For this issue of The Architecture Journal on Identity andAccess, we interviewed Kim Cameron, a Microsoft Architect whose thoughts onthis area are the basis of one of the latest Microsoft initiatives in Identity Architecture:Windows Cardspace.

DD: Hello, Kim. Tell us who are you and what you do.

KC: I am Kim Cameron and I work as the Architect ofidentity at Microsoft. What I do is try and figure out what kind of problemscan be solved with Identity and then how we can build the systems that respondto those problems. It’s a very-wide ranging type of work where we have to thinkabout all of the different experiences in the complete realm of computing andhow they relate to Identity.

DD: Many of our readers know you from the paper on theLaws of Identity you published some years ago. [A condensed list of Kim’s sevenlaws of identity appears in Fernando Gebara Filho’s article.] Can you tell ushow you went from Kim Cameron the individual to Kim Cameron the Identity Architect?

KC: Well, it took a long time. In the beginning, I workedon e-mail and it became clear after a certain amount of time that, this is backin the 1980s, the problem of getting e-mail from one person to another personwasn’t really the problem of transporting a message; it was as much a problemof finding out the name or address of the person you were sending it to. Interms of routing things, it was a matter of how to find out where to routethis, and so on. So it turned out the real problem with e-mail was more of adirectory problem than an e-mail problem, and I started to become interested indirectories. Once we started working with directories, it became clear thatevery little application had its own directory.

So, directories through their multiplicity were as much of aproblem as a solution. I started to see we had to have a new way of looking atdirectories, which I called Meta Directory, to unify the different directoriesat a logical level. And you know, it’s a kind of adaunting problem. I started falling into this problem and no one else waslooking at it, and that caused me to fall further and further. Basically, theproblem hypnotized me and pulled me into being an architect.

This was long before I came to Microsoft. One of the reasons Icame to Microsoft was because this is one of those huge infrastructureproblems. This isn’t the kind of problem that can be solved by one or twopeople. It can’t even be solved by one or two companies. It has to be solvedacross the whole industry and you need to have a place to work where you canpull people together right across the industry. That was one reason why I wasso interested in Microsoft.

DD: What advice would you share to those who want to berecognized for their abilities as an architect?

KC: I would have two pieces of advice. One is to fullyexplore a problem in a way that is extremely self-critical, so that you arewilling to expose everything you think to a complete rethink all the time, andto make sure that you are aware of all the conflicting views and embrace thoseand embrace the knowledge in those views. In other words, be thoroughlyscientific and nonemotional. Some people get on a kind of a hobby horse andthen something else comes along that threatens their vision and there is a tendencyfor people to just cover their eyes. Don’t cover your eyes; embrace the ideas,because you have to really solve the problem. That is how you build yourreputation—by solving the problem.

The other thing, which took me a lot longer to figure out, isthat you have to really explain the story. The reason people do the wrong thingisn’t because they are evil or stupid or something, it’s because the story youknow—the technology and science of it—hasn’t been explained properly. So,instead of arguing about the issues, you need to find ways to lay down theobjective characteristics, and that’s what the laws of identity represent. Itreally wasn’t a change in my way of thinking, but a change in my ability toexpress my thinking.

DD: The architect role requires understanding current andfuture technical trends. How do you stay up-to-date?

KC: Well, one of the things I do is, I blog. When you talkabout blogging, people often say, “I would like to blog, but I don’t have time andbesides no one would read it.” In fact, when I started my blog, I definitelythought that no one would read it, but at a certain point, I realized it didn’tmatter.

What was useful was expressing my ideas. Once they go into theInternet contraption, they are there forever, so I had to express them in a waythat wasn’t too stupid, but also face the fact that I was going to be changingmy ideas and this transformation of my thinking was going to be public. Thatwas a starting point—a transformation of my thinking as a public thing, not aprivate thing. Then, other people who are interested in these issues may notsit there and read your blog on a daily basis, but every now and then they willsift through it. They’ll have reactions to it and often they will write to you.They will either write to you or about you. As I was writing about these ideas,other people would comment on them and point out, “This isn’t clear” or “Thisis not a good word because it implies the wrong things.” So instead of sittingin my attic and producing a paper that would be misunderstood by everybody,they actually helped me not only to improve entire points of it, but find a wayto explain it. And of course, I wouldn’t have to go out and find out aboutconflicting ideas. People would come to me with, “Why don’t you look at this?Why don’t you think about that?” It became a tremendous point of concentrationof information.

It’s paradoxical that by originating information, you actuallyend up consuming more information. So that’s one thing. Another thing is thatbeing at Microsoft, we are very lucky because we get to be in conversationswith many people in all different governments, industry, and the academicworld. So, putting those things together, I would say to the younger architects,make sure you talk to as many people as you can. Beopen; don’t avoid. I also try to read a lot.

DD: Name the most important person you have ever met inthis industry. What made him/her so important?

KC: That’s a hard question. I have met a lot of veryinteresting and inspiring people; but I guess I’ll pick Craig Burton. CraigBurton is an analyst who used to be involved with Novell. He was very crucialto the original success of Novell’s Netware—the early version of Netware. WhenI met him, I had been working this Meta Directory concept and had actuallystarted to build the Meta Directory. My company was producing this thing, butof course we couldn’t talk about it. We didn’t have any words for it, we just knew we had to solve a technical problem. Craigintroduced me to this problem of communication and helped me understand thatthe communication process was as crucial to the technology as, say, theanalytical process. For example, what is the name of something? As you try andname it, it becomes much clearer than the original intuition that you have asan architectural thinker. Initially, it seems clear enough to you, but when yougo and explain to somebody else, you may have to sit there and work on it for20 minutes to get the point across.

The aim is to make everything clear enough that you can get thepoint across instantly. So, it’s a matter of sharpening the concepts and of notbeing afraid to be sophisticated; in other words, there is no need tocondescend to the audience. You can be scientific and feed as much clarity asyou want. For example, we had the question of what to call this thing we hadinvented, and I just laughingly said, “You know, we had thought of calling it a‘Meta Directory,’ but of course you couldn’t really call it a Meta Directorybecause everybody would think we are existentialists or something alien.” AndCraig said “No, if you call it what it is, people will start to use thosewords. Call it what it is, don’t call it something else in order not to offendsome people.”

DD: Is there anything you did that you’d do differently ifyou could turn the clock back on your career?

KC: I am not a person to think backwards that way. I guessif I had known what I know now at the beginning of my career, a lot of things Ihad done would have been much more successful than they were—right? When I didmy original e-mail system, I couldn’t believe that I could actually withstandthe competition, with others. It was only later, when I met these people, they told me that they were really worried about thetechnology that I had been bringing forward. In other words, I didn’t have alarge enough view of what I was doing. I think that’s often the case. Peoplelook at a company like Microsoft and they say, “Well gee, if I am doing atechnology and Microsoft is doing that technology—is it really worth it for meto be in the same area doing the same kind of thing?” And it is! Because it creates an ecology, and it creates room for thesedifferent products and points of view. The fact that Microsoft has a productcreates the room for another product that may be specialized in some way, butthat otherwise wouldn’t have any chance at all. So I can understand the synergypart of the industry. I saw it as very much “dog eat dog,” and now I am muchmore of a believer that “the other guy” is my best ally. Because we are bothbuilding this new world that hadn’t existed, and by having two of us build itwe can do a much better job of improving our products—and we’ll actually sell alot more of it.

DD: Do you see your ideas also being considered in othercompanies?

KC: Well, I don’t want to pose as the source of allthought in this area, but certainly other organizations have embraced much ofmy work. I’m also trying to synthesize what others are doing right. This is theidea of keeping your mind open and embracing what surrounds you. But it’s beenvery interesting, because the identity area is unique in some ways: Identity ismost important when you are reaching across to somebody else—including acompetitor.

Clearly, we can’t have a solution for the Internet that justworks with Microsoft products. People live in a much bigger world and thatwhole world has to be aligned if technology is to be really usable. In thissense, I consider everybody else in the industry to be as much as an ally as mycolleague in the next office here.

The industry is really coming together. The Information CardFoundation, for example, will have been launched by the time this interviewreaches publication. So that’s all these companies who’ve come together toproduce the compatible software we have, like IBM, Oracle, Sun, and evensmaller companies: all kinds of people participating in this new technology.

DD: What does Kim the Architect’s future look like? Whatdo you hope to accomplish in the next few years?

KC: Well, I would like to see the deployment of thisIdentity Meta System. We are currently at the stage where various vendors havestarted to produce software, but we are not yet at the stage that people havedeployed it.

I also have a project that I worked on earlier, which is a newway of conceptualizing and building directories, based on what I call“Polyarchy.” Polyarchy means that instead of having hierarchies, you can shootit across these different dimensions. So, I am trying to evolve the nature ofdirectories in that direction.

This article was published in the Architecture Journal, a printand online publication produced by Microsoft. For more articles from thispublication, please visit the ArchitectureJournal Web site.