It is exciting for us to be able to finally be able to tell everyone the Identity Conference is returning. The two day event will run two weeks after Privacy Week in May 2015. It will be the third time the Identity Conference has been run.

The line-up is shaping up as one that we, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and the co-organisers, the Department of Internal Affairs and Victoria University, can be justifiably pleased with.

American blogger and journalist, Doc Searls, is one of an impressive list of accomplished technologists and privacy commentators who will be in Wellington on 18-19 May 2015.

Doc Searls is one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, one of the most influential books about the internet age. The term "cluetrain" came from a quote by an employee of a firm that dropped out of the Fortune 500 list of successful global businesses and was a reference to how the company missed obvious signs to adapt to the burgeoning internet age. Searls’ most recent book The Intention Economy: What Happens When Customers Get Real Power, explores the implications for markets and economies where buyers are a scarce commodity.

Other international keynote speakers at the Identity Conference include Professor Alex Pentland, from MIT, who has helped to develop the debate about the trade-offs between privacy and the value of personal data. Prof Pentland has been named as one of the seven most powerful data scientists in the world, and was a pioneer in the development of wearable technology. He chairs the World Economic Forum's Data Driven Development council.

Dr Alessandro Acquisti, Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University. Prof. Acquisti has research interests in the behavioural economics of privacy. His research has spearheaded the application of behavioural economics to the analysis of privacy and information security decision making, and the analysis of privacy risks and disclosure behaviour in online social networks.

Professor Simone van der Hof, is an information law expert at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Prof van der Hof is a specialist in digital rights for children and has been involved in an empirical study into cyber-bullying. Australia’s former privacy commissioner Malcolm Crompton is speaking at the conference. Crompton, together with KPMG, carried out a review on ACC’s privacy systems and processes after the agency’s much publicised 2010 privacy breach.

The 2008 and 2012 events began a conversation about managing digital identity and its wider implications for people in New Zealand and beyond.  We are now meeting again to discuss what has changed in our increasingly connected world. The theme for 2015 is Enabling Digital Identity and Privacy in a Connected World. We all recognise that digital identity and privacy are critical areas for data-driven innovation.  How then can we get the most benefit while minimising risks around identity and privacy in our increasingly digitally connected way of living?

Join the conversation. Find out more and book your place at the 2015 Identity Conference.

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