Michael B. Jones

Microsoft Director of Identity Partnerships

Mike Jones

Microsoft Corporation

One Microsoft Way, Building 40/5138

Redmond, WA 98052

USA

mbj@microsoft.com (with PGP if you like)

Or contact me via my i-name: =Mike.Jones

Blog:  self-issued.info

What's New?

• Information Card Foundation Board:  In June 2008 I joined the Information Card Foundation board of directors as Microsoft's representative, as announced on June 24th.  Also see my personal perspective on the Information Card Foundation launch.
• OpenID Foundation Board:  In January 2008 I joined the OpenID Foundation board of directors as Microsoft's representative, as announced on February 7th.  Also see my personal blog post supporting the announcement and Microsoft's post at PressPass.
• Blogging:  In April 2007 I launched self-issued.info, a blog for digital identity discussions. I hope you'll find the content there useful, thought-provoking, and sometimes just plain fun.  Let the conversation begin...
• Tighter Focus on Identity:  In March 2007, I moved from the Web Services Interoperability team to the Federated Identity team (both within Microsoft's Connected Systems Division).  This move enables me to focus full-time on Digital Identity.  I'm passionate about Identity and see it as a key enabler for making the online world both more personal and more valuable.  I'm working with strategic customers and partners to drive adoption of privacy-enhancing, ubiquitously-accepted, easy-to-use identity solutions.
• Microsoft / OpenID Collaboration:  Read about the Microsoft / OpenID collaboration on Kim Cameron's blog and read the transcript of Bill Gates' and Craig Mundie's speech announcing this at the RSA Security conference.  We're working together to bring the benefits of phishing-resistant authentication methods, such as Windows CardSpace, to the growing community of OpenID users.
• CardSpace One-Pager Published:  This paper is a one-page introduction to Microsoft's CardSpace software, which facilitates user-centric identity interactions online through an easy-to-use visual "Information Card" metaphor.
  Michael B. Jones.  A One-Page Introduction to Windows CardSpace, January 2007.
• Information Card Web Specification Published:  This specification documents the web interfaces utilized by browsers and web applications that support Information Cards. The information in this document is not specific to any one browser or platform.
  Michael B. Jones.  A Guide to Supporting Information Cards within Web Applications and Browsers as of the Information Card Profile V1.0, December 2006.
• Identity Metasystem Design Rationale Paper Published:  Many of the problems facing the Internet today stem from the lack of a widely deployed, easily understood, secure identity solution. Microsoft's CardSpace software and the Identity Metasystem vision underlying it are aimed at filling this gap using technology all can adopt and solutions all can endorse, putting users in control of their identity interactions on the Internet.  The design decisions presented in this paper are intended to result in a widely accepted, broadly applicable, inclusive, comprehensible, privacy-enhancing, security-enhancing identity solution for the Internet.  We present them and the rationale behind them to facilitate review of these design decisions by the security, privacy, and policy communities, so that people will better understand Microsoft's implementations, and to help guide others when building interoperating implementations.
  Kim Cameron and Michael B. Jones.  Design Rationale behind the Identity Metasystem Architecture, January 2006.
• Identity Metasystem Whitepaper Published:  I authored the Microsoft whitepaper Microsoft's Vision for an Identity Metasystem published on May 12, 2005.  It describes our initiative with the rest of the industry to interconnect today's diverse collection of identity systems into an interoperable Identity Metasystem, analogous to how the Internet Protocol tied together individual network technologies such as Ethernet, Token Ring, and X.25 (and enabled new technologies, such as 802.11 wireless to be easily incorporated as they were invented). The Identity Metasystem and Microsoft's "InfoCard" identity selector client will help prevent phishing by ensuring that sites strongly authenticate themselves to users in a non-spoofable manner.
• From Research to Products: After 12+ years as a member of the Systems and Networking Research Group at Microsoft Research, in early 2005 I decided that it was time to find a position that would use the full range of both my technical and inter-personal, coalition-building skills. And I found a great one! At the beginning of March 2005 I started a new position at Microsoft as Director of Distributed Systems Customer Strategy and Evangelism. This position is a great fit for me because it's very much a collaborative cross-group and multi-company, multi-platform effort. I'm working with people all over Microsoft and with numerous customers and partners across a tremendous range of industries worldwide.

Just for Fun

• Amazing photos from the Palio: See what it's like to have front row seats at the oldest continuously run horse race in the world -- the Palio in Siena Italy.  In the race we attended in August 2007, 5 of the 10 starting jockeys completed the 3-lap bareback, no-holds-barred race around the town square.  I could have touched one of them as he came unseated.  Amazing!
• None of these representatives are real!  For fun, I assigned placards used to identify country representatives and officers in meetings to some of the participants in an open space meeting at the ITU in February 2007.  Kaliya Hamlin (a.k.a. IdentityWoman) beamed when I placed Canada in front of her...  See the photos.
• :-) After a successful computing archaeology effort, as of September 2002, the original bboard post in which the smiley :-) was invented by Scott Fahlman in September 1982 is back online!
• Real-World (Out of This World) Story: The Mars Pathfinder mission was widely proclaimed as "flawless" in the early days after its July 4^th, 1997 landing on the Martian surface. Successes included its unconventional "landing" -- bouncing onto the Martian surface surrounded by airbags, deploying the Sojourner rover, and gathering and transmitting voluminous data back to Earth, including the panoramic pictures that were such a hit on the Web. But a few days into the mission, not long after Pathfinder started gathering meteorological data, the spacecraft began experiencing system resets. The press reported these failures in terms such as "software glitches" and "the computer was trying to do too many things at once". Read What really happened on Mars? Also, be sure to read this follow-up message from Glenn Reeves of JPL, who led the software team for the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft.

Upcoming Activities

• Participant, Internet Identity Workshop, Mountain View, CA, December 2008.
• Participant, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Los Angeles, October 2008.
• Participant, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, Prague, October 2008.
• Participant, Digital Identity World, Anaheim, CA, September, 2008.

Recent Activities

• Participant, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, San Diego, CA, June 2008.
• Presenter, Internet Safety Task Force, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard, June 2008.
• Participant, Internet Identity Workshop, Mountain View, CA, May 2008.
• Exhibitor, RSA Security Conference, San Francisco, CA, April 2008.
• Exhibitor, GSM World Congress, Barcelona,  February 2008.
• Exhibitor, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, Barcelona, October 2007.
• Participant, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Los Angeles, CA, October 2007.
• Participant, Digital Identity World, San Francisco, CA, September 2007.
• Presenter and Exhibitor, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, San Francisco, CA, June 2007.
• Participant, ITU Focus Group on Identity Management, Mountain View, CA, May 2007.
• Participant, Internet Identity Workshop, Mountain View, CA, May 2007.
• Steering Committee, Eleventh Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-XI), San Diego, CA, May 2007.
• Presenter, MIX '07, Las Vegas, NV, April-May 2007.
• Presenter, Federal Trade Commission Workshop: Proof Positive: New Directions for ID Authentication, Washington, DC, April 2007.
• Steering Committee, Fourth USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design & Implementation, Cambridge, MA, April 2007.
• Presenter, Novell Brainshare Conference, Salt Lake City, UT, March 2007.
• Participant, ITU Focus Group on Identity Management, Geneva, Switzerland, February 2007.
• Participant, RSA Security Conference, San Francisco, February 2007.
• Participant, Mobile Identity Workshop, San Francisco, January 2007.
• Participant, Internet Dating Conference, Miami, FL, January 2007.
• Presenter, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, Barcelona, October 2006.
• Participant, Digital ID World Conference, Santa Clara, CA, September 2006.
• Participant, Berkman Center Identity Mashup Conference, Cambridge, MA, June 2006.
• Participant, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, San Francisco, June 2006.
• Presenter, JavaOne Conference, San Francisco, May 2006.
• Participant, Internet Identity Workshop, Mountain View, CA, May 2006.
• Presenter, Domain Roundtable Conference, Seattle, April 2006.
• Participant, MIX '06, Las Vegas, NV, March 2006.
• Presenter, W3C Workshop on Secure Web Authentication, New York, NY, March 2006.
• Participant, PC Forum, Carlsbad, CA, March 2006.
• Participant, RSA Security Conference, San Jose, CA, February 2006.
• Presenter, Digital ID World for Financial Services, New York, NY, November 2005.
• Participant, Internet Identity Workshop, Berkeley, CA, October 2005.
• Presenter, Internet2 Member Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, September 2005.
• Presenter, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Los Angeles, September 2005.
• Participant, Digital ID World Conference, San Francisco, May 2005.
• Participant, Identity Gang Meeting at PC Forum, March 2005.

Offices Held and Ongoing Roles

• Board member of the Information Card Foundation.
• Board member and executive committee member of the OpenID Foundation.

Related Pages

• Past Activities:  Conferences and events I've organized, published at, or otherwise participated in.
• Research Projects:  A description of some of the research projects I have participated in.
• Research Publications:  Some of the key research publications I authored.
• Biography and Curriculum Vitae:  A one-paragraph biographical sketch plus links to my full Curriculum Vitae.
• Summer Interns:  I've worked with some fabulous summer interns over the years.  Read about them here.
• Family Web Site:  We love road trips!

Last modified June 29, 2008, Michael B. Jones, <mbj@microsoft.com>.