I’m back from the Aspen Institute, where last week we held a roundtable on "Identity in the Age of Cloud Computing: Implications for Social Interaction, Governance and Money."
Participants included John Seely Brown, Esther Dyson, Bill Coleman, Mark Bregman, Jeff Dachis, Ann Winblad, Mark Rotenberg, Arjun Gupta, Arturo Artom and lots of other smart folks. If you go to the group photo on Flickr, you’ll see mouseover IDs for everyone.
Sessions included: Defining the Cloud Scenario; Identity; Implications for Commerce, for Privacy, Personal Well-Being, Governance and Next Steps. The institute will issue a report on the roundtable this fall, in time for consideration by the next administration. My Flickr photo set, with 76 photos, is here.
Upsides of Aspen:
• Hard to think of another city where the physical surroundings are such an integral part of the landscape. It’s just plain beautiful, and the surrounding mountains, hiking and horseback riding are a real treat.
• It’s hard to spend a couple of days here without bumping into a notable figure from the political realm. Last time (2006) it was Al Gore, Jack Valenti and Madeleine Albright. This time it was … Madeleine Albright. Just missed the Dalai Lama and Condi Rice.
• Very cool to spend three days with two dozen super-smart people.
• A small-town, friendly vibe.
Downsides of Aspen:
• Every night is prom night here.
• Pages of thousand-dollar bottles of wines in the less-upscale restaurants.
• Aspen = Beverly Hills meets Carmel meets La Jolla.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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