) marketing. Tier 1 (T1) is central to the model. Popeye, I am what I am.

Kim Cameron calls T1 identity "the committee of the whole." Our wallets are Tier 2 habitats. CA driver's license, how many here have a DL with an old address? (Audience responds.) All of us! Each relationship is conducted on the supplier's terms, each is isolated unto itself. Tier 3 habitats are our mailboxes. Andre asked what happens when T1 and T2 have equal power: relationships become two way, they're real relationships, so guess what? T3 goes away. New opportunities open up, we're not sure how that will work because we're used to isolated, 1-sided relationships. This gets you to Cluetrain. All the individual and collective intelligence increases. But what happens beyond it, and how does identity do that?"

Lots of what has gone on here, here and last year, clearly is BuzzPhraser material. (Doc shows enormous spreadsheet of all the buzzphrases tossed around here. IdentoLatin, CollaboLatin, etc. We use the term "market" to mean many things: targets, groups, regions, categories, as an acronym for selling (verb). Sales touch the customer, marketing doesn't (why? 'cause it's "strategic"). Eric Raymond and Sayo Ajiboye say markets operate at 3 levels: at the bottom level, markets are places where exchange happens; above that, we have conversation. In a natural market, no one is really in charge, you have to determine the price in the course of the conversation and it develops from the relationship. An interesting point is we still talk in the language of exchange: delivering services, moving content, adding value. Mechanical language substitutes for relationship: "Honey, I'm going to deliver some love to you." When the 'Net's not there, it's hard to have much of a relationship, the relationships are narrow. This changes when you embrace the grassroots. Meanwhile, as farmers, we sound like paving contractors: "We got your federated identity, right here!" The Liberty Alliance About page is a little bit scary this way...

There are ways to get personal, and whoever pulls it off will get rich. What do we do with the networked customer? We embrace them for big, we enable them for small. What to do? (Shows still from Mel Gibson's "What Women Want.") Think about what customers want: any time, any place, any where, in the networked world, and enable that. Have to table privacy concerns every once in a while to think creatively about where we want to go.

Surprise! Doc lost his power cable at this conference. Wouldn't it be nice if he could register that need? That's $80 to someone. Discusses parallel to RSS. Doc says he's not that technical, the only code he knows is Morse. But doesn't think it would be that hard for an individual provider to know that he's coming down the road right now and needs "x." Thinks RFID could be really powerful in this. Maybe Doc has ideas about the way his supplier could do things. Wouldn't it be better if, rather than just having these thoughts expressed on a gripe site somewhere, a relationship existed for exchange on the point. The 'Net will help dismantle The Matrix. We're going to get the IM systems to work with one another eventually, because people want it and it will happen.

Marc Canter: if we're dismantling The Matrix, what are we "mantling?" Esther: it's like bees and pollen, cross-pollination. Chris: my daughter asked me about dinosaurs, "How did they know they were called dinosaurs? [Laughs] [DMH aside: to Cory, I'm a Pregosaur!]

Doc: I hear Federation and I see Darth Vader. Reaction (channeling David Weinberger) is get that away from me, don't even have that conversation.

Marc Canter: Why are you really wearing a suit? Doc: I just think it looks cool. Esther: Want to leave it in my cab?

How will T3 disappear? The spam that we call mass market advertising is very unwieldy and will fail. The costs are incredibly high. In the long run it will go away as demand gets more equipped to say what it wants. Google profits about $700-800 million per year. Google has explored new ways for buyers and sellers to connect with each other, explored the Holy Grail of advertising: messages you may want. They're going to blow up advertising in the next 2-3 years, and they need competition.

Interesting concluding discussion involving Chris and Esther about time and attention. Are the number of relationships we can have finite, do they devalue as they multiply? Eric mentions that Doc is a walking network (so true).

Audience question: "Are we in danger of moving from spam to meatloaf?" Doc thinks we're getting both at the moment.

Audience question: If we're dismantling The Matrix, who do you guys see as Keanu Reeves? Doc and Esther in unison: "Chris Locke!"