We had a fantastic meetup at 29c3, the Chaos Computer Congress in Hamburg, Germany. Around 30 people attended, which is great considering it was not on any official lists (unless you count my twitter and signs posted around Congress). Everyone had something to contribute, and here are some of the highlights:

• I went over a few key points from the identity talk I have been doing. Covered basic definitions, “what is a nym” (we still don’t know), names vs identity, Jung (rational vs emotional identity), and covered my diagrams of how identity might work better on the internet.[1]
• Covered the basics of what NSTIC is, how NymRights works into NSTIC, and so on
• General group discussion. Given this was Europe, I heard some new things about how names work in different countries, it might be worth exploring how implementations of naming systems differ across cultures.
• Discussion on Facebook integration changing quality of comments on sites like Youtube. It was pointed out that there are context issues which must be considered, it’s not just names alone
• We also attempted to create an “ideal names policy” for a website like Google or Facebook, and quickly ran into difficulties.

In general, the workshop was very well received, and everyone had an opinion of some sort on it. It’s worth noting that two interesting new names issues popped up while I was at Congress:

• Foursquare will display users “full names” by default: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/12/30/2029244/foursquare-will-display-users-full-names-by-default
• China may require real names registration for internet access: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/25/net-us-china-internet-idUSBRE8BO01320121225 (I am still looking for a copy of the actual law)

All in all, very fun times!

PS: it is worth noting that there are some upcoming NymRights related events, I will post an update on this list shortly.

[1] This is also available in the talk I gave recently at PhreakNIC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLGpQA8xoYM