We (Martin McKeay, Dan Sweet, Robyn Tippins, Jeremiah Owyang, and I) had fun schmoozing about three topics last Saturday: (1) HP's planned reduction in telecommuting, (2) Technological threats to the continued relevance of corporate marketing departments, and (3) Increasing incompatibility in how individual web based accounts are handled.
Have a listen! the MP3 file is available here (this links to the Podcast Roundtable web site).
It's interesting how the third topic morphed. We started by talking about the proliferation of passwords for managing accounts of web based services and ended up with an extended discussion of "identity 2.0." We touched on several topics, including the initial market failure of Microsoft's Passport technology, the role of cooperation (bottom up) versus an imposed solution (top down), and how public, private sector, and government interests might differ.
We'll probably be revisiting the topic. With the continued growth of web based public and private activities, being able to prove who you are -- in a way that protects privacy while ensuring sufficient trust among the parties in a transaction -- can only grow in importance.