This is the blog of Fen Labalme, a 50-year-old geek who sold his first computer program - a copy of the Lunar Lander game in Focal - in 1969. My thesis at MIT was "NewsPeek: a knowledge-based open access news and information retrieval system" which (AFAIK) was the first electronic personalized (newspaper) media. Since then, I have been designing and implementing systems that enable personalization while supporting one's right to privacy. Some recent forays into the field include:

• In 2000 I co-founded OpenPrivacy, working to create a level playing field in the online digital marketplace;
• In 2002 I began work with the Identity Commons, initially as their CTO; and
• In 2004 I co-founded 2idi which created the world's first i-names i-broker.

Now I am a partner of CivicActions, LLC, an online services company helping non-profits, NGOs and socially responsible businesses that are aligned with our values reach their goals. Along with doing great work for great organizations that make a difference in our world, what is particularly exciting for me is that I believe CivicActions provides exactly the correct ingredients to foster the growth of responsible, reputable identity-based communities.

Besides working to enable people to take back their power from the online organizations that wish to treat people merely as consumers and line items in their spreadsheets that can be bought, sold and traded, I have another passion that drives me: my family. I met Elaine in 1998 and we had our son Steven in 2001 - what incredible joy!

What will I write about?

If history is to be the judge, mostly stuff about user-centric digital identity, with a dose of political commentary and whatever else I feel like. But I won't write a lot, as, well, this "blogging" thing is still kinda new to me.

You can contact me via my i-name contact page at =Fen.Labalme