Latest / Identity at the Center / #427 - Identiverse 2026 Preview with Heather Flanagan and Andi Hindle
Transcript
- 0:05This is identity at the center. Welcome to the Identity at the
- 0:11Center podcast. I'm Jeff, and that's Jim.
- 0:12Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
- 0:15Oh, not so bad yourself. I'm too good.
- 0:17So to prove what you often tell people, Jim's going to hit me
- 0:22with something. I have no idea what it's going
- 0:24to be. I'm going to ask you a very
- 0:26simple question. What year did the solar winds
- 0:30breach happen? Solar winds, which one?
- 0:35I don't know. I feel like it, it, it feels
- 0:38like yesterday, but you're going to probably tell me something.
- 0:40I was like, oh, that was like 4 years ago or five years ago.
- 0:432020 yeah, that was so I was working on with my boss.
- 0:47So our day jobs, right? We work for RSM, we do
- 0:50consulting and our digital identity as part of the risk
- 0:56consulting practice, right? And so we're working on a risk
- 0:59consulting deck. And he asked me, hi, what,
- 1:03what's 1 of the big breaches that stands out from a risk
- 1:07consulting standpoint in cyber? I said, well, it has to be
- 1:11SolarWinds, right? And I started doing a Google
- 1:14search. I couldn't remember even the
- 1:16name SolarWinds, right? I'm like, it's that big 1.
- 1:19And I started looking at 2023. What was the big breaches 2024?
- 1:23And I'm like, you know, I, I, I finally got there by keyword
- 1:28jamming. And eventually it was like
- 1:30realized it was 2020. I remember we had Paul Volosian
- 1:33come on in the time. This is the very beginning of
- 1:36the pandemic, right? And we decided like, hey, we
- 1:40need to put out an emergency episode.
- 1:42This humongous freeze just happened.
- 1:44And Paul was like, Hey, I can talk about it on a Sunday.
- 1:47So I went on, I think I did this.
- 1:50That was probably my first solo episode was with Paul and on
- 1:55that topic. So just came to mind because I
- 1:58was also thinking about like, Hey, we've got an identifiers
- 2:00coming up. That's in Las Vegas, right?
- 2:04That was the big scatter spriter breach, which to go back and
- 2:08check the date that was 2023. That was obviously more recent,
- 2:13more in kind of the the recent episode log.
- 2:17So if you go back, we had a couple episodes dedicated to
- 2:21Scatters Fighter over time, but I just thought it was
- 2:24interesting. It's like some of these
- 2:27breaches, they are the biggest deal ever.
- 2:30As we're in this news cycle now where things become the biggest
- 2:33deal ever and then something else becomes the biggest deal.
- 2:36You move on and eventually you forget when the last thing
- 2:39happened. Well, we're desensitized because
- 2:42it happens so often. It's like, OK, you know, what
- 2:44are we going to do about it this time?
- 2:46Some are bigger than others, obviously.
- 2:48But I appreciate you living up to your Debbie Downer of hey,
- 2:54let's start off the let's start off an episode with, hey, let's
- 2:57talk massive breaches and all the things that can go wrong and
- 3:00things like that. So you're definitely, you know,
- 3:02you hit a home run on that one. Hey, wait till the lighter note.
- 3:05I got some really good stuff planned for that.
- 3:08Well, remember, it's a lighter note.
- 3:10It's supposed to be fun, you know, Airy, carefree.
- 3:14Hey what I found is when I am airy and carefree then you
- 3:17become Debbie downer so the the universe has to balance itself
- 3:21out but. As Thanos once said, balance in
- 3:24all things, right? So.
- 3:27Yeah. Again, you have to educate me on
- 3:29who that even is. But you know, coming up, we've
- 3:32got day Jenna verse conference. We're going to talk about it
- 3:35today. We've got a discount code still
- 3:37for that. I I kind of feel nostalgic.
- 3:39This is the last episode where we're going to talk about the
- 3:42Identiverse conference and our discount code.
- 3:46Then we'll shift into kind of the fall conferences.
- 3:49But I'm excited about it. Denna verse.
- 3:51We're going to have a booth, we're going to do our game show.
- 3:55We've got a bunch of other things.
- 3:56We're going to record a bunch of episodes.
- 3:59What else do we have? What are your thoughts?
- 4:02I mean, I think you hit kind of everything that that we've got
- 4:04going on. So yeah, this is going to go
- 4:07live a week before the actual conference.
- 4:10So if you haven't registered already, here's 30% off for you
- 4:14if you use the code IDV 2 six dash, IDAC 30 and the percentage
- 4:18sign, it's on our website, idacpodcast.com.
- 4:21So you don't have to kind of jot it down.
- 4:22But yeah, time's time's ticking. I'm going to guess the Mandalay
- 4:26is probably sold out or very high from a rate perspective,
- 4:30but hopefully we'll see a lot of familiar faces there for the
- 4:32conference itself. And you know, this is also
- 4:35extended to all of our friends at ID Pro for sure.
- 4:38So we also have kind of a recent discount that we're finally able
- 4:41to get in place with the help of ID Pro.
- 4:43If you go to idpro.org/IDAC, all new members get $25 off of their
- 4:50first year, which is very cool. So people can check that out.
- 4:52Jim, I don't know if you know that I did this, but in an
- 4:55episode that we aired, I guess at this point a couple weeks
- 4:58ago, I used AI to insert the IDAC discount information
- 5:05because when we were recorded with Elizabeth, we didn't have
- 5:08it kind of worked out and finalized at that point.
- 5:09So we weren't quite sure what to put there.
- 5:11But I actually used AI to animate my headshot and the
- 5:16voice of AI, Jeff, to, you know, say, OK, well, if you're going
- 5:21to hear it, it's here it is. And then it kind of cuts to it.
- 5:23I'm guessing you have not seen that yet.
- 5:25I didn't know that's freaking cool though.
- 5:29Well, as we were talking about before we hit record, I have
- 5:31shifted my, I'm trying to shift my thinking and my speaking to
- 5:35saying AI good or bad or if it's this good or this bad and just
- 5:39say capable because it is certainly becoming much more
- 5:43capable all the time. And I'm sure that's going to be
- 5:45a big topic that we talked about Identiverse.
- 5:47But why don't we go ahead and get to our guests, 2 of the
- 5:51finest in the IM industry. They've been on multiple times,
- 5:54a total of 13 between the two of them.
- 5:57We've got Heather Flanagan, she's the content chair, and
- 6:00Andy Hindle, who is the conference chair, and we're
- 6:02going to find out what that means.
- 6:04They're both part of the team that's helping put together the
- 6:05Identity Identity Verse Conference itself.
- 6:07But welcome to the show, Heather and Andy.
- 6:10Hello again. Greetings, it's a pleasure to be
- 6:14here as always. And Heather, I notice your cat
- 6:17sitting behind you. We have some some supervision
- 6:20this time. We'll see how that goes.
- 6:22Yes, Charlie, I've already exhausted him.
- 6:26Well, Chaucer is, is free to, you know, pipe in an A point.
- 6:30She's going to be the fact checker maybe for you as you're
- 6:32kind of talking. But let's start with the roles
- 6:36that you guys are playing at the conference.
- 6:38You guys have done this before as well, but for people who
- 6:40aren't familiar and, and Heather, I want to kind of start
- 6:42with you. What is the difference?
- 6:44You know, explain your role as a content chair.
- 6:46And then Andy, you go next and talk about, OK, what how's that
- 6:50differ from a conference chair? So for content share, it
- 6:55basically means that I'm responsible for the results from
- 7:00the CFP in organizing the content committee and making
- 7:04sure that things are reviewed and making sure that we have a
- 7:08whole lot of stuff in our back pocket as it were.
- 7:10Because what we find is, you know that we get hundreds and
- 7:15hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of proposals, which is
- 7:18great. But then sometimes people will
- 7:21be like, oh, sorry, we didn't remember what days the
- 7:26conference were, so we have to pull out or, OK, but we're only
- 7:29going to speak if you pay US money.
- 7:30And so they pull out. And so there's this this churn
- 7:33that happens over the course of the few months after you
- 7:37actually start picking things. This year was a little bit more
- 7:41character building than expected because we had to the the woman
- 7:48who was responsible for she was going to be handling the content
- 7:52and the process and all of that stuff.
- 7:54Her name was Chris Tanaka, and she unexpectedly passed away at
- 7:57the very end of 2025, at which point we were kind of Plan B,
- 8:04except they didn't know they even needed a Plan B.
- 8:07So we just sort of dove on it and pick things up from there to
- 8:11make sure that everything continued to go and the
- 8:13conference actually happened on time.
- 8:17But that's that's my focus is is the content.
- 8:20However, there's so much more that happens, and that's Andy's
- 8:23job. Yeah, it's unfortunately.
- 8:25About Chris, just because we met her for the first time in, in I
- 8:29think it was DC last year. And, you know, one of our first
- 8:31times that we did kind of the game show in that sort of
- 8:33smaller format for, for that conference.
- 8:34And she was such a pleasure to work with.
- 8:36And yeah, sorry to have to, you know, hear that news over the
- 8:41the break. But anyway, Andy, tell us about
- 8:44being a conference chair. Yeah.
- 8:46So, so what's interesting about this is if you go back far
- 8:49enough, and I've been around doing this for a little while
- 8:53now, this is actually going to be my 12th year, if I've added
- 8:56the years up correctly, of being roughly in this role.
- 8:59But when I first took it on, Andre Durand, who obviously
- 9:03founded Identiverse Wayback, was in the role of conference chair.
- 9:08And so I took on specifically the content and then slowly
- 9:12moved in and effectively looked after both of them.
- 9:16The the role of conference chair is a guess about the overall
- 9:23direction of the conference. So I'm thinking about how does
- 9:27everything tie together thematically?
- 9:29What are the big topics that we need to try and touch on?
- 9:33How do we make sure that we have stitched together at least a
- 9:37reasonable story through the mainstage through the week?
- 9:42And I'm hedging a little bit on that because we don't always
- 9:45know exactly what's going to be said on the mainstage until
- 9:49sometimes just a few weeks out. Some of it's locked in, some of
- 9:53it, you know, changes as we get a little closer.
- 9:56And so there's a certain amount of real time work that goes into
- 9:58that as well to try and, and kind of tell the story through
- 10:01the week. And some of that is about
- 10:04literally telling the story through the week so that you
- 10:06have some consistency as you go through some some sense of
- 10:10progression from A to B. But we're also thinking about
- 10:14where might we want to go next year, right?
- 10:18And so, you know, it's impossible to predict exactly
- 10:22what that's going to look like. But at least directionally,
- 10:26we're already starting to have some conversations and have some
- 10:28thoughts around, OK, here are some directions we might want to
- 10:32lean into for next year. Let's maybe test some of those
- 10:35out in real time, see how people respond to them or react to
- 10:38them. And all of that goes into
- 10:41helping inform getting us set up for the call for presentations
- 10:44for the 27 conference, which of course will open, you know that
- 10:48the CFP for 27 will open in October, which means that we're
- 10:52all ready. We need to start thinking about
- 10:54what are the things we're going to want to directionally talk
- 10:57about by then. So that's, that's the role of
- 10:59the conference chair really is is kind of the the broad
- 11:02picture, but but it's impossible to do that without this really
- 11:06strong kind of, you know, content from the CFP sort of
- 11:10holding everything together underneath.
- 11:12And so that's why these two things fit together so well.
- 11:16So let's talk a little bit about that theme for this year.
- 11:20Can I guess that there's going to be some sort of AI as part of
- 11:24this, just because it seems like it's taken over sort of the the
- 11:28mindshare for so many people. But maybe I can Mandy, you know,
- 11:31start with you. Let's let's talk about that
- 11:33theme. And then, Heather, if you've got
- 11:34anything you want to get on, feel free.
- 11:36Yeah, So, you know, themes for conferences are always tricky
- 11:40because on the one hand, you do want to give people some
- 11:44structure, some, some context in which to kind of think about the
- 11:47week. By the same token, if you focus
- 11:50on one thing, then everyone just wants to talk about that one
- 11:52thing, right. Again, because it informs the,
- 11:54the, the CIP, the golf presentations.
- 11:56The last thing you want to do is to just end up with, you know,
- 11:59400 proposals about AI and and nothing else.
- 12:04So we actually hinted a little bit at this last year for, you
- 12:10know, listeners who who might have attended last year.
- 12:14We talked quite a lot about fragility.
- 12:17We talked quite a lot about these four big kind of technical
- 12:21developments that are happening, which again, going back to last
- 12:26year, AI, continuous identity, personal identity, and someone's
- 12:30going to remind me what the 4th 1 was and no one's going to
- 12:36remind me what the full form was.
- 12:38Oh, well, somebody can go and look it up afterwards.
- 12:41And the point that we made that identity really acts as a
- 12:47substrate, right? It, it pulls everything
- 12:50together. It helps us deal with, with that
- 12:52fragility. And the reason that, that we
- 12:55talked about that partly was because it was very true last
- 12:57year. It continues to be true.
- 12:59And so this year we're talking about really two things.
- 13:03One is that exactly that line of thinking, right?
- 13:06And it's increasingly the case that our digital identity
- 13:09systems are absolutely fundamental to building trust.
- 13:17And it's trust that allows us to get work done in the, in the
- 13:21digital world, right? It, it's kind of fundamental to,
- 13:24to how everything works at the same time.
- 13:29There's an awful lot of change going on.
- 13:30And so there's, there's as a result of that, a lot of
- 13:33uncertainty for digital identity professionals.
- 13:36There's also a huge amount of innovation that's happening.
- 13:39And knowing when this episode is going to go out, I can, I can
- 13:43hint at least a little bit at some of my opening remarks.
- 13:47So, you know, if you go back again to the to the very
- 13:52beginning of Identiverse, when it used to be called Identity
- 13:55Summit, one of the reasons that Cloud Identity Summit that Andre
- 13:59originally set up the conference was because at the time, and
- 14:03this was just when cloud computing was becoming a thing.
- 14:06And, and we didn't know as an industry, as in a profession, we
- 14:10didn't know how to do identity in the cloud really.
- 14:13And so part of the point of Cloud Identity Summit was to
- 14:16answer that question. Well, you know, here we are 15
- 14:21some years later and there's sufficient change going on,
- 14:26particularly around agentic AI specifically, but there's a
- 14:30bunch of other stuff too. And we're all sat here kind of
- 14:34asking the same question, which is how do we do identity now,
- 14:37right? The good news is that there's a
- 14:39lot more of us to kind of help answer that question, right?
- 14:42So that's, you know, contextually some of the stuff
- 14:45that that we'll start talking about I think this year and then
- 14:50you know, what we started to see through the CFP gives gives some
- 14:55meat to all of that. I'm going to let Heather talk
- 14:57about that a little bit. Yeah, because that was one of
- 15:00the things that I guess one of the first things I did was when
- 15:05when the CFP opened, there were there was, you know, we have
- 15:10different tracks and one of the tracks was AI and identity.
- 15:16And I took a look at what came in and I thought about it and I
- 15:19ripped the track apart because that it didn't make sense.
- 15:23AI isn't a a, you know, a vertical.
- 15:27It isn't its own thing. It's always AI in the context of
- 15:30something else, AI and how it's impacting security, AI and how
- 15:33it's impacting the business, AI and how it's impacting privacy.
- 15:37All of which were other tracks we had.
- 15:39So and unfortunately about oh, easily anywhere, somewhere
- 15:46between a third and a half of the submissions that came in
- 15:49came in under that AI category. So I ended up recategorizing a
- 15:53whole bunch of different things because again, they didn't make
- 15:56sense 'cause they weren't about AI, they were about something
- 16:01else and how you could use AI with that.
- 16:03So I, that's I think an interesting trend and concept
- 16:08for the industry to be thinking about the fact that, you know,
- 16:11AI, while it's certainly taking over our conversations and
- 16:15influencing what we do, there's still what we do, right?
- 16:20We're still doing identity verification, improving, we're
- 16:22still working on security, we're still doing all of these things.
- 16:26This is just a tool that's making, you know all the things
- 16:29go faster. Not better, just faster.
- 16:32I think there's a growing sense that identity is at the center,
- 16:36not to toot our own horn, but it's at the center of all these
- 16:39things like agentic systems and wallets and kind of automation
- 16:45in general, machines, workloads. How is this affecting like that
- 16:51thought? And you hear it a lot in terms
- 16:53of this catch phrase. I keep hearing identity is the
- 16:57control plane, which is generally, I think the way I
- 17:01interpret that is like you're using identity now to secure
- 17:06systems rather than just depending on external controls,
- 17:13things like that. So first correct me in terms of
- 17:15like that statement I just made, but then also because I, I see
- 17:19you guys shaking your head now. So that's great.
- 17:22That's what this show is all about is educating people,
- 17:25including me and Jeff, but also talk about that how that concept
- 17:31affects the theme of this year's conference my.
- 17:34Gosh, I have such opinions. But Andy, you go first, because
- 17:37I got a soapbox right here and I'm about to hop on it.
- 17:42So, yeah, I, you know, you're right, Jim, in the sense that
- 17:45that phrase gets gets thrown around the lot, right?
- 17:47The identity is the control plane.
- 17:48And it's not unreasonable. It's just, for me, it doesn't go
- 17:52far enough because it gets us back into that mode of saying
- 17:56identity is all about security. It's security is very important,
- 18:00don't get me wrong, but identity is also about enablement.
- 18:04It's about making stuff possible.
- 18:06And so I actually like to think of it as the enablement plane
- 18:09and not the control plane, right?
- 18:11It, it, it's, it's really important that we don't forget
- 18:14that. And there are lots of things in
- 18:17the identity space that actually have nothing really to do with
- 18:21controlling in, in that sense, right?
- 18:23And they give us control in other ways, but that isn't
- 18:29really what people mean when they say it.
- 18:30So that's why I'm still here shaking my head.
- 18:32Is I just, I just, it feels very reductive to be saying identity
- 18:36is the control plane. It's so much more than that.
- 18:38And I'm going to. So one of the things I do in my
- 18:42copious free time is I write blog posts.
- 18:44I like writing blog posts and I wrote one this week that said
- 18:47identity systems don't make decisions.
- 18:52They they are part of a decision making process.
- 18:55But so much goes into, you know, an access decision or you know,
- 19:00some kind of enablement decision, but that the
- 19:02information is going to come from a lot of different areas.
- 19:05Identity is a critical area, but it is one of many.
- 19:09And I think one of the things that that gets very complicated
- 19:14for people is, you know, aren't we, we talk about the industry.
- 19:17I think even some of the questions that we wrote in
- 19:19advance, we're talking about the industry.
- 19:21And my question was what's the industry?
- 19:24What is it? It's, it's not just identity,
- 19:27right? If you want to put it that way,
- 19:29every single company that has an online presence or uses
- 19:32computers is an identity company.
- 19:35It, it almost makes the term the industry meaningless.
- 19:39We do have subject matter experts, but if they only look
- 19:42at it from their point of view as to identity being the control
- 19:47or the enablement or anything, you've missed out on all the
- 19:52other things that actually end up going into decisions being
- 19:55made. And that's going to be a really
- 19:57big problem. Now we get to my soapbox part.
- 20:00That's going to be a really big problem when you actually start
- 20:02using AI to help speed up your decisions.
- 20:07Because one of the things that we know about AI is that it's
- 20:11not generally A deterministic system.
- 20:14It's not a, it's not a binary system.
- 20:16It's going to probably. Take information and usually
- 20:21make the same choices each time, but not necessarily.
- 20:25So a lot of our thinking about the binary, of course, if
- 20:29identity says yes or identity says no, then that's, that's the
- 20:33end all be all. But I don't think that's the way
- 20:35it's going to be going forward. So it's that's something I think
- 20:38is important to think about. That's pretty deep.
- 20:41I really like that answer about what is the industry.
- 20:45I remember in the 90s when I was first getting into networking, I
- 20:49heard somebody talking about computers or operating systems.
- 20:53I got so excited. It's like, oh, there's one of my
- 20:55people like we're in this computer world.
- 20:58And then in 2006, I went to Digital Identity World and it
- 21:02was like, holy cow, this to me, that was the industry.
- 21:06That was the digital, or let's call it the IM industry at the
- 21:09time. And what I loved about it was it
- 21:13just wasn't about the zeros and ones.
- 21:16And it wasn't even just about like, how does this make your
- 21:18business better? It was the philosophy of what is
- 21:23an identity? I still think that element
- 21:27exists that that that thread exists within the community or
- 21:34the industry. I kind of feel like the industry
- 21:37is really comes to bear when you talk about these conferences,
- 21:41right? Not everybody can go to the
- 21:42conferences. I get that, but it is a
- 21:45representation of people who consider consider themselves in
- 21:50the identity industry. But I also feel like potentially
- 21:54we're we're always getting better, right?
- 21:56And like every year seems like, hey, major milestones.
- 21:59So some of those things that we're talking about now we might
- 22:03have been talking about a year ago.
- 22:06I'm wondering like, and I'm going to ask you this question
- 22:09first other than Andy, feel free to jump in, is what are we
- 22:12potentially as an industry under estimating now about the
- 22:16importance of identity I. Think we're under estimating the
- 22:20long tail we, when you come to ideniverse or authenticate or
- 22:26EIC, any of the RSA, any of the Tier 1 conferences, you're,
- 22:31you're looking at people who are thinking about, you know, what's
- 22:35possible today and where are we trying to go and what's most
- 22:38urgent to do. And you know, it's a very
- 22:42immediate kind of thing. However, there are industries,
- 22:46and I'm going to point to scholarly publishing.
- 22:49Scholarly publishing is kind of an important industry, if you
- 22:52think about it, right? It's it's about how people are
- 22:55are where research goes, where education goes.
- 22:58It's all there. And they're still struggling
- 23:01with the concept of can they use federation or do they need to
- 23:06just stick with their local accounts, username and
- 23:08passwords. The long tail in just that one
- 23:11group is pretty epic. And yet we don't talk about them
- 23:15anymore because that's like, that's so 15 years ago.
- 23:20The long tail is getting longer. And we as identity professionals
- 23:27don't want to talk about that anymore because solving that
- 23:30problem isn't a technical problem, it's a business
- 23:33problem, it's a social problem. And I think that's what we in
- 23:39not talking about it, we kind of forget about it.
- 23:41And I think that will bite us in the butt at some point.
- 23:44Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with that.
- 23:47I'm going to come at this from a slightly different perspective,
- 23:49which basically means I'm going to ask a different question.
- 23:54And it's and it's the the question is more something that
- 23:59I think the industry and the profession is not thinking
- 24:04about. And again, by the time this
- 24:06actually goes out, I will have spoken about this publicly.
- 24:12One of the things that's happened over the course of say
- 24:15the last three or four years slightly quietly, but it's
- 24:19suddenly become really obvious, is that non human access to
- 24:27things, in other words, API requests of some kind
- 24:31dramatically outnumber human requests for things.
- 24:36And yet we are still, by and large designing identity systems
- 24:41with the human access in mind. So I'm going to restate that a
- 24:46different way we're designing most of our work is designing
- 24:51for what is actually an edge case.
- 24:53Human access is the edge case. That's really worrying because
- 24:59it means that we're designing things kind of the wrong way for
- 25:02what identity is going to look like over the course of the
- 25:05next, say, five years. That isn't to say that designing
- 25:09for human access is important. Actually, I think it becomes
- 25:11more important in that case. It's a little bit like the
- 25:13conversations we've had about, you know, making sure that
- 25:17people who are digitally excluded have ways of accessing
- 25:21digital systems. That's a conversation that we've
- 25:23had over the years, and it becomes increasingly important
- 25:27that the, you know, over time. This is the same thing.
- 25:32And I think that the industry and the profession massively
- 25:35underestimate how much work needs to be done, how much needs
- 25:40to change to allow for that fact.
- 25:43Yeah, that's really fascinating. So I did want to talk a little
- 25:47bit about some of the subject matter that was discussed last
- 25:52year. I've always thought of identity
- 25:54and access management as identity management.
- 25:57Access management. Access management for the old
- 26:00school was authentication and authorization, right?
- 26:03It wasn't like managing people's identity information or what
- 26:08they have access to. It was the authentication side.
- 26:11I think somebody changed the definition and forgot to inform
- 26:15everyone. So I'm still referring to it
- 26:17that way. But in quotations, it was
- 26:21authentication is done. We talked about this last year.
- 26:24I think what we mean is authentication was solved.
- 26:27In other words, like the the progress in that area is so
- 26:30incremental. I think with that agentic
- 26:33identity that makes you question that like is it OK, maybe you
- 26:39solve for people, maybe it's like incremental for people, but
- 26:44our problem is a lot more about non people.
- 26:47So Andy, what are your thoughts there when someone says
- 26:49authentication is solved? Yeah.
- 26:52So I think, you know, when, when we started to throw that phrase
- 26:55around, I think we particularly had in mind that the, the, the
- 26:59past key construct really is very solid.
- 27:04And yeah, there's, you know, to, to pick up Heather's point about
- 27:07long tail, there's an enormous deployment effort still
- 27:10required. But as a solution to the, to the
- 27:14historic problem, I think it's, it's a very good one.
- 27:16And I'm not clearly the only person that thinks that.
- 27:21I think you're right, Jim, that that work has to continue,
- 27:26right? Let's be clear, we shouldn't
- 27:27stop doing that. If you haven't deployed Passkey
- 27:30yet, you'll still don't, you should go do that, right?
- 27:33That's a priority. I think one of the things that
- 27:39that sort of emerged out of Idanoverse last year and which
- 27:42we're absolutely going to be talking about this year is the
- 27:46incredibly important role that the continuous identity
- 27:50architecture is going to play. And so that incorporates shared
- 27:54signals, 0, standing privilege, a whole bunch of stuff around
- 27:58how authorisation works in that context and some of the new work
- 28:03that's going on there. All of these things kind of fit
- 28:07together, right. But that continuous architecture
- 28:11which people already starting to deploy and we had talks about it
- 28:14last year. We'll have you know, plenty more
- 28:16talks about it this year in terms of really practical things
- 28:19that the people can and should be doing.
- 28:23It also provides provides us the wrong word.
- 28:28It also delivers an architecture that ties in very well to the
- 28:36emergence of digital identity wallets and verifiable
- 28:40credentials and ways that those things, sorry, and other
- 28:45credential types and ways that those things I suspect will be
- 28:51used over the course of the next say few years to provide the
- 28:58information that's required for an authorisation decision.
- 29:02Whether that is a very coarse grained yet you can have access
- 29:07or whether it's a very fine grained you need to carry out
- 29:10this specific operation at this specific time, right?
- 29:15So I think that's kind of the and and it's a massive thing,
- 29:20right? It's it's not the getting Paskey
- 29:23done was simple at all. Huge amount of work went into
- 29:25it, but it's kind of a constrained problem, right?
- 29:29This is not a constrained problem.
- 29:30It's much bigger than that. It's going to take longer, but I
- 29:33think that's that's where the the work really needs to happen
- 29:38from my perspective if. You want to think of it as a
- 29:40purely technical problem, then sure, pass keys are, are great
- 29:45and they have solved for, you know, the majority of, of
- 29:49authentication challenges. Though some of the work that
- 29:54needs to happen is like I've, I've spoken to people who are
- 29:57like, yeah, I'm not convinced because they don't absolutely
- 30:01want people. We say pass keys as if it is
- 30:03just one thing, which it isn't right?
- 30:07You, you can actually have syncopal pass keys.
- 30:09You can have hardware based pass keys, you know, and and which
- 30:12you choose depends on the use cases that you're trying to
- 30:14solve for. There's, there's like a whole
- 30:16decision tree that feeds up into are you deploying pass keys?
- 30:20Well, if then else, Bah, Bah, Bah, Bah, Bah, we that's always
- 30:25seems to be missing in a lot of the conversations.
- 30:27And I've been working on some text for a client to try and,
- 30:32and clean that up a little bit to be a little bit more clear
- 30:34that yes, pass queues can solve your problems if you choose the
- 30:37right one for your risk, for your need, things like that.
- 30:43So I'm sure that that's that's part of the conversations that
- 30:46need to be have authorization. Oh my gosh, we are.
- 30:51I think we're pretty far away from solving that at this point
- 30:54because authorization ties directly into delegation and
- 30:59delegation we, you know, we still don't know how to do in a
- 31:04complete fashion. We do have Oauth for the win.
- 31:07Love Oauth, don't love the fact that it doesn't handle chaining
- 31:12all that well. There's a lot of conversations
- 31:14about how to get there from here, but those are all still
- 31:17pretty. I don't want to see speculative.
- 31:20They're nascent, right? They're, they're at their
- 31:22beginnings for all intents and purposes.
- 31:24So a whole lot of more work needs to happen there.
- 31:27Now when you take that back to a conference like Ideniverse,
- 31:31Ideniverse attracts the people that are looking for, I have a
- 31:35problem now and I want to solve it.
- 31:37Now what, what are the solutions out there now for me?
- 31:41And so some of these bigger picture things we're looking at
- 31:44of, well, these are problems. They don't actually have
- 31:46solutions yet, you know, they almost don't.
- 31:49They frustrate attendees. They're almost not ready for
- 31:53identifiers yet, which is one of the reasons why there's a whole
- 31:56range of other conferences out there to look at the OK, well,
- 31:58if this is what's happening now, what's happening in the three to
- 32:01five year range, what's happening in the seven plus year
- 32:04range, all of those are conversations that still need to
- 32:06happen. Let.
- 32:06Me play the Debbie Downer, Jim McDonald card here because we
- 32:12always say things are, well, I don't know.
- 32:14Things are not solved right. I think there are varying
- 32:16degrees of the solution. And so I would, I would say for
- 32:21the most part, yeah, authentication is probably been
- 32:25solved, but we're unsolving it almost in real time because of
- 32:29all the new challenges that we're seeing with agentic and
- 32:32AI. And how are we going to
- 32:34authenticate some of these things?
- 32:35And maybe it does take advantage of some of the things that we've
- 32:38learned from the human that we've been trying to solve
- 32:41authentication for. And so I feel like it's, it's
- 32:43never like 100%. It's like, yeah, I think we're
- 32:45like 80% solved and then some new thing comes along and says
- 32:49up back to 20, we've got to figure that out.
- 32:52And it's kind of like a, an equation that never quite comes
- 32:54into balance. And I don't know if that's, I
- 32:57mean, it's just the way it's going to work.
- 32:58But I mean, you could take that same equation across really any
- 33:02part of identity authorization. I'm with you, Heather.
- 33:05I feel like we're much closer to 10 percent, 20% solved than we
- 33:09are to 80%. Like I'm the whole, but there's
- 33:12always a sort of a give and take and I don't know, you know,
- 33:14Heather, am I am I preaching to the choir for you?
- 33:16And then Andy, I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are and
- 33:18sort of that that rebound that I'm pushing back to.
- 33:20Oh, absolutely. But I, I would, you know, to be
- 33:24snarky, I'd say, Jeff, let me introduce you to the concept of
- 33:28job security, but more, more realistically, I, one of the
- 33:33things that that I've told people and generally gets
- 33:37agreement is the identity industry is sticky.
- 33:42It's really sticky. Once you've touched on it, you
- 33:44kind of can't, we don't let you escape because there's so much
- 33:48to do and so many the, you know, the problems that we think we're
- 33:51solving evolve over time and new uses cases come in, new
- 33:56capabilities come in, which is, which is slightly different from
- 33:59just the new use case, right? It's a whole new capability, a
- 34:01whole new tool. How would you use it?
- 34:04So there's always going to be more to do, without a doubt.
- 34:09And I. Think you're right, Jeff.
- 34:10You know that those sort of two steps forward, one step back
- 34:12kind of thing is. Is.
- 34:14True. There you go.
- 34:17And A and a little frustrating and I think, I mean, Heather
- 34:21alluded to this and it it's something, you know, several of
- 34:25us have been thinking about probably for a couple of years
- 34:28now. Is this this notion of time
- 34:31horizons? I've been thinking about it in
- 34:33the context really of of the various conferences, but Ian
- 34:38Glaser has spoken about this in the context of, you know, large
- 34:42enterprise, right? That that, that one to
- 34:46three-year time frame, which which really is, you know, when
- 34:49Heather says a problem to solve, you know, something to deploy
- 34:51now, right? It's for a large enterprise
- 34:53that's kind of a three-year time frame problem.
- 34:56And it's really important that we don't in in, I guess the
- 35:02concern of how do we solve for tomorrow's problems, even though
- 35:07some of those tomorrow's problems, especially the ones
- 35:09around, you know, things like agentic AI are really kind of
- 35:12today's problems, but we don't have solid solutions for them
- 35:16yet, right? It's really important that we
- 35:19don't lose sight of getting the work done.
- 35:23Now, even that will make things better, right?
- 35:28Safer, easier to use, more purposely preserving whatever it
- 35:32might be still needs to get done.
- 35:35And I think particularly now there is this huge risk that we
- 35:39end up not getting that stuff done.
- 35:42The long tail gets longer, you never catch up, right?
- 35:48That, that level of focus, I think is really important.
- 35:51So all of that's to say I, I kind of agree with you, Jeff.
- 35:54It's just, it's the nature of the beast and we have to be, we
- 35:58have to be careful about making sure that we get today's work
- 36:01done as well as thinking about tomorrow's solutions.
- 36:03Heather. One of the things I said, so I'm
- 36:07also a working group chair in a couple of different standards
- 36:09organizations. And one of the things that I
- 36:11really encourage people to think about for some of the
- 36:15specifications we write is does this box us into a corner?
- 36:20Maybe it's OK to be boxed into a corner, but I want to be
- 36:22explicit. Does this box us into a corner
- 36:25in terms of closing doors for directions we can take?
- 36:28I think that's one of the best questions people can ask when
- 36:31they are looking at deploying some things for problems that
- 36:34aren't entirely solved. Go ahead and do that, but but
- 36:37think about does that make it harder to move in a direction
- 36:42that it looks like the industry is going to go if they ever, you
- 36:45know, figure out how to do things and I'm guessing.
- 36:47Box. Order means right now, right?
- 36:48Because we don't know what's coming in the future.
- 36:50So you try to be extensible. Well, I think.
- 36:52Where you yes and no. I mean, we know that delegation
- 36:54is a huge problem, right? So if you're deploying something
- 36:58that locks in how you do delegation in only one way or
- 37:03that you've funded it so that, OK, we're going to do this, but
- 37:06now we don't, we won't be able to change anything for another
- 37:09five years. Do you really want to do that?
- 37:12Was that a good idea? Right.
- 37:14No, you don't know how it's going to do, but you kind of
- 37:16have to build in a certain level of flexibility and resilience
- 37:21because you have to solve the problem today.
- 37:24But the actual best practice hasn't been determined yet,
- 37:27Andy. You want to say something?
- 37:28Yeah, I was, I was going to, you know, float over the top of that
- 37:32and say, you know, all of this requires tremendous leadership.
- 37:38And that isn't by by saying that, in saying that I don't
- 37:42mean good management also requires good management, right?
- 37:46But leadership comes from any level within an organization.
- 37:51And so as digital aid only professionals, we need to think
- 37:54about, OK, how do we lead the organization to get the work
- 37:57done today? And how do we start to lead the
- 38:01organization to think about what's going to need to change
- 38:03over the course of the next three to five years?
- 38:06That that's they aren't easy things to do, but at whatever
- 38:10level, you know, people are operating at, there's
- 38:13opportunities to to start to drive those conversations.
- 38:15And it's really important as a profession and as an industry
- 38:19that that we do that whenever we have the opportunity.
- 38:22I think we've kind of hit one of the major themes here.
- 38:25I want to hear from you, Heather, from the your role,
- 38:28right as kind of seeing all these different calls for
- 38:31presentation. What are some of the topics that
- 38:34you think other than what we've talked about so far that you
- 38:36think are going to be kind of hits with the audience things
- 38:38that you're interested? And I'm curious if you had any
- 38:40surprises, like, was there something that's like, oh, I
- 38:43hadn't thought about that. Or, you know, maybe the calls
- 38:46for presentations were all focused on like a certain area.
- 38:49I'm guessing there was a lot of AI but.
- 38:51Yeah. A certain area that you weren't
- 38:52expecting maybe? So that I think, I think what I
- 39:00expected to see a little more of and didn't get was more about
- 39:06fraud. And I think that's something I'm
- 39:09going to push on for next year is I really would like more
- 39:12about how fraud comes into the world of identity.
- 39:17A lot of times we talk about IAM identity and access management.
- 39:22Great. It's a very useful thing to talk
- 39:24about the payment side of things which relies heavily on identity
- 39:29thinks it's a whole different field and it is at the moment,
- 39:32it has been for a long time, but it's kind of bigger than I am is
- 39:37I want, I want to see some convergent more convergence
- 39:40there. I want to see those discussions
- 39:42about fraud coming in and the the people who have IAM on the
- 39:47brain think a little bit more about well, yes, but there's
- 39:49actually a whole another field that has been working on this
- 39:53and has solutions for it and is trying to build better solutions
- 39:56for it that we should we shouldn't be two fields.
- 39:59We should be 1. So there was that.
- 40:01I didn't see as much of that as I wanted to.
- 40:03I also didn't see as much as I expected on I mean, yes,
- 40:09identity proofing and verification.
- 40:11There were there was a bit on deepfakes.
- 40:13I'm like, yes. Besides that, that's actually a
- 40:18really big critical field. What, what can we talk about
- 40:23that isn't deepfakes, You know, there, there is a whole lot more
- 40:26about how to do this, about the accessibility of it, about what
- 40:29devices you can use, about whether biometrics work that I
- 40:33thought could we, we ended up like trying to chase some people
- 40:36down saying I think you really need to talk about this.
- 40:40So that that's what I would add in.
- 40:43I, I would agree with all of that.
- 40:44I'm going to throw an extra 1 in, which is, oh, it's a few
- 40:50years ago now. I want to say it was the year
- 40:53that we were entirely virtual in, in one of the COVID years.
- 40:58And we had a focus that year specifically on usability.
- 41:04And particularly given the the context of Passkey, I was
- 41:08actually kind of surprised that we had very little that talked
- 41:12about the user flow, the user experience that all of that,
- 41:15right. It's such a critical part of
- 41:18what we do. And there's lots of really,
- 41:21really interesting work going on.
- 41:22There's also some really bad examples or I should say some
- 41:26examples of very poor usability. And in some cases, it's not only
- 41:31poor usability, it's also marginally, you know, arguable
- 41:35as poor security. And I feel like that's an area
- 41:40that would be interesting that I was, it was lacking this year,
- 41:44right? We've got some, but it would be
- 41:46nice to start to see a little more of that.
- 41:48You know, one topic I thought I think could be really
- 41:52interesting and to kind of go back to my 2006 digital identity
- 41:58world point that I was making about it kind of having a
- 42:02philosophical thread to the identity industry.
- 42:05And you guys rightly pointed out.
- 42:06So every, all the stuff I was bringing up is like identity as
- 42:10a control plane is really just thinking about identity as
- 42:13security. But here's what I I kind of run
- 42:16into is that I think organizations, you have a
- 42:21balance of wanting to the innate to enable the users to be
- 42:26creative and maybe they are AI whizzes and can create agents
- 42:31and publish them to the organization.
- 42:34And let's assume you have a pretty large organization, but
- 42:37then you have the counterbalance, which is we need
- 42:40to govern this thing and we need to make sure that people don't
- 42:43just start publishing a bunch of agents.
- 42:46So I don't know, to me that is where the, where the where this
- 42:53hits the road or where the rubber hits the road is
- 42:57somebody's got to set up the identities and allow them to
- 43:01publish the agents. So I guess my, my follow up is,
- 43:07you know, what, how do that, how do you handle that balance?
- 43:11And I think that would be a good topic for people to present on.
- 43:16What do you think? That's not an identity problem.
- 43:20You don't think it's an identity problem?
- 43:22No, it's not really a core identity.
- 43:24No, I think I. Think it's a governance problem.
- 43:26I mean, the the first question you asked what, you know, should
- 43:30they be able to do this? That's not an identity problem.
- 43:34Should they be able to do this? That's that's about business
- 43:36risk, right? That's about IP, that's about
- 43:39all sorts of different things. You've got to get through a
- 43:41whole mass of stuff before you actually get to the technical
- 43:44question of are the, you know, how do you enable the systems to
- 43:49identify who's trying to do it, what they're trying to do, what
- 43:52access it has, how much you can delegate to it?
- 43:54Those are great problems, but you got to get to the are you
- 43:57even allowed first? And that's not technical.
- 44:01Who's talking about it though? And.
- 44:03That's a great. Question.
- 44:04What ends up happening? Who like who has to make those
- 44:07decisions in an organization? That.
- 44:11I kind of feel like it keeps that's a good.
- 44:13Conversation. But that's where I think you
- 44:16have that with your Seesos, you have it with your business
- 44:18people. I would love to have them at
- 44:20Identiverse because I know a lot of identity people are just
- 44:23desperate for. Would would our business people
- 44:24please give us direction? It is interesting.
- 44:27I mean, and, and specifically in the context of AI, this is
- 44:30interesting because that area is moving so very, very, very
- 44:35quickly and it's wholly understood even amongst let's
- 44:41call them technically capable people who might just not be
- 44:46specifically working in the field of AI, right.
- 44:48There's plenty of of misapprehension,
- 44:53miscomprehension to to go around even amongst technical folks.
- 44:57Once you start to get outside of the realms of the technical,
- 44:59people have all sorts of fascinating ideas about what
- 45:02this new magic is is going to let them do.
- 45:08And that doesn't help with that conversation, right, Because
- 45:10people don't don't know at the executive level, they don't know
- 45:13what they don't know. They're asking in many cases the
- 45:16wrong questions. I've sat in on a, a in an
- 45:21entirely different sphere to this.
- 45:22I've sat in on a, a couple of kind of board level
- 45:24conversations about how do we think about AI in, in, you know,
- 45:29large, large multinational organisations.
- 45:32Some of those conversations are really positive and helpful and
- 45:34good. And, and, you know, you kind of
- 45:36get the sense that people are doing the work to understand
- 45:38what this really means to the business.
- 45:41In other cases, they're just scrambling because they feel
- 45:44like they have to keep up and, and and do something.
- 45:49In a lot of cases, what's happening is you, you that
- 45:51they're not thinking about that policy question that you raised,
- 45:55Jim, right? They're just going, yeah, we
- 45:56need to do this, make it so. And and nobody ever defines
- 46:00this. I mean, it's like it's it's
- 46:04problematic. So, yeah, I mean, there are ways
- 46:07I think as a, again, as a, as an industry and a profession that
- 46:10we can where we can engage in, in those conversations to try
- 46:14and help. But it's in the Ala context
- 46:17specifically. It's really, really difficult
- 46:19right now. Yeah, it's about publishing the
- 46:22agents, but then even what the agents can do.
- 46:25And I think that if you look at it at the surface level, people
- 46:28think, oh, well, you know, Heather Access, my agent uses
- 46:33Heather's capabilities, you know, her entitlements and her
- 46:37access. But the problem is the agent has
- 46:4024 by 7 is operating in the background, scraping data, doing
- 46:44all kinds of things. So what identity is being used
- 46:49for that? But then can people publish,
- 46:51publish agents? I think we're kind of an
- 46:54inflection moment, which is, you know, organizations are going to
- 46:58have to decide like, you know, what rights do they allow their
- 47:03people to have to build agents? Are they going to restrict it?
- 47:07Or is this something that they're going to say take an
- 47:09entrepreneurial approach to? And I don't think we're going to
- 47:12solve that today, but I think to and, and feel free to follow up,
- 47:16Andy, but I think that one of the points was made as by
- 47:20Heather was these are the hallway conversations that
- 47:23happened at Identiverse. To me, it's the in person
- 47:27conversations at conferences that make conferences worth
- 47:31getting on a plane and sleeping in a hotel worth it, right?
- 47:35It's the in person conversations.
- 47:39I know that Identiverse has a lot of workshops and networking
- 47:45events lined up. Can you talk a little bit about
- 47:48that Andy? And and feel free to address my
- 47:51last point and then go into answering the question.
- 47:55Yeah, No, I, you're, you're, you're right.
- 47:58We should talk about those things.
- 47:59And I'm, I'm smiling because I'm remembering an observation.
- 48:03I was having a, a conversation with a couple of folks about,
- 48:05you know, the impact that AI might have on various different
- 48:09industries. And I, and I think, you know,
- 48:11one of the questions that a lot of organizations don't ask at
- 48:15the moment is not, not just, you know, the thing you were getting
- 48:19to, Jim, which is, OK, what can we do with it?
- 48:22What, what is possible and how should we enable that?
- 48:25But the, the, the question that comes first is why are we doing
- 48:29this right? What, what, how does it benefit
- 48:31the business to us doing this? How do we improve the business
- 48:34by the point that's where organisations have to start?
- 48:37And again, to have this point, that's not an identity problem,
- 48:39right? That comes before we, we get
- 48:42stuck in, but we should go and try and be part of those
- 48:45conversations if we can. So I was, I was having actually
- 48:49a very similar conversation to this with a couple of folks.
- 48:51And, and you know, we, we talked through this and we were
- 48:53starting to talk about, you know, what impact do we think AI
- 48:57is going to have on, on different events.
- 48:59And we started to talk about content in particular and some
- 49:02of the challenges around, you know, AI generated material and,
- 49:06you know, it's very clever, predicted text engine and all of
- 49:09those things. And it occurred to me and I said
- 49:13it and, and everyone went quiet and then nodded, which is what
- 49:15I'm hoping is going to happen here is I actually think that AI
- 49:19is tremendously beneficial for the events business.
- 49:22And the reason I think that, Jim, is because people actually
- 49:25want to know that they're talking to a real person.
- 49:27The best place to do that is at a conference.
- 49:30So I don't know whether that's true, but I mean, I think I
- 49:34think the statement is true. Whether it actually helps the
- 49:36events businesses all or not, I don't know, right?
- 49:38That's outside of my, my, really my, my sphere of expertise.
- 49:41But it's a reasonable conjecture.
- 49:45And I do think that's something that we've always done very
- 49:48successfully at Identiverse is even for folks who are coming
- 49:53for the first time, even for folks who are relatively new to
- 49:56the industry or the profession. It is, I like to think, and I
- 50:01hear from other people, it's hard for me not to be biased at
- 50:04this point, but we try very hard to make it a very welcoming,
- 50:09open kind of a place, right? We really encourage people to go
- 50:12and have those conversations and know that, you know, if, if you
- 50:18know, somebody's presented on a topic and then you see them a
- 50:21little later, feel free to go and gently start asking them
- 50:25some questions. I recommend not doing that
- 50:27immediately as they come off stage, right?
- 50:29Give people a chance to breathe. It can be nerve wracking to
- 50:33present to an audience of your peers, even if you do it
- 50:36frequently, standing up in front of a couple 100 people in a room
- 50:40and, and talking about, you know, a, a, a subject that you
- 50:42know, inside out, but you know that there are people in that
- 50:45audience who, who probably know it as well.
- 50:47It's, it's nerve wracking. And I have a huge amount of
- 50:49respect for everybody that that helps to, to do that every year.
- 50:54So give people a moment right as they come off stage, but go and
- 50:58have those conversations. And, and as you say, there are a
- 51:00number of things that that we do at the event and that CRA, you
- 51:05know, helps to put on around the event to help with that.
- 51:08Lots of networking opportunities, lots of stuff
- 51:11going on in the Expo hall, you know, some of which is is put on
- 51:15by the sponsors as well. We will have at the very
- 51:19beginning of the week, as we always do, we'll have a session
- 51:23specifically for, for newcomers, really recommend that folks go
- 51:27to that, especially if it's their, if it's their first time.
- 51:30Lots of really good information about how to navigate the week.
- 51:34And there's a number of other kind of community oriented
- 51:38things that are happening, you know, through through the course
- 51:41of the week. Heather, I know you've got a
- 51:42couple that that you're picking up as well.
- 51:44So. Yep, there's a woman at
- 51:47identiver side meeting on Tuesday.
- 51:51It's actually open to anyone, but that's from like 2:00 to
- 51:545:00 and has some interesting panels and discussions that will
- 51:59be happening. The the hallway conversations
- 52:02are great. And one of the reasons I like
- 52:03the sessions is because that helps you identify, you know, 30
- 52:08to 100 other people that were interested in the same thing.
- 52:10And maybe you don't want to like leap on the poor speaker as they
- 52:13come off the stage, but you'll look at, well, who was actually
- 52:15asking questions in the audience.
- 52:16Those are people you can go talk to.
- 52:18I will say in terms of how AI has impacted the events
- 52:22industry, though, is if I was queen of the universe, I am
- 52:25absolutely going to limit how many proposals any one person
- 52:29can submit because it got crazy pants.
- 52:33And you could tell it's like one person I think was close to 20
- 52:36submissions. And I'm, I'm very, you know, I'm
- 52:40grateful that they were that engaged and that interested.
- 52:42And but for the love of Pete, could you focus?
- 52:46You should have. Just accepted them all.
- 52:49Yes, and then? You would have to talk in
- 52:51parallel. Yeah, just malicious.
- 52:54Compliance. I love it.
- 52:57So one person submitted 20 different talks all on AI or
- 53:01different no. But you could tell that they
- 53:02were he used AI to help them generate the proposal.
- 53:05That's that's the part that I I see most immediately is how how
- 53:10AI is is helping with with people submitting to the CFP.
- 53:15Well, the answer to AI is more AI.
- 53:17So you you know you've got AI submitting proposals, now you
- 53:20need an AI to judge and remove. Proposals.
- 53:23So we, we don't have time to get on this because I suspect that
- 53:27Heather and I are going to share a soapbox at this point.
- 53:29But just very briefly, how irritating is it that, you know,
- 53:34because most LLMS are trained on a volume of literature and high
- 53:39quality writing, that we're now using high quality writing as
- 53:45the thing to tell us if it was written by AI, right?
- 53:48Like there's a reason the M dash exists and some of us have been
- 53:52using it for a really long time. Likewise the semi colon.
- 53:55Likewise, long words and complicated sentence
- 53:58constructions that never seem to get to the end like this one.
- 54:02There's a reason those things exist.
- 54:03They exist in academic literature, and some of us can
- 54:05do that. Anyway, I'll get off my little
- 54:08soapbox now. The answer now is.
- 54:11There are studies, I think, like the.
- 54:12Instruction. Set.
- 54:13That's like, you know, but there are obviously.
- 54:15Make mine, you know, have misspellings or you know,
- 54:18occasional improper gram no. Give me the soapbox.
- 54:21I want it. OK, there, there there are
- 54:23actually studies now about how the fact that AI has this
- 54:28pattern of language is impacting how people are speaking and
- 54:31writing. It's, you know, there, there is
- 54:34only a brief window where we can look at something and go, OK, so
- 54:37obviously AI because people are adapting to AI at least as much
- 54:43as AI is adapting to what people say.
- 54:45Which you're absolutely right, Heather, I should have picked up
- 54:48on that. And I will take that into
- 54:49consideration of my next question.
- 54:54All right, let's start to close out because we're running a
- 54:56little bit long, but I want to talk about not this year, but
- 54:59next year. Are there any sneak peeks or
- 55:03ideas that you think of topics? And Heather, I'll start with you
- 55:07of things that you think are going to be topics of
- 55:10conversation at next year's Identiverse.
- 55:12Time to put on that hat that says here's the future.
- 55:15Well, I am going to come back to the topic of fraud.
- 55:18I definitely want to to see that in there.
- 55:23I know people want to hear about AI.
- 55:26We'll I'll think about ways to make that more specific.
- 55:31I do think I'm going to pull apart right now.
- 55:33We have consumer, citizen and customer in one track.
- 55:38We might start pulling that apart because I think that's
- 55:41there. There's now certainly enough
- 55:43interesting stuff happening in the government space that it may
- 55:45need its own dedicated area of conversation.
- 55:50It's going to be I'm, I'm, I'm willing to bet it's going to be
- 55:53a bigger event next year. So we're going to probably have
- 55:57more more tracks as a result because there is more to say in
- 56:00the space. Andy, what do you think?
- 56:01I agree. With all of that, including the,
- 56:04it's going to be a bigger event. I mean, look, we're going to be
- 56:06close on 4000 people this year. We're going to be close on 200
- 56:10sponsors and, and supporters. And I mean, it's, it's really
- 56:14big and it's just going to get bigger because the industry and
- 56:17the profession is getting bigger because identity is so
- 56:19fundamental to everything that happens.
- 56:22I don't want to get, you know, too far ahead of of where I
- 56:25think we might be heading directionally, but I mentioned
- 56:30it, you know, kind of at the top of the the conversation or at
- 56:34least near to it. This the the importance of how
- 56:41we continue to think about the user experience, I think is
- 56:45something that that is increasingly important and gets
- 56:52progressively less solid coverage.
- 56:56And I think there's a lot to think about there, particularly
- 57:00as we start to, you know, to design around a bunch of non
- 57:05human actors, right? And as you start to think about
- 57:10continuous architecture and and where do you know, wallets and
- 57:14verifiable credentials and other credential types fit into all of
- 57:18that, there are a bunch of really big questions to start
- 57:21asking. Some of them have good answers
- 57:23already, some of them don't. But I do think that that that
- 57:28feels to me like a direction the industry needs to needs to have
- 57:31in mind at least. And I should have prefaced this
- 57:34by saying this is all highly speculative, right?
- 57:36It may very well be that you ask me this question again, you
- 57:39know, come the end of Ideniverse and I'll be like, no, Jeff, no,
- 57:42we're going to talk about something completely that isn't
- 57:44this. We're going to, we're going to,
- 57:46oh, I don't know, let's think of something really outlandish.
- 57:50We're going to start talking about the use of Prologue in
- 57:53building identity systems. I think that's unlikely, by the
- 57:56way, but you know. I thought you were going to
- 57:59mention like, oh, the password is dead again for like the 40th
- 58:02year in a row. So if we had to come up with a
- 58:07theme for a theme song for Identiverse, what would you
- 58:11pick? I've asked this question a
- 58:12couple times from some kind of recent events like Identity
- 58:15Management Day and and things like that.
- 58:17Andy, let me start with you. What is the What is your theme
- 58:20song for Idaniverse 2026? I, I, I had a whole thought
- 58:24process here, so you're just going to have to give me a
- 58:26minute, right? So I started out with so you
- 58:29know, the the theme tune from 2001, a Space Odyssey, right,
- 58:32which is Azush Path just that big, you know, kind of thing,
- 58:36which which there's a there's a point in the event planning
- 58:38cycle where it really feels like done, done, done like that,
- 58:41right? Then I'm like, OK, but we're
- 58:43also in this really complicated bit where there's a lot to
- 58:45organize. And so maybe some kind of really
- 58:47avant-garde, conceptual jazz thing.
- 58:49Most of those songs don't have real titles.
- 58:51They're just things in their own right.
- 58:53Right. Then Heather mentioned earlier
- 58:56on when we were talking, she said about, you know, the the
- 59:00biometrics and deepfakes. And I remember there's a
- 59:02brilliant Weird Al Yankovic song.
- 59:04I think I'm a clone now, which struck me as potentially
- 59:08appropriate. Hema had kind of went to Queen.
- 59:11You know, the show must go on. But where I landed, where I
- 59:15landed was Robbie Williams. Let me entertain you because
- 59:18that's really what it's about. That's a good one, Heather.
- 59:20You got one I. Do, and it's funny, I think Andy
- 59:23and I's thought processes started about the same way and
- 59:26then just went spring for me. I I'm choosing Bohemian Rhapsody
- 59:33Queen because the sheer level of, of orchestration and
- 59:37excitement and complexity and and whatnot that come together
- 59:41to make that song just an amazing classic is what I like
- 59:45to see out of idenomers. And everybody loves that song.
- 59:48I don't know if anybody does not like that.
- 59:50If they don't like it, they're probably not my people, so.
- 59:53True. And you know what?
- 59:54And I, and I'm, I support that as well.
- 59:56If you're not a Bohemian Rhapsody fan, also you're
- 59:59probably not my people. So I'm with you either.
- 1:00:01Jim, what's what's your song of choice?
- 1:00:04I'm going to go a little bit further back.
- 1:00:05So Beach Boys, I get around and you know, that song goes round,
- 1:00:11round get around. I get around and basically those
- 1:00:14are the lyrics for almost the entire song.
- 1:00:16But there are a couple verses. So I'm going to read you one of
- 1:00:19the verses. I'm getting bug driving up and
- 1:00:22down the same old strip, you know, Las Vegas Strip.
- 1:00:27I got to find a new place where the kids are hip, Itenna versus
- 1:00:31where the kids are hip. My buddies and me are getting
- 1:00:34real well known. Yeah, the bad guys know us, and
- 1:00:39they leave us alone. That's very aspirational, Jim.
- 1:00:44I like it you. Know I'm I'm glad you said that
- 1:00:49one because a couple things one that's a great song choice 2 I
- 1:00:52now have yet another clip of you kind of singing that I can add
- 1:00:55to my you know reel of of things that I can use to, you know
- 1:00:59slightly embarrass you and but also promote your singing
- 1:01:02talent, which is very good by the way I.
- 1:01:04Wish we didn't have to worry about strikes because then you
- 1:01:06could do like an outro of like the the real version of the song
- 1:01:10playing. And people are like, Oh my God,
- 1:01:12Jim, you are so bad. But I think everyone knows that
- 1:01:14song, almost everyone. And they're probably like, Oh my
- 1:01:17God, Jim, you are so bad. Denise's brother was at our
- 1:01:21house not that long ago, and he's like, Denise and he were in
- 1:01:27the basement and he heard me singing something.
- 1:01:29He's like, what's going on? She's like, oh, Jim is singing.
- 1:01:33He's like, that's how he sings. So there you go, Jeff, what's
- 1:01:37your song? I you know, I took it I can't be
- 1:01:41serious about any of these stuff that we typically do in kind of
- 1:01:43like our lighter notes. So mine is You can't touch this
- 1:01:45by MC Hammer. Yeah, it has a little bit of a,
- 1:01:48you know, security, you know, identity Ting to it.
- 1:01:51But yeah, you can't touch this. Can't go wrong with that.
- 1:01:54Again, great song. And if you don't like that song,
- 1:01:56you're probably not one of my people either.
- 1:01:57So I'm you can't touch this and Bohemian Rhapsody.
- 1:02:00I'm I'm with you on both of those things.
- 1:02:03So I think that's a good spot. You know, we'll you know, we'll
- 1:02:08think of other songs. I'm sure I'm sure if other
- 1:02:09people have their own songs, you know, Hey, let's pick up on, you
- 1:02:12know, Jim's challenge to put more comments on the YouTube.
- 1:02:14So you know, what are your theme songs for the universe?
- 1:02:17Either put it here on YouTube or put on the LinkedIn post, you
- 1:02:19know, whenever this goes live, right, Things like that.
- 1:02:20So, so this is one of my favorite conferences to attend
- 1:02:24of the year. And you know, I will throw in a
- 1:02:25plug, right? One of the many sessions that'll
- 1:02:27be out there. If you're not in a session, you
- 1:02:28know, come see us in the Expo hall floor.
- 1:02:30We'll be recording some podcasts, but we're also doing
- 1:02:32our majority rules game show. And if you've been fortunate
- 1:02:35enough to be part of that, you know how much fun that could be
- 1:02:37for the audience. And we'll have some great
- 1:02:39prizes, I think, for that as well, too.
- 1:02:41So hopefully you come check it out.
- 1:02:42I don't know when exactly it's going to take place, but you
- 1:02:45know, we'll be there doing that. I want to ask you real quickly,
- 1:02:49Heather, because we're kind of running short in time.
- 1:02:51You do a lot of work around a lot of conferences.
- 1:02:54I think you said something like 40% of your year is like
- 1:02:57attending these things. How do you keep track of that
- 1:03:00and tell me more? I know how you do because that's
- 1:03:02going to set you up for the website that you got on GitHub.
- 1:03:05So anyone who knows who's going to laugh about what I'm going to
- 1:03:07say, how do I do that? I have a list.
- 1:03:12I love lists. Lists are the best thing that
- 1:03:14humanity has ever invented. And but this particular list
- 1:03:18I've been keeping since 2023. It's actually on GitHub.
- 1:03:22One of the community groups that I run in the W3C asked me that
- 1:03:27question back in like 2023. Wait, you keep going to these
- 1:03:30events and we only just hear about them at the last minute?
- 1:03:33Could you, could you write them down?
- 1:03:35And thus I started tracking all of the identity and identity
- 1:03:39adjacent conferences that I was aware of that were more than,
- 1:03:43you know, a day. So they had to be at least two
- 1:03:45days and weren't vendor conferences.
- 1:03:47So they weren't like the Amazon or the sale point or Octane or
- 1:03:51anything like that. They actually, you know, at
- 1:03:52least some level of vendor neutrality and two days or more
- 1:03:57anywhere in the world. English doesn't have to be the
- 1:03:59main spoken language, though. That tends to be what I hear
- 1:04:02about. So I have that list and I think
- 1:04:04we're going to put it in the show notes.
- 1:04:05And I've already started populating 2027.
- 1:04:08There's over a dozen conferences listed there for next year
- 1:04:11already. There is something in the world
- 1:04:13for everybody to attend. I feel like it's such a great
- 1:04:16list. I've used it in the past.
- 1:04:17Definitely have a link in our show notes.
- 1:04:19It's a very long GitHub link. And so I feel like there's an
- 1:04:22opportunity to do like a, you know, a short URL something or
- 1:04:25anything and just kind of directed at that.
- 1:04:27I don't know, that might make it easier.
- 1:04:29Maybe put it on, you know, your website for spherical cow or
- 1:04:32something like that. I.
- 1:04:32Could put it next to. So I have the I have on my
- 1:04:34website is the where am I going to speak, which is not the full
- 1:04:37list because I can only be in one place at one time.
- 1:04:41But I may put the just a a point or two.
- 1:04:44OK, but where is the actual full list that I'm aware of so.
- 1:04:47With all these conferences, is there like, do you even pick up
- 1:04:50like swag items anymore or is it like, I'm not going to grab that
- 1:04:54and it will, you know, do something else and like, OK, Or
- 1:04:58is there like something you seek out for everything?
- 1:05:00OK, so mostly, so I have, I live in a very small house and I have
- 1:05:05a rule that something can't come into the house unless I know how
- 1:05:09it's getting out of the house. So I have to know how to dispose
- 1:05:12of it and I have to know where I'm going to put it.
- 1:05:14So I can tell you right now, no more T-shirts.
- 1:05:17I have got no room for T-shirts. The T-shirt drawer is full and
- 1:05:20we're done. I will potentially bring in
- 1:05:23socks because you wear through socks and then you get rid of
- 1:05:25them. But I'm, I want them to be
- 1:05:27really good socks because I get very cold feet and anything else
- 1:05:31like fidget spinners. Why, why does a fidget spinner
- 1:05:33exist? I don't know.
- 1:05:34I don't need it. I was tempted by some of the
- 1:05:38interesting coffee paraphernalia, but otherwise,
- 1:05:43Matt it it's it's very much about what do I even have room
- 1:05:47for at this point and is it really, really interesting?
- 1:05:49Well, it. Has to be somewhat packable too,
- 1:05:51right? You can't like.
- 1:05:53Well, yes and no. I mean, I'm one of those people
- 1:05:57that I actually do always have to check a bag because since
- 1:05:59I've got some food allergies, I'm always packing food in.
- 1:06:02And if I'm going to pack food in, I may as well pack a bottle
- 1:06:04of whiskey or something. So.
- 1:06:06So I usually have a checked bag and that's fine.
- 1:06:08A. Checked bag just for the
- 1:06:09whiskey. I love that that's that's but.
- 1:06:11Heather Also, not just whiskey, it's got to be Scotch, right?
- 1:06:14Yes, it does have to be Scotch for me.
- 1:06:16We. Had this discussion in the past.
- 1:06:19Yeah, I'm not a fan of bourbon. Just not.
- 1:06:23I'm not. Agreeing with you or anything,
- 1:06:24I'm just specifying yes you like a good PT.
- 1:06:29Scotch. I, well, no, I'm actually open
- 1:06:32minded. I like both peated and not
- 1:06:33peated. For me it's more a question of
- 1:06:35like when are you drinking it in, in, in the day, 'cause I'm
- 1:06:39not going to start a day with peated Scotch.
- 1:06:40That's just, that's just a little too, too much.
- 1:06:42Not going to have 1/5 of Scotch to start the day at IG.
- 1:06:45Universe not. To start the day.
- 1:06:47But, you know, ask me at noon on Thursday.
- 1:06:51It's Vegas. How do you define start and end?
- 1:06:54Right Time is like a meaningless construct in the in the
- 1:06:56Constitution of Vegas. That.
- 1:06:58So that's fair. But in the context of identity
- 1:07:00verse, and especially where we've got mainstage
- 1:07:02responsibilities, the start is about two hours before mainstage
- 1:07:06opens and the end is when I go to bed at the end of the day.
- 1:07:09Andy, do you, are you a sweat guy?
- 1:07:10Like, do you pick up stuff? Are there things that like
- 1:07:12you're like, yeah, I've seen enough of that?
- 1:07:14Or is there something you seek out?
- 1:07:15I know socks are popular, Heather.
- 1:07:17I get it like that. So the honest answer is no, but
- 1:07:21some, some of that is just circumstantial, right?
- 1:07:23Like as you say, I've been to enough of these things.
- 1:07:25It's like, hey, look, it's another thing to put some liquid
- 1:07:28in or another travel adapter that will break after three
- 1:07:31days. Or, you know, finding a thing
- 1:07:33that that is, that actually genuinely has value over time
- 1:07:36and is useful that I don't already have is, is kind of
- 1:07:40hard. There's also practical reality
- 1:07:42though, too, which is I, particularly at Identiverse, but
- 1:07:45actually at most of the other conferences that I go to as
- 1:07:48well, I don't get to the show floor very much right.
- 1:07:52I'm usually busy doing other stuff and so I usually by the
- 1:07:56time I get there, it's the end of the week and all the stuff's
- 1:07:57gone anyways. My kids are unimpressed, but
- 1:08:00they're also old enough now to, you know, just get over it.
- 1:08:03So. I feel like there's an
- 1:08:05opportunity here to like, you know, have like some sort of
- 1:08:07like little mini shrine of like gifts from vendors or prep room
- 1:08:10or something like that for all the people who can't get out
- 1:08:13there. It's like, hey, you know, like
- 1:08:14that's maybe that maybe it's illegal.
- 1:08:16I don't know. I don't want to like get anyone
- 1:08:17in trouble, but like, why not? Is that a problem Andy?
- 1:08:23Like if I, if I. Just encourage most of people to
- 1:08:26do the wrong thing. So I, I, I think no, I'm.
- 1:08:29Sure you didn't. I think if it were organized,
- 1:08:32then actually it could be a really smart thing.
- 1:08:34And I was. The reason I went quiet is I was
- 1:08:36making a note to to mention it to somebody because I think it's
- 1:08:40a really smart idea. But programmatically, right.
- 1:08:43Like I think you want to organize that rather than just
- 1:08:45have it kind of grown a style. But yeah, let's make it like,
- 1:08:48you know, like the Oscars or the Emmys.
- 1:08:50The. Emmys, like where you have like
- 1:08:51a gift bag and it's like, instead of like, you know, you
- 1:08:54know, perfume and chocolates and like other things, it's like,
- 1:08:57oh, here is a discount code for six months of free sass
- 1:09:01something or other, right? Yeah, I think that would be kind
- 1:09:04of a cool idea. I mean we try and get people to
- 1:09:06the speaker ready room at least. Once to review their stuff, we
- 1:09:09can have a lovely little altar of things.
- 1:09:13Just sort of encourage them. We'll donate a sticker for IDAC,
- 1:09:16how about that? Jim, I mean, we've been doing
- 1:09:19the stickers for a long time now.
- 1:09:20Jeff, I think. Maybe we should update our IDAC
- 1:09:24approach to swag. Maybe.
- 1:09:27Maybe we need IDC socks. I don't know.
- 1:09:30But what I would like to do right is put the challenge out
- 1:09:33there for folks to comment on the YouTube video and let us
- 1:09:39know what IDAC swag they would like.
- 1:09:43Me personally, I usually go for the socks.
- 1:09:46I always figure even if I wear them once or twice and throw
- 1:09:48them away, which I usually don't, as long as they're
- 1:09:51holding up. The thing that I don't really
- 1:09:54like is like, you go by a vendor booth and they've got like the
- 1:09:58Death Star Lego set and I'm like, oh, I want that so bad.
- 1:10:02But you know, it's like I'm not going to buy their product and
- 1:10:06like, you know, don't feel appropriate even signing up for
- 1:10:09the contest to win that thing. So I'll just let that go and
- 1:10:13take the socks. You know, somebody has to pack
- 1:10:15up all that stuff. And so the more that the vendors
- 1:10:18can give away, the better. You know, there's times where
- 1:10:20it's like, OK, well I have like 500 or something, right?
- 1:10:23And it's like you gave away maybe 300, but you still have
- 1:10:26like 2 boxes full of like stuff. And don't don't ever feel bad
- 1:10:30about going to the vendors, you know, check them out whatever,
- 1:10:33right that, you know, definitely want to do that, but never feel
- 1:10:35bad about grabbing swag because I find a lot of stuff in
- 1:10:39dumpsters and in carbage afterwards.
- 1:10:42If people don't take it, it sometimes it just goes to waste,
- 1:10:44which is a real shame. If you think you're going to put
- 1:10:46it at use, go for it. Grab it, grab, grab the 48th,
- 1:10:49you know, USB to lightning adapter that we will no longer
- 1:10:52need in, you know, three months, you know, for all the people who
- 1:10:55switched over, you know that port on their iPhones, you know
- 1:10:57that kind of thing. That reminds me of a story.
- 1:11:00So the one of the firms. That you and I worked out
- 1:11:02together called Identropy. One year Jeff Chang was
- 1:11:06responsible for coming up with the swag.
- 1:11:09He bought 500 of these. Basically they were like long
- 1:11:13term Solo cups. They look like a regular solo
- 1:11:16cup, but they could be washing the dishwasher, whatever.
- 1:11:20I think we gave away like 3 of them and at the end I was like,
- 1:11:24well, what do we do with these other 497 Solo cups?
- 1:11:27The guy don't know. I'm not taking them home.
- 1:11:29You can throw them out. I can't throw them out.
- 1:11:31That's not the way I was raised. So I had them shipped back to my
- 1:11:35house, dude. I kept them in my garage.
- 1:11:37I probably use like 7 of them eventually like 15 years later
- 1:11:42throughout the other 490 Solo cups.
- 1:11:46That was a man if you have red. Solo cups, just go to the
- 1:11:49nearest, you know, university fraternity and hand them out.
- 1:11:52They would love that. They weren't the red, they were
- 1:11:55orange, right? Identity Orange, which were
- 1:11:57great. They were.
- 1:11:57Like very like they're still they.
- 1:11:59They would have loved that guarantee.
- 1:12:02Yeah, I should have talked to you. 1st but I didn't I was just
- 1:12:05had to clear. I had to clean out my garage and
- 1:12:07I was like sorry. Guys.
- 1:12:09Or it's time to I tried. I had my heart was in the right
- 1:12:13place. Then I had to clean my garage
- 1:12:16and then, well, you know, and your heart was no longer in the
- 1:12:19right. Place it was no longer in the
- 1:12:20right. Place.
- 1:12:23All right, let's go. Ahead and wrap it up for this
- 1:12:24week. I'm looking forward to see you
- 1:12:26both here at Identiverse. That's going to be a lot of fun.
- 1:12:29And let's see what else? A bunch of links in our show
- 1:12:31notes, probably to to collect the Identiverse link, our
- 1:12:34discounts, our Linkedins for all of us, the Heather.
- 1:12:39Does this have a name other than just like?
- 1:12:44Yeah, it's it. But it as you said.
- 1:12:46It's a pretty long. Name.
- 1:12:47It's the 2027 list of identity and related conferences and
- 1:12:51standard development events. OK, we need we need some AI to
- 1:12:55help with the. Marketing app, now I have a link
- 1:12:57for that in our show notes as well for people to check out.
- 1:12:59I use it. Thank you so much for putting it
- 1:13:00together. It's very handy for me, you
- 1:13:02know, to kind of figure out, OK, like what do we have going on
- 1:13:04and what are the ones that I can try to get to and things like
- 1:13:06that. But definitely appreciate both
- 1:13:08you guys time. We'll go ahead and leave it
- 1:13:10there for this week. Thanks everyone for watching and
- 1:13:13listening. We'll see you at Identiverse and
- 1:13:15talk with you all on the next one.
- 1:13:18You've been listening to Identity at the.
- 1:13:20Center, we hope you've enjoyed the show.
- 1:13:23Make sure to like rate and review and we'll be back soon.
- 1:13:28But in the meantime, hit the website at
- 1:13:30identity@thecenter.com. See you next time on Identity at
- 1:13:36the Center.