This coming Saturday, I will be attending a symposium sponsored by Yale Law School’s Information Society Project on Reputation Economies in Cyberspace. As part of preparing for this, I thought I would explore how reputations in cyberspace reflect to my planned attendance.

Last January, I attended a Journalism That Matters conversation in Memphis, where I met Eddan Katz. Eddan is the executive director of the Information Society Project, and we had a great discussion. So, the reputation first person I’ve interacted with from the symposium wasn’t established in cyberspace, but was established offline. However, it was through relationships established online that I ended up at the Journalism That Matters conversation in the first place.

When we moved to Woodbridge, the next town over from Yale’s campus in New Haven, I got in touch with Eddan and let him know I was in the neighborhood as well and communicated a little bit with him, online, about Avery Doninger’s case. It was through this that I found out about the symposium.

I RSVPed to the symposium’s event in Facebook and my wife added the event to our family calendar. Yesterday, like everyone else that RSVPed on Facebook that they would be attending the event, I receive a message asking me to register for the conference.

After I registered, I checked the list of attendees on Facebook. Who, amongst my friends on Facebook, were attending the symposium? Who was attending that I knew, but hadn’t added as a friend? Upon reflection, I think this is interesting. I checked the attendees before I checked the list of speakers. This ties, I believe, to Dan Gillmor’s comments about his audience knowing more about what he writes about than he does. I suspect there are going to be some very bright people in the audience. It was only after this that I looked at the panels; their topics and speakers.

The first panel is entitled, “Making your name online!” and will focus on “the transition from accreditation to participatory, community-based modes of reputation management.” I found this interesting in light of the registration process. I have registered as a member of the press. It is always interesting to see what groups recognize bloggers as members of the press. On the registration form for members of the press, it notes, “Certification required”. Is this certification something from an accredited institution or can the certification be based on some “participatory, community-based mode of reputation management”?

I glanced at the list of names of the panelists. None of them jumped out at me, although I suspect that if I were more involved in more of the academic discourse, the names would mean much more to me. The majority of the speakers were identified in terms of their involvement with accredited higher education institutions.

Yes, we may be moving from a reputation model based on accreditation to one based on participation, but the lines are blurry. Accreditation is based on participation and provides a useful shortcut. There are plenty of other issues such as privacy, quality of the reputation systems, and portability of reputations that will also be discussed. It looks like it will be a very interesting symposium. If you can make it, please do, and drop me a message on Facebook.