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Welcome to the Identity Commons Wiki
We are a community of groups working on addressing the social, legal and technical issues that arise with the emerging, identity, data and social layer of the internet.

The purpose of Identity Commons is to support, facilitate, and promote the creation of an open identity layer for the Internet -- one that maximizes control, convenience, and privacy for the individual while encouraging the development of healthy, interoperable communities.

Identity Commons is open, inclusive, and bottoms-up, community of groups. They share an agreement and agree to abide by a set of principles to help assure this. Membership resides in the Community Groups. There is a Stewards Council - with a representative from each group.

We designed the community structure to be particularly inclusive to support broad information and sharing and encourage collaboration across a range of groups:
 * Independent Organizations - examples of that form are the Data Portability Project, OpenID Foundation and XDI.org
 * Groups that are sub-groups within Organizations - examples include the Higgins Project (Eclipse Foundation) and Project VRM (Harvard Berkman Center)
 * Groups that are co-hosted with other organizations - NSTIC.US (eCitizen Foundation, Kantara and ID Commons)
 * Groups that just part of Identity Commons examples include Internet Identity Workshop, OSIS (Open Source Identity Systems), ID-Legal, Digital Death, Kids Online.

We provide a minimal structure for supporting group and community activities, and we hold space for the entire community to collaborate, and  facilitate dialogue so that collaborative action and initiatives towards for filling our purpose are possible. Shared understanding and shared language are pre-cursors of high-performance collaboration and come about via shared community space.

You can learn more about our History and Background and organizational details Articles Of Incorporation, Bylaws, Identity Commons Brand Transfer.

Get Involved

 * Join one of the Community Groups - Identity Commons is organized as a set of distributed working groups.


 * Attend a community conference
 * Internet Identity Workshops happen every 6 months in Mountain View and there are Satellite events around the world and connected to other conferences.


 * '''Subscribe to a mailing list
 * IC Community Mailing List''' (Also known as the "Identity Gang").
 * The Stewards Council mailing list is also public.
 * Some of the Community Groups also have their own lists.


 * Participate in telecons - See Stewards Council Telecons for information about how to participate in our quarterly (and sometimes more) calls, which are open to everyone in the Identity Commons community.

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 * Edit the ID Commons Wiki - Use your OpenID URL or i-name to login, and follow the instructions. See [Wikimedia Help] [converse American Flag] for more information.

Learn More About the Organization

 * Working Group Descriptions and a  Working Groups Chart is here.


 * Purpose And Principles - The "core DNA" of the Identity Commons (IC).
 * How We Collaborate - Information on how participants in IC work together
 * Stewards Council - The coordinating body for IC working groups.
 * Organizational Structure - A short explanation of how and why IC is structured as an "upside down umbrella".

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 * Working Group Agreement - The implied contract between a working group and IC as a whole.
 * Working Group Charter Template - The template any working group sponsor(s) can use to form a working group.
 * Background - A brief history. A longer History
 * IC Logo this explains the history of our logo.
 * Organizational Details Articles Of Incorporation, Bylaws, Identity Commons Brand Transfer.

Learn More about the Identity Space

 * Lexicon is a project of the Identity Gang to harmonize vocabulary for user-centric identity architecture.
 * ID Related Standards this list was developed at IIW #13 by representatives of each of the standards bodies.

Older Rescues

 * Identity Landscape is a community-wide project to produce a living "map" of the Internet identity space, including efforts both inside and outside Identity Commons. All community members are invited to contribute.
 * The Identity Gang Working Group maintains a list of resources for the user-centric identity space.

Archive

 * The Original Identity Commons Wiki (2002-2007)

Links

 * Identity Commons Home
 * volunteer tasks
 * IT Infrastructure
 * Declaration of Identity

Nick Givotovsky