Latest / Identity at the Center / #400 - Celebrating 400 episodes of IDAC

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#400 - Celebrating 400 episodes of IDAC · Identity at the Center

• 0:05
  This is identity at the center. Welcome to the Identity at the
• 0:11
  Center podcast. I'm Jeff, and that's Jim.
• 0:12
  Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
• 0:15
  Oh, not so bad yourself. Happy anniversary. 400 episodes
• 0:22
  of Identity at the Center. Pretty crazy.
• 0:25
  That's 400. I wouldn't say 400 weeks, right?
• 0:29
  It's probably close. So, I mean, there were a lot of
• 0:33
  weeks where we did more than one episode, but it 6 1/2 years, 400
• 0:38
  episodes, I think we're ahead of pace.
• 0:41
  Yeah, it's been a crazy wild ride.
• 0:45
  Yeah, I think we're we're going to do today is kind of talk
• 0:47
  about that journey that the podcast has been on and the
• 0:49
  growth we've seen and then maybe talk through like some trends.
• 0:51
  But I guess to kick down the 4th wall that we that I like to do
• 0:55
  at least is this is actually the first episode you and I are
• 0:58
  recording together. That is like a non sponsored
• 1:01
  thing in the year 2026. So we had some episodes that
• 1:04
  were recorded in December while we were at Gartner.
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  We did the majority things majority rules game show with
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  Becky there, which was awesome. And Gartner let us release it,
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  which is even more amazing. So there's proof that we were
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  there and yeah, here we are. Look, it's.
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  But it's, I guess when this goes on, it'll be what, February
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  something? Happy New Year.
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  Merry Christmas. How was your holiday break?
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  All that stuff. It's good, you know, and I've
• 1:28
  got a few New Year's resolutions that probably should kind of
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  been the kind of person who doesn't do New Year's
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  resolutions. There's been something that's
• 1:39
  been eating at me for a while, which is I wanted to write a
• 1:42
  book about identity. And the more I thought about it,
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  I didn't want to write just another identity book, which I
• 1:50
  don't even know what's happening, right.
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  But I looked at it like a, a book that a lot of people would
• 1:56
  write, say like an Eve Mailer would write.
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  It's like, I can't do that. I can't like that's not even if
• 2:02
  I wanted to do that, I couldn't do it.
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  But I do feel like I've got a creative mind and I've got a lot
• 2:08
  of experience doing identity over the past 20 years.
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  And so I, I'm writing a book of short stories from the lens of
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  identity practitioners doing identity stuff in the trenches.
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  And what I'm doing is kind of a mix of telling the identity
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  story, but also telling the story a little bit about the
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  people and the interactions and like what's happening to them.
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  So I don't want to give too much away.
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  And the book's not really written yet, but I've made
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  tremendous progress on It's going to happen here in 2026.
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  How many pictures can I expect in it?
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  I don't know really. It's not, it's not a
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  kindergarten or under book. No, it's.
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  It might not have any pictures. OK.
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  Well when you when you let me know about this a couple days
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  ago, I kind of mentioned it sound a little bit like kind of
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  like the Phoenix project. Was that a fair kind of
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  comparison or? I mean, yeah, that's, you know,
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  a lot of first hand, first hand accounts of things that have
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  already happened. So that's kind of the point of
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  view of the storyteller. One thing that I'm doing is
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  trying to trade off between mentor and a mentee or an
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  advisor and advisee situation. So run through like a scenario
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  where a breach has recently taken place and somebody, two
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  people who were involved in the breach in some way.
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  But somebody who has kind of more perspective of having, you
• 3:45
  know, a 30 year career and, you know, looking at it differently
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  than the person who maybe was on the front lines and is more
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  early career and like thinking like, great, I was on the fast
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  track and all of a sudden like I'd blown it.
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  So that's just an example of one story.
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  There's another story I'm working on where the setting is
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  they are preparing for, you know, I don't say the Olympic
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  Games, I just say the games. But if that like that kind of
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  setting is like a major event where the whole world has
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  eyeballs on this thing. And could you imagine being
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  responsible for the identity roll out, maybe the biometrics,
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  the idea of like taking some kind of cutting edge
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  technologies like using biometrics for making purchases
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  and entering at the gate, like things that have been done, but
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  doing it at that kind of scale. So a lot of cool backdrops for
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  these stories, but then I also tried to weave in, you know, a
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  little bit of education. So it's kind of like this
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  podcast, right? We always think of ourselves as
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  like edutainment, like partially education, partially
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  entertainment. And so the idea we find the book
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  is really the same kind of approach.
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  So take me through your process here because Jim, I love you,
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  man. You're one of my best friends.
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  But I've seen you type and based on what I know of your typing,
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  this book might come out in a decade, so.
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  That's a good point. Well, First off, I think my
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  typing has gotten a lot better and there's voice recognition
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  software that helps. But I mean, I'd be remiss I'd be
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  lying if I said I wasn't using AI for help.
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  You know my, my approach with using AI for the book, it's kind
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  of like I use AI for everything. I explain everything that's in
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  my head to the prompt to the AI and then it comes back with
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  ideas. And the one thing I, I am
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  critical of AI right now in the in 2026 is that it pretty much
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  agrees with everything I say. Every idea I have is like the
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  most awesome idea that's ever been heard.
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  I should say that's that's what happens like 99% of the time.
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  Sometimes it does give me some feedback, which is good critical
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  feedback, but it does a really good job of like, OK, with what
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  you've given me now I'm going to do my best to output this thing.
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  And then it's a lot more iterations than I expected.
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  I expected like, Hey, I, I gave you, you know, a full page of
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  like, here's my thought, right? And I'm looking for a A10 page
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  short story and then like how, how, how did you miss by that
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  much, right, So that there is a lot more corrective or it's kind
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  of like you're talking to another person.
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  Obviously, I think most people who are listening to this
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  podcast have done enough AI don't know what I'm talking
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  about, right. It's just a back and forth and I
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  don't know, Jeff, I think it's just like so entertaining for me
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  to go through this process. That's been the biggest surprise
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  so far is that I kind of had this idea for a long time and I
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  kept putting it off. Kept putting it off because I
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  thought it was going to be kind of dreadful to sit there and
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  write a book. Like, who the heck wants to
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  write 100 pages of anything? Well, the approach in using AI
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  has been a lot of fun. It sounds interesting.
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  Are you going to do an audiobook version of it, be you, you know,
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  speaking into the microphone, reading, you know, being the
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  characters in it and the different voices?
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  Because that I would pay extra for that.
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  I think the only way I wind up doing an audiobook is is with
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  AI. So in other words, I'll teach
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  you on my voice. Now you read the thing.
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  But if it sounds too mechanical or too robotic, that wouldn't
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  work. I have another friend who
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  published a book recently, put it on Amazon.
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  So I'm going to learn a lot from him in terms of like, how did he
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  approach that? But you know, you can self
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  publish books now without, you know, having to, to get a
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  contract or anything. And you know, I, I think this
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  will be popular within our circle, like the identity
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  practitioner circle, but I don't see this being New York Times
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  bestseller. You never know, you know, get it
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  out. Maybe you want to sponsor an
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  episode of the podcast and, you know, promote the book, things
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  like that. Well, hopefully I don't have to
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  sponsor we'll. Take it under consideration, you
• 8:28
  know, I'll talk with management. Yeah, right.
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  There you go. That's pretty exciting though,
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  writing a book. So that's a New Year's
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  resolution. Is that mean?
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  Then sometime this year is you're thinking you'll be done
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  with it and kind of like out there for people to to enjoy.
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  My goal is by one of the conferences this summer to say
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  it's launched, maybe to even have a few printed copies
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  available that, you know, people are interested in buying it.
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  I'm assuming it's going to cost me enough money to produce it
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  that I'm not just going to want to give them away, but we'll
• 9:02
  see. You know, I'd like to be able to
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  give them away, but that's kind of the timing that I'm thinking
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  about is like you know around the conferences May, June time
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  frame. Yeah.
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  So we'll have EIC in Berlin in May and then Ideniverse in Las
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  Vegas in June, can turn our podcasts recordings that we do
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  there into slash book signing for you, Jim.
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  Exactly. Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'll maybe I'll
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  have to get a little booth or something, but I don't think
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  it's going to be that popular a line out the door.
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  You know, the, I think the, the way we went, like we're sitting
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  here today at like 1.5 million downloads, which is mind
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  blowing, mind blowing that our podcast people have listened to
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  us that many times. And we do LinkedIn.
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  We have to do really for the most part any other social
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  media. We tried like X for a while.
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  We tried blue. Sky and Instagram, it's just.
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  Too much one that people got sick of X, right?
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  They got sick of Elon. So then everybody went over to
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  this other one, Blue. Sky or Mastodon?
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  Yeah, Mastodon. Mastodon was one, yeah, which is
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  another decentralized, you know, thing.
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  I think blue Sky's kind of taken over kind of that role, but it's
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  just too much, man. I can't keep up with it.
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  So it's LinkedIn and YouTube and, you know, the podcast
• 10:27
  platform and, and the audience. What I was going to say is it's
• 10:29
  been word of mouth. I mean, I think that's the
• 10:32
  biggest thing is word of mouth and people telling people.
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  So if you're listening, I think probably other than listening
• 10:41
  we, which we highly appreciate, if there's something you want to
• 10:44
  do to help the podcast, it's tell a friend, you know, or as
• 10:48
  Jeff likes to say, at the end of episodes, tell a friend, tell an
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  enemy. We don't care as long as they
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  listen. Right, exactly so I think.
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  The book is going to spread that way too.
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  I mean, that would be a science success.
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  That'd be a, that'd be a nice, a nice little bonus for it.
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  One in one and a half million downloads to date.
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  We've been doing this for, you know, it's called almost seven
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  years. You know, kind of July, June,
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  July is sort of like our birthday kind of officially.
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  I was looking back over the stats and in 2019 we put out 26
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  episodes for a total of 2374 downloads with an average
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  download per episode of 91. And I'm pretty sure I was
• 11:29
  probably 80 or 90 of those making sure things were working
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  and try some of that. And yeah, it's just been growth
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  since there last year alone. This is absolutely mind
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  boggling. We did almost 1,000,000
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  downloads just in 2025. It's crazy.
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  It's really crazy. Yeah.
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  So thank you so much to everyone who is like supported.
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  You know, there's a ton of, you know, listeners and super fans
• 11:53
  and folks that we meet at conferences and we kind of
• 11:55
  talked to like, OK, we name names as like, well, we're not,
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  are we going to miss somebody that we mean to include?
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  And so we just decided we'll just leave a general thank you
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  to everybody. I think people know who they are
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  and really appreciate it. And, you know, the conferences
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  have been a big, a big thing for us, you know, going to places
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  like Ideniverse and Gartner and Fido.
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  And I know now EIC for the first time last year and again, you
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  know, this year, I think that's where people have really kind of
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  discovered us. Because I'm always curious like,
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  hey, how did you hear about this thing?
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  Because, yeah, we don't do any advertising.
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  It's either me on LinkedIn posting a new episode or, you
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  know, maybe the out the YouTube algorithm, which we started
• 12:30
  video maybe was that about a year, a year and a half already
• 12:33
  now or maybe 2 years even, which is still growing, right?
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  We're still, that's still kind of our, our very, very much a
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  minority platform. 99% of the people who listen are listeners.
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  They don't really watch on YouTube, but that's probably
• 12:46
  better for their eyeballs. They don't have to see these
• 12:47
  faces. No, I I think it's the format is
• 12:52
  probably lends itself better to audio.
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  You know you're off for your walk or on the car ride to work.
• 12:58
  You just played the audio. I totally agree with you about
• 13:03
  not naming names because you're invariably going to leave
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  someone out. But there's one name I do want
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  to mention and it goes back to episode 7.
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  Probably know who I'm talking about.
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  Elise Almeida, dear friend of both of ours, passed away right
• 13:22
  after the the new year. Yeah, yeah, a lot of kind of
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  outpouring support on LinkedIn, I noticed.
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  And you know, we worked with him at Identropy a very long time
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  ago feels like. But we've all like that whole
• 13:35
  team has really kind of stayed together, right?
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  That's how you, Jim and I, you and I met were working through
• 13:40
  Identropy though. Elise was just awesome.
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  Yeah. And it's a shame that we've lost
• 13:45
  him so soon, but it it, it's nice to see the outpouring.
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  You just kind of wish it would happen while people were still.
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  Alive. I know, I know.
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  That's the truth. That's the truth.
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  And yeah, he's somebody that will always remember.
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  And like I said, he was on episode 7, episode 78 and
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  episode 164. So folks are interested in going
• 14:09
  out it by the way, in case you always you ever wonder like how
• 14:13
  do we remember what episodes specific people were on?
• 14:16
  Go to our website, idacpodcast.com.
• 14:20
  There's a tab for listen and there's a a search bar that
• 14:23
  works as good as any search for eyes.
• 14:25
  I mean, this thing's on the level of Google well.
• 14:30
  Let's not go crazy. It's very simple.
• 14:32
  Just type in a couple words that'll find anything in the
• 14:35
  description or the titles. Yeah, no, it's not.
• 14:38
  It's not at the Google level, but it is, it's pretty darn
• 14:41
  good. So you know, as having done IT
• 14:44
  projects for over 20 years, I remember some really bad search
• 14:49
  wars overtime, like if you misspell something, forget it.
• 14:53
  It was not finding it. Yeah, I can think of a couple of
• 14:57
  enterprise tools that you and I use in our day job.
• 15:00
  It's pretty much like that. That's just an absolute mess.
• 15:03
  And you'd think we would have that, you know, those types of
• 15:06
  solutions would have solved for that already.
• 15:08
  But clearly there is an area for improvement.
• 15:11
  Definitely. So how about your new year?
• 15:13
  I mean, how is it off to a good start?
• 15:17
  Yeah, I mean, after Gartner, I basically shut it down for for a
• 15:20
  few weeks, came home, adopted a puppy, though we now have Pepper
• 15:25
  joining our pack here. So now we are officially
• 15:27
  outnumbered again in the house, three dogs to two humans.
• 15:31
  We imported her from Tennessee, couple hours away.
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  My wife went and picked picked her up and brought her home.
• 15:37
  And that has basically consumed our entire life for the last I
• 15:42
  guess month and a half now. So I would like to say it was a
• 15:45
  fun and great Christmas kind of holiday, New Year break.
• 15:50
  But it was I do not feel rested because there was a lot of like,
• 15:54
  you know, one AM, 3:00 AM, five AM, 7:00 AM walk outside.
• 15:58
  Let's try to get the house, you know, the house breaking done
• 16:01
  and and things like that. But.
• 16:04
  Every once in a while, step in a pile of poop or what?
• 16:06
  Or a wet spot on the hardwood floor.
• 16:09
  Yeah, yeah. She's been pretty good, though.
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  So, you know, I think part of that is just us being diligent,
• 16:13
  you know, or a couple mistakes, you know, you're, you know, here
• 16:16
  and there. But I can tell you it was it was
• 16:18
  some days we got really lucky, sort of like when we first
• 16:21
  brought her home, because the weather here in in Asheville, NC
• 16:24
  was relatively mild. And so it wasn't too bad.
• 16:27
  And then, like, the freezing temps kind of came and, you
• 16:30
  know, they're, you know, when you're out at 3:00 in the
• 16:32
  morning, you know, in the side of a mountain, the wind is
• 16:36
  whipping. We had gusts here from thirty,
• 16:40
  3540 miles an hour. And that's whipping, you know,
• 16:43
  through. And it's cold.
• 16:45
  It's like, all right, do your business.
• 16:47
  We need to get inside. Like, this is not fun.
• 16:50
  But yeah, so far so good. You are quite the quite the dad.
• 16:56
  Well. That's, you know, those are our
• 16:58
  kids in our house, but. Yeah.
• 17:01
  So, yeah, one of the one of the things we talked about doing
• 17:05
  during this episode, we obviously wanted to talk about
• 17:08
  the conferences and just to let people know, because I think
• 17:12
  this is one of the things that kind of a service that we do and
• 17:16
  we've been doing it for a long time is we always ask the
• 17:20
  conferences to give us a conference discount code.
• 17:24
  It will publish, right? We don't ask them to pay us to
• 17:26
  do that or anything. We just do it as a service to
• 17:29
  our listeners. And we always insist, don't give
• 17:33
  us a discount code unless it's the best one because there was
• 17:36
  an instant, I'm not going to try to pinpoint who it was, give us
• 17:41
  a discount code. And then again e-mail a couple
• 17:43
  days later where it was like, oh, here's this other
• 17:47
  organizations discount code and it's, it was like 5% better than
• 17:52
  ours. I'm like, what the heck.
• 17:53
  We've been telling people here's a 20% and now here's a 25% that
• 17:57
  doesn't fly. So at least we get verbal
• 18:01
  guarantees that yes, these are going to be the best available.
• 18:06
  Yeah, and that's great for conferences like to want to
• 18:08
  partner with us and do that. I think, you know, we bring a
• 18:10
  lot of fun, I think to conferences.
• 18:12
  You know, we've done like our game show their majority rules
• 18:15
  couple places. You know, we Fido we do, you
• 18:17
  know, Fido few, which is a lot of fun.
• 18:19
  And you know, we try to do something different and try to
• 18:23
  make it more entertaining. And if we can somehow use that
• 18:25
  to save people money, awesome. Like that's, that's a win for
• 18:28
  everybody. Yeah, I also feel like, you
• 18:32
  know, the confidence attendance being there has helped people
• 18:36
  become aware of the show. And then I think, you know, it's
• 18:41
  it's been great for us. Like I love going there.
• 18:43
  I love recording episodes having a little bit of a different
• 18:46
  background, they're a little bit different environment.
• 18:49
  Plus you get a break from, you know, the day-to-day and you
• 18:53
  know, you can't. You get your guests are in the
• 18:55
  same position where they're not feeling the pressure of like
• 19:00
  check their e-mail box all the time.
• 19:02
  So yeah, I think the whole thing is fun.
• 19:05
  The other thing that we wanted to do is kind of like reflect on
• 19:09
  some of the the highlights that we've had over over the years.
• 19:12
  What are some of the best lessons learned you know,
• 19:16
  without putting a number on over the 400 episodes of interviewing
• 19:21
  What What's 1 of the things that you've learned about either
• 19:25
  being a guest? I feel like one of the things
• 19:27
  I've noticed about you, so I'm going to you don't have the
• 19:30
  answer. This way you can give whatever
• 19:31
  answer you want. One of the things I've I've seen
• 19:34
  about Jeff Steadman over 6 1/2 years, 400 episodes, is like,
• 19:38
  you've become the MC, like you just are good at that.
• 19:45
  I'm not saying you weren't good at it in the beginning, but
• 19:47
  you've definitely gotten better over time.
• 19:51
  Do you feel that? First of all, thank you.
• 19:54
  Checks in the mail. I will buy a book.
• 19:58
  Yeah, I think so. Look, it comes with like, you
• 20:00
  know, anything else that you practice and do enough.
• 20:04
  When we first started this podcast had no really public
• 20:08
  speaking experience and didn't really expect it to do.
• 20:10
  Anywhere near the numbers that we're doing now for sure.
• 20:12
  But I think you get more comfortable in front of it.
• 20:14
  I will say, you know, I've had people ask me, hey, why don't
• 20:16
  you present at a conference, right?
• 20:18
  Or something like that. I don't really want to do that.
• 20:21
  I'm much more comfortable being sort of like that MC or
• 20:25
  moderator type role or, you know, have a little fun things
• 20:28
  like that. So I don't think I have anything
• 20:30
  original to say or ground baking to like, oh, here's the next big
• 20:34
  thing and identity. Like, no, I want to have fun and
• 20:37
  entertain. And I think, you know, I've,
• 20:39
  I've had more practice on it. Am I perfect?
• 20:41
  No. But I think I'm good enough and
• 20:44
  I'm happy with that. And OK, anything else, I'll keep
• 20:46
  continuing, continuing to get better at it as I stumble over
• 20:49
  my words, you know, trying to say that stuff.
• 20:51
  Yeah. Look, you and I have done this
• 20:54
  400 times at least. You know, there is, you have
• 20:58
  thousands of hours at this point of audio.
• 21:01
  And so if you listen to Episode 1, it sounds like Episode 1, you
• 21:07
  listen to this episode, yeah, it's going to sound more
• 21:09
  polished, more natural. The quality is going to be
• 21:12
  better and, and pretty much every front, right, Things like
• 21:14
  that. The only way you get to that is
• 21:17
  by doing episodes 2 to 399. And really the same comes
• 21:23
  through like, you know, knowledge in any space, right?
• 21:25
  If you're a basketball player, you shoot free throws unless
• 21:27
  you're Shaq until until you're good at them, right?
• 21:30
  You know, if you're a quarterback, you're throwing
• 21:32
  balls in into, you know, tires and, you know, name the
• 21:35
  profession and identity is another one of those is like,
• 21:37
  you have to stay on top of it and keep doing it.
• 21:39
  And, you know, podcasting is no different.
• 21:42
  It's just presenting and, you know, just continuing to kind of
• 21:46
  develop your own voice. Yeah.
• 21:48
  So I was thinking one of the things I've learned about doing
• 21:53
  interviews and every once in awhile and like you said
• 21:55
  earlier, like you might come for the show, I might cover the show
• 22:00
  ideal scenarios where we're both here.
• 22:02
  But one of the things that I've learned is that I know it's not
• 22:06
  that I like to hear myself speak.
• 22:08
  It's just that I feel like, oh, I just said something now I need
• 22:12
  to explain what I just said. And then I say it and then I'm
• 22:14
  like, oh, further explanation. That's kind of like my natural
• 22:20
  way of being. But I found that sometimes it's
• 22:22
  better just to ask the open-ended question and then
• 22:25
  shut up, especially if the guest is kind of like able to, to work
• 22:31
  within that framework. And so I found being a, a good
• 22:34
  interviewer, sometimes just asking a question, then letting
• 22:38
  the person answer it. But I will say, so one of the
• 22:43
  things with the podcast is like, sometimes we have CE OS on,
• 22:47
  sometimes we have very technical people.
• 22:50
  And I think we we aim for some level of consistency, right?
• 22:55
  So I think we've gotten better at kind of organizing things and
• 22:59
  preparing our guests. Like, hey, a good answer goes
• 23:03
  something like 2 minutes, 2 to 3 minutes.
• 23:05
  And then, you know, let us ask some follow up questions and
• 23:09
  stuff like that. And it's knowing when to
• 23:12
  interrupt. And I think we both tried to
• 23:15
  avoid interrupting people, but sometimes you're, you're
• 23:18
  throwing them a lifeline by interrupting, right?
• 23:20
  Like they just are to the point where they're afraid to stop
• 23:25
  talking because then you're going to have that, that moment
• 23:29
  of silence where it's like an uncomfortable silence.
• 23:33
  I think that's a natural reaction is I think people think
• 23:35
  that, you know, you can't have dead air.
• 23:38
  And I think it goes back to like the radio days is like dead air
• 23:40
  is the enemy. I can't have that.
• 23:43
  Look, you know, people will talk, people have stories to
• 23:46
  share. I'm very, you know, fortunate to
• 23:48
  be able to have those conversations with all these
• 23:51
  people that we've met over the years.
• 23:52
  And you know, we again, I'll, I'll pull down the kick down the
• 23:56
  4th wall here. And I'm sure we have a lot of
• 23:57
  people listening who have been guests on this episode.
• 24:00
  They kind of know what the process is that we go through
• 24:02
  like do guest prep and kind of get things going.
• 24:05
  But you know, to that point of like long answers, one of the
• 24:08
  things on our, you know, prerecorded checklist is have
• 24:12
  something to drink nearby because I know you and, and you
• 24:15
  know, we have like 17 things on this checklist.
• 24:18
  I'm looking at it right now. And they are all there because
• 24:21
  of a real life thing that has happened.
• 24:23
  That's like, OK, we've got to like add that to our thing to
• 24:27
  make sure that, you know, not only us right as the people on
• 24:30
  the show, but anyone who comes on the show knows like we know
• 24:32
  what to expect. So I've seen the drink nearby
• 24:34
  because we've had situation where somebody talked for like 5
• 24:38
  minutes and you know, their throat was basically gone at the
• 24:42
  four minute mark and they just kind of kept plowing on through
• 24:45
  it rather than, you know, taking a break and allowing like the
• 24:48
  conversation to breathe and take a sip of water and stuff like
• 24:50
  that. So yeah, I think, I think being
• 24:53
  able to ask questions and let the person answer is, is super
• 24:58
  important for everybody. It's not just podcast, right?
• 25:00
  You're talking to anybody, you're asking that question.
• 25:03
  Listen, don't just don't just ask a question and then
• 25:06
  immediately have your next thought ready to go, right?
• 25:09
  Be in the conversation, be dynamic, be part of it.
• 25:12
  I think that's something that, you know, I think I, you know
• 25:14
  myself, I'm sure a lot of people also struggle with this.
• 25:16
  Like you just want to get to the next point.
• 25:18
  Like, no, no, no. I just asked a question.
• 25:20
  Let me think about that and react to it rather than just
• 25:22
  waiting for my next turn to speak.
• 25:25
  That makes sense. Yeah.
• 25:26
  Yeah, it's certainly that that kind of triggered a memory for
• 25:31
  me, which was we had a guest who I thought was going to be a
• 25:35
  fantastic speaker there. So where I came up with this was
• 25:40
  is so you can over prepare. You can write like the full
• 25:44
  sentence of the question you want to ask or to your point,
• 25:47
  you can be listening and not really paint, not really
• 25:50
  listening. You're hearing the words and
• 25:52
  you're thinking about what you're going to say.
• 25:54
  Those are both horrible things. Sometimes the guests over
• 25:57
  prepare too. And it's like, I remember 1
• 26:00
  episode and I'm not obvious. If you want to try and figure it
• 26:03
  out, there's 400 episodes out there.
• 26:05
  Listen to all them and you'll figure it out.
• 26:07
  But and. Why you're listening to them?
• 26:09
  Hit the Like button. Yeah, hit the like 5 stars for
• 26:13
  all of them. This poor guest basically read
• 26:20
  notes the entire episode and it was like, Oh my God, like do we
• 26:25
  re record this thing? And I thought what we didn't,
• 26:30
  but it's we always say to people, it's presentation is not
• 26:34
  or I'm sorry, it's not a presentation.
• 26:37
  It's a discussion and we have to be in the discussion as well.
• 26:40
  We can't expect that person being the in the discussion.
• 26:44
  We're just reading questions from a sheet of paper.
• 26:49
  Look, you know, you're only talking to 1,000,000 people a
• 26:51
  year, so don't be nervous. I get it, right?
• 26:54
  Yeah. Some people are covered with
• 26:55
  that. Some people aren't.
• 26:56
  I mean, there's been times where, you know, we'll go
• 26:58
  through a prep session and I'll, I'll send you a message like,
• 27:00
  oh, I don't know how this is going to go.
• 27:01
  And then, you know, that the light kicks on, the star
• 27:05
  happens, whatever. And the guest is awesome, right?
• 27:07
  It's like, oh, OK, I didn't have to worry about.
• 27:10
  Anything that does happen, I mean, so the opposite also
• 27:14
  happens. So you you have the scenario
• 27:15
  that you described, so you do the prep session, then you go to
• 27:19
  record and the person is way better in the recording than
• 27:24
  they were on the prep. And the prep, they weren't
• 27:26
  really paying attention or their camera had a big thumbnail
• 27:31
  thumbprint on it or something. They didn't inspire confidence
• 27:34
  that it was going to be a good conversation.
• 27:36
  Yeah, exactly. But you also have the opposite
• 27:39
  where the prep session goes great and then you get to the
• 27:42
  session. Now one of the things I fig I've
• 27:45
  found is, you know, technology issues can be the worst.
• 27:49
  I remember 1 episode where we were recording with somebody and
• 27:56
  it wasn't even their Internet bandwidth.
• 27:58
  I think their hard drive was so full and what do you call it?
• 28:02
  Like there's that software that that kind of like makes all your
• 28:07
  files whole again. But oh, fragmentation.
• 28:10
  So if you're their, their drive was probably full and fragmented
• 28:14
  and it couldn't save the video and their computer kept
• 28:17
  crashing. It crashed like 5 times during
• 28:19
  the episode and somehow you're able to save it and make a
• 28:24
  decent episode out of it. I don't know how, but we've had
• 28:27
  a few times where things like that have happened.
• 28:30
  It still happens. I mean, you know, there was an
• 28:32
  episode recently where we had it, you know, a guest crash a
• 28:35
  few times throughout it. I challenge you to find where
• 28:39
  that happened because I've gotten so much better at editing
• 28:41
  and hiding that kind of stuff. Look, we're, we're remote, you
• 28:46
  know, we're doing recording. Technology is not going to be an
• 28:49
  issue. And, you know, we've got a
• 28:50
  pretty stable platform here that we're using.
• 28:52
  But things happen and, you know, we'll deal with it.
• 28:56
  It's fine. Yeah, it's the meme, right?
• 28:58
  Everything's on fire around me. This is fine.
• 29:02
  Well, the, I think with the podcast too, it's like we've
• 29:06
  been talking about the early days and I'd love to, you know,
• 29:08
  one of the things we prepared today was to kind of go through
• 29:11
  and what was a major theme for each year since we started the
• 29:15
  podcast. But I think back to this early
• 29:17
  days and literally we were recording Teams meetings, like
• 29:22
  we would just save the, the audio recording of Teams or Zoom
• 29:27
  or something like that. And.
• 29:28
  Pre pandemic, Zoom that that helps you gauge the quality of
• 29:33
  how things were working. Yeah.
• 29:35
  And just think about it, it's like very Internet dependent.
• 29:38
  If your Internet was shopping that day, your episode is not
• 29:42
  very good. And if you have a guest on now
• 29:44
  you're talking about three people to have to have decent
• 29:48
  Wi-Fi connections for the entire episode to get decent recording.
• 29:53
  And yeah, it's a, it's actually for us to look back and say,
• 29:57
  yeah, we only got 100 downloads. It's a, it's a tough thing to
• 30:02
  even wrap my brain around. Why someone Our audio quality
• 30:06
  was what it was that we would get anybody who'd wanted to
• 30:09
  download it. Well, let's go back year by year
• 30:12
  because I think the strength of our show has always been the
• 30:15
  content, right? The quality I think is in a good
• 30:17
  enough spot, you know, where we sound good enough, right?
• 30:22
  And we look slightly worse than that, but still good enough for
• 30:25
  you to 2019, you know, the year of foundations.
• 30:30
  Really it was like strategy and frameworks.
• 30:32
  Our first episode was introduction to an IM strategy
• 30:35
  framework and of the, let's see, 26 episodes I think we put out
• 30:40
  that year that was sort of like the theme was like a lot of
• 30:42
  conversations around strategy and how do you build a program
• 30:46
  and how do you set that kind of stuff up and what are people
• 30:49
  should be thinking about, right, the people and the process side
• 30:51
  of things. And so, you know, those are
• 30:54
  those are the episodes that, you know, listeners seem to
• 30:57
  gravitate, you know, even way back when in in 2019.
• 31:01
  Yeah. You know, I wanted to mention
• 31:04
  one other thing, so or two other things.
• 31:06
  One is the name of the podcast. So we've never changed the name
• 31:10
  of the podcast. I feel like there's a a bit of
• 31:14
  luck there. Like identity at the center was
• 31:17
  kind of a philosophy that we were at a debt free we're all
• 31:21
  working on. And the idea being that identity
• 31:24
  is at the center of cybersecurity.
• 31:26
  There's all these cyber tools that are in the environment,
• 31:30
  including, you know, SIM and logging and access management,
• 31:35
  and they all depend on an identity.
• 31:37
  If you don't have the identity, the power of those tools is not
• 31:41
  that great. And well, that's the way the
• 31:44
  industry has gone. Like now all these cyber tools
• 31:46
  are becoming identity dependent and with that dependency becomes
• 31:52
  they become so much more useful. So the name a little bit of luck
• 31:56
  because like the industry, like put it, you know, made it so, so
• 32:02
  perfect. And I think The thing is like we
• 32:05
  so we've trademarked identity at the center.
• 32:09
  If we hadn't, I may either be an identity at the Center
• 32:12
  conference or. It would be a theme at a
• 32:15
  conference for sure. And I've, I have certainly
• 32:18
  noticed a few conferences really stretching like the theme of
• 32:22
  identity and sorry man, identity center was taken and they had to
• 32:25
  like come up with an alternative.
• 32:27
  Identity at the middle. Right.
• 32:31
  Yeah, so. That was for us for being
• 32:33
  trendsetters and ahead of of of our times.
• 32:36
  But yeah. Yeah, the other thing is people
• 32:39
  ask me a lot. I'm sure they ask you, well, how
• 32:42
  did you start this thing or why did you start the podcast?
• 32:46
  And I always just tell the truth, which it's kind of like
• 32:50
  not the most glamorous story. I remember you saying because
• 32:54
  you and I were working together on client work, like every day,
• 32:59
  right? So you and I would talk every
• 33:00
  day and we'd have these like really cool identity
• 33:03
  conversations. Like we're as the industry was
• 33:07
  moving and we're moving with it where our thoughts are evolving
• 33:12
  and we're having these conversations and kind of like
• 33:15
  testing each other's limits on various topics, right?
• 33:19
  And you would say we should record this, make a podcast.
• 33:23
  I'm thinking like, I don't know about that.
• 33:27
  I'm pretty busy. I'm pretty busy, man.
• 33:31
  And then I think one day he just said it again.
• 33:33
  I was like, fine, let's do it. And then we recorded an episode
• 33:37
  and then we recorded the next one the next week and the next
• 33:41
  one the week. Actually, I think Week 2 I
• 33:44
  wasn't available. You recorded with Fletcher,
• 33:46
  Fletcher Eddington. And then I mean, you and I both
• 33:51
  did on most of them. You know, probably of the 400,
• 33:54
  we probably made like 385 each or something like that.
• 33:58
  But we've recorded an episode every week, at least one episode
• 34:03
  per week except the two weeks at the end of the year.
• 34:08
  And I always argue for give me another week man.
• 34:10
  And you always talk me out of. It.
• 34:15
  Get back into that editing cave nerd and put out another
• 34:17
  episode. Well, I always give you the
• 34:20
  option. We can record every day the
• 34:23
  first week of December and just we can have a whole bunch of
• 34:26
  episodes build up. But that's also not realistic.
• 34:30
  So we do take a break. And I think partly that break
• 34:33
  makes sense because not only do we need a break, but our
• 34:38
  listeners probably are spending time with their family.
• 34:41
  How dare they? How dare they do that?
• 34:44
  We're your family. We're your identity family.
• 34:47
  Identifam so so yeah, like that's really how it started
• 34:53
  was, you know, Jeff's idea we should record a podcast and my
• 34:58
  brave soul saying, OK, let's do it.
• 35:02
  And neither of us liking our voice, but just plowing through
• 35:04
  it anyway. Oh yeah.
• 35:05
  That's that hasn't changed in Nobody does, yeah.
• 35:10
  But that was 2019 was like strategy frameworks. 2020 became
• 35:15
  more of like career growth and like certifications and really
• 35:20
  kind of like, OK, how do we make this?
• 35:22
  I am an actual career, right? So this was pre CID pro from ID
• 35:27
  Pro like that certification didn't exist.
• 35:29
  We did a really popular episode with the Identity Management
• 35:33
  Institute, Henry Begusarian. Hopefully I got the name right.
• 35:36
  That was all about different IM certifications that, you know,
• 35:40
  they had. They were one of the leaders in
• 35:41
  that space went early movers. So like a lot of the content
• 35:45
  that people seem to gravitate were, you know, how do I become
• 35:49
  certified in this thing called identity and access management?
• 35:53
  I don't think digital identity was like a thing then.
• 35:55
  It was just, oh, I'm an IM or IDM, you know, something like
• 36:00
  that. And, you know, pandemic, I think
• 36:02
  was kind of hitting somewhere around that time too, and a lot
• 36:05
  of disruptions and, you know, we're taking place with that,
• 36:07
  but like that. Yeah, we were starting to get a
• 36:10
  lot of downloads. And then the pandemic hit
• 36:12
  hardware, they said to everybody in the world, stop coming to the
• 36:16
  office. People stop listening to the
• 36:18
  podcast in their car. And it was like, oh, now we're
• 36:21
  back down to like 65 listens per episode.
• 36:24
  I don't have time to listen to a podcast.
• 36:26
  I got to find toilet paper man, it was 20. 20 a total aside, but
• 36:32
  I remember right after the world started going to to shit.
• 36:39
  The second swear ever made on this show.
• 36:42
  Right there. Well, you can bleep me out.
• 36:44
  That was that was leaving. That was my first one.
• 36:47
  I think the other one was you so.
• 36:49
  The first one was a privileged access management episode that
• 36:53
  we did several years back, and our guest asked if she could
• 36:57
  swear, and I said sure jokingly. And then she swore.
• 37:00
  I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a family friendly show.
• 37:04
  So anyway, I see this adult man, he's a what's the neighbor of
• 37:08
  mine adult man and his wife and they had 6 gallons of milk.
• 37:12
  They had no, no children. I'm thinking what did you do
• 37:15
  with 6 gallons of milk? Are you lactose intol?
• 37:20
  It's the new currency for 20/20 was, you know, the barter
• 37:23
  system. It was, but I think that's the
• 37:25
  exact theme that we had that year because, you know, it's,
• 37:29
  it's really weird. I think back in that time, the
• 37:34
  mantra was there's more demand for people than there are
• 37:39
  people. So it was like, hey, folks,
• 37:42
  you're having a hard time finding a job that has meaning
• 37:45
  to you while the water's warm over here.
• 37:48
  Jump in. And then I remember at Identity,
• 37:52
  we had something going, where do you remember a lady named
• 37:54
  Elaine? And she had brought in a bunch
• 37:57
  of very junior people into the company and they were like
• 38:02
  learning the trade. And we had a few of them on the
• 38:06
  show, I think. So that was the reason I said
• 38:09
  that was kind of funny, is because now we're all worried
• 38:12
  the AI is going to take our jobs and that the next generation,
• 38:16
  like nobody's hiring new people. Well, we had some of those
• 38:19
  folks. We we actually did a Family Feud
• 38:21
  episode like way back then as well.
• 38:23
  We did it at a company meeting for Identropy.
• 38:25
  And you know, you ran this very complex set of PowerPoint slides
• 38:29
  that I had found to use as like the game and I sort of MC Ed
• 38:32
  that point of it. And some of the some of the
• 38:35
  answers that we got from our own companies like identity
• 38:38
  professionals, I'm putting that in quotation marks were very
• 38:43
  suspects. But yeah, it was it was an
• 38:47
  interesting time. Yeah, name your favorite
• 38:50
  privileged access management platform, Kanye West.
• 38:55
  I remember somebody just said Kanye West is like an answer.
• 38:57
  I was like, what? That had to be.
• 38:59
  That had to be Fletcher. It might have been, but it was a
• 39:02
  lot of fun. And I think that's was like, all
• 39:04
  right, Like we got to figure out how to do this better sometime
• 39:07
  in the future. And, you know, fortunately we
• 39:09
  were able to work something out with Fight Alliance.
• 39:11
  And, you know, that whole thing was.
• 39:13
  Fido feud baby. Fido feud.
• 39:14
  That's Yep. So, but yeah, let's see.
• 39:17
  So 2020 was or no to 20. Yeah, 2020 was like
• 39:21
  certifications and like professionalizing.
• 39:24
  I am 2021 was really about like cloud stuff, cloud identity.
• 39:30
  I think there was a lot of people still figuring out how to
• 39:32
  things like AWS, you know, work. How are we managing permissions
• 39:36
  in Azure and GCP and all the different cloud environments
• 39:39
  that were out there. So there was like a lot of
• 39:40
  content that was around managing identity in the cloud.
• 39:45
  And you know, our top episode that year was episode one O 1,
• 39:49
  AWS Cognito and CID Pro. We did that with what did we do
• 39:54
  that with? I have to look and see Sarah, I
• 39:59
  think it was. Yeah, that was like the most
• 40:01
  popular episode for like years, right?
• 40:05
  Yeah. And so, you know, people were, I
• 40:07
  think were interested in, you know, what is this thing called,
• 40:11
  you know, Cognito. So people were trying to figure
• 40:13
  that out. And then, yeah, it was just
• 40:15
  Sarah Cicchetti. Sorry, There we go.
• 40:17
  Yeah. And then the CID protos, CID Pro
• 40:21
  certification was just being launched kind of around that
• 40:25
  time tone. And obviously, you know, ID Pro
• 40:27
  has been such a big part of this this show, right?
• 40:30
  We're the official podcast for that ID pro.org, you know, go
• 40:33
  sign, sign up, be a member just like Jim and I.
• 40:37
  But that was a very popular episode because it kind of
• 40:39
  blended a couple things. It was the need to certify
• 40:42
  talents, right? To demonstrate we've got
• 40:44
  certification in space just like other parts of security.
• 40:48
  And then also this crazy idea of like I am in the cloud like what
• 40:51
  does that even? Mean well that's it.
• 40:54
  I mean, you know, I think organizations that had
• 40:59
  traditionally had on Prem infrastructure were in mass
• 41:03
  moving that infrastructure to the cloud.
• 41:06
  I kind of remember in the beginning of the cloud, it was
• 41:08
  like, Oh yeah, we're just running some dev servers there.
• 41:10
  And then all of a sudden it was like, Oh no, we're doing DevOps
• 41:13
  for our production pipeline to AWS.
• 41:16
  And it's like, oh, wow, that happened pretty quick.
• 41:20
  And now the identity practitioner needed to get their
• 41:23
  arms around it. Man, I can't believe that that
• 41:28
  was that was all happening, you know, underway while the podcast
• 41:32
  was running. But it doesn't make sense.
• 41:34
  And now we're in like a, you know, another era where you see
• 41:40
  AI, the big AI wave coming to potentially replace a lot of
• 41:44
  infrastructure. Yeah, we're going to talk about
• 41:48
  2026, but I'm going to keep the the year is rolling here.
• 41:51
  So if 2021 was a year of cloud, like for an identity standpoint,
• 41:55
  2022 was really about the year of governance.
• 41:58
  So there was a lot of like process and compliance type
• 42:02
  things. And IGA was certainly part of
• 42:03
  that. We did an episode with Paul
• 42:05
  Mazzara, episode 190, which was around identity governance.
• 42:09
  That was like our most popular episode that year.
• 42:12
  And so the assumption was at that point was like, oh, OK,
• 42:14
  programs are starting to figure it out.
• 42:16
  We're starting to get our handle on our people and this being a
• 42:19
  career. And, you know, now we've got
• 42:21
  this. We've had to manage the cloud
• 42:23
  permissions because that was like, oh, we've got to figure
• 42:25
  that out. Like right now what's happening,
• 42:27
  let's take a step back and make sure the permissions across the
• 42:30
  board are being governed, right? So kind of like the space of
• 42:33
  identity governance and administration, right?
• 42:34
  So players in that kind of space.
• 42:36
  So kind of interesting to see 2022 kind of clean up the work
• 42:40
  that was done in 2021 which? Is definitely, it's definitely
• 42:46
  about cleaning up. It was, you know, a lot of
• 42:49
  organizations move quickly during COVID to open things up.
• 42:52
  But I think overall it also opened a lot of eyes to like,
• 42:57
  here's the gaps that we have in terms of our preventative
• 43:01
  processes to make sure that people have the right access.
• 43:05
  And I really, I think one of the things that we were the voice
• 43:09
  for was folks, now's the time to do this.
• 43:12
  Because if you wait and you find yourself in 20252026, you're
• 43:17
  going to be way behind the curve.
• 43:18
  Because now what you're seeing happening is this kind of real
• 43:22
  time intelligence where identity and signals are kind of becoming
• 43:28
  where, you know, organization have the opportunity to get
• 43:33
  ahead of threats. But The thing is of like, you're
• 43:36
  still fighting the war of like, hey, we're trying to get IGA in
• 43:39
  the door, man, you're, you're way behind.
• 43:42
  And so hopefully your organization, if you're
• 43:46
  listening, you've taken care of this.
• 43:48
  But that was one of the times where I think we're kind of
• 43:51
  ringing the alarm like now's the time to do this.
• 43:54
  And by the way, I did want to say one thing about Paul
• 43:56
  Mazzera. So Paul's now at Gartner.
• 43:59
  We probably won't get Paul back on the show until he retires or.
• 44:04
  We did majority rules, you know, maybe we do something at the at
• 44:08
  a conference and he can get him on stage for something.
• 44:10
  They have very specific rules around how that works.
• 44:12
  But now I know what they are, maybe we can work that out.
• 44:15
  Absolutely. There was a lot going on.
• 44:20
  And so 2023 was the year of security conversions.
• 44:25
  So we saw like a lot of different tool sets start to
• 44:27
  come into things. So like identity security
• 44:30
  started to become a term that was out there.
• 44:32
  You know, we started to see things along the lines of like
• 44:34
  ITDR and ISPM and sort of precursors right to those kind
• 44:38
  of spaces. And around that .2023 we kind of
• 44:43
  hit 100,000 downloads as a show. It's like, oh, it's like a major
• 44:47
  milestone for us. I think I put one of the few
• 44:49
  times I put like a social graphic on Twitter or something
• 44:52
  at the time around, you know, celebrating that.
• 44:54
  And we actually were self funded throughout that entire time.
• 44:57
  And then we started to do sponsored episodes, you know, to
• 44:59
  help with, with the cost of running, you know, the episodes
• 45:02
  and show and stuff like that. And believe it or not, our top
• 45:06
  episode in 2023 was a sponsor Spotlight episode with Sunray.
• 45:11
  Was that our first sponsor or no, No, I'm sorry.
• 45:14
  No, we it wasn't our first, but Sunri did come back into a
• 45:18
  second one as well. Yeah, and I think people were
• 45:21
  interested to learn more about other, other identity security
• 45:28
  tools in the space, right. It wasn't IGA, it wasn't Pam, it
• 45:32
  wasn't another IDP. It was something else.
• 45:36
  And there was current, you know, definitely an appetite for
• 45:37
  people to kind of learn about that.
• 45:38
  And you know it helped us, right?
• 45:40
  Help helps me pay the costs pretty.
• 45:43
  Sure. Our first sponsored episode was
• 45:46
  Conductor One with Alex Bovey. That sounds right.
• 45:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a, that was a big
• 45:54
  turning point for the podcast we had.
• 45:56
  We were still not doing video at that point.
• 45:59
  I think, I think we started video in 2024.
• 46:03
  But I actually, I think we started experimenting with video
• 46:07
  by the end of 23, but we weren't sure if like this is something
• 46:13
  we wanted to commit to, right. But then at the beginning of 24,
• 46:16
  we made the the announcement. Yeah, I think convergence was a
• 46:21
  big thing that year. I think a lot of these new
• 46:26
  technology spaces and I remember as a consultant thinking, you
• 46:31
  know, I'm, I'm concerned with making a recommendation about
• 46:34
  something that's new to my, my clients, right?
• 46:38
  Because what if that becomes unimportant or kind of kicked to
• 46:43
  the curb? Like remember we were talking
• 46:45
  about UBA all the time, like user behavior analytics.
• 46:49
  It's not from a space that people refer to anymore.
• 46:52
  And I'm not saying that it doesn't exist at all.
• 46:55
  What I'm saying is it's, it's not making any headlines.
• 46:58
  So if we're making big recommendations like, Hey, you
• 47:01
  need to do this thing because the promise was there.
• 47:04
  And I think a lot of what you're seeing happening with like ITDR,
• 47:09
  it's dependent on, you know, recognizing a user's normal
• 47:14
  behavior, knowing when they're doing something that breaks that
• 47:18
  mold, and then taking action on it, doing a response so they're
• 47:24
  on the right track. But if you went out and told
• 47:26
  your clients like hey, you need to, you need to be on this UVA
• 47:30
  thing, you could have muddle on your face later.
• 47:34
  Yeah, it was it, it's really kind of an evolutionary thing.
• 47:37
  It's like where I've, I've said this before where I think like
• 47:39
  ITDR started as user behavior analytics, or if you wanted to
• 47:44
  use user and entity behavior analytics, right?
• 47:46
  This other thing is kind of evolved into that while you're
• 47:49
  talking. I went and looked it up.
• 47:50
  Sunri was our first sponsor episode.
• 47:52
  We did that December 13th with Sandy Byrd, which was a fun one.
• 47:56
  We had a great conversation and then we started to do more and
• 47:58
  more of those. And you know, I think the one
• 48:00
  thing that's been nice about those sponsor Spotlight episodes
• 48:03
  is, and this is something that I have learned over the years of
• 48:07
  doing this, there are way too many technology companies for me
• 48:11
  to even keep up with. It used to be manageable, like,
• 48:14
  Oh yeah, I know all the IJ players.
• 48:17
  Not anymore. Like there's just too many of
• 48:18
  them and new ones are popping up every week.
• 48:21
  Same thing for Pam, same ID. PS A little bit more mature, but
• 48:24
  occasionally I'll see a new like IDP type solution.
• 48:28
  But now you've got things like ISPMITDR.
• 48:31
  What was the one that we talked about intent based access
• 48:34
  control. You know, we we talked about
• 48:35
  with gal from plane ID that'll be coming up in an episode, you
• 48:39
  know, stuff like that. There's always something new.
• 48:42
  And for for all the sponsors that have been, you know, we're
• 48:45
  grateful for them for like donating and helping us, you
• 48:47
  know, keep the show afloat and running.
• 48:50
  It's been a really learning opportunity for me to also say
• 48:52
  like, OK, our normal episodes vendor neutral.
• 48:55
  Like we don't pitch product. We don't even advertise what we
• 48:59
  do. A lot of people think that we
• 49:01
  are podcasters 100% of the time when it couldn't be far from the
• 49:04
  truth. Like we've been identity
• 49:05
  consultants the whole time and we've maybe done too good of a
• 49:08
  job of hiding the fact, which I guess is a good thing.
• 49:11
  It's like, hey, this is vendor neutral.
• 49:13
  You're not getting punched in the face every 3 minutes with
• 49:15
  like, you know, buy a, buy a mattress or, you know, here's a
• 49:18
  protein shake or, you know, buy our services, you know, stuff
• 49:22
  like that. But it's been, it's been nice to
• 49:24
  be able to kind of take the gloves off on those sponsor
• 49:27
  episodes and ask question, tell me about your product.
• 49:30
  Very similar to like going up to a booth at a conference or you
• 49:33
  know, hey, some salesperson reaches out and say, Hey, can we
• 49:36
  show you our product for 45 minutes, right.
• 49:37
  And tell us about it. So, you know, it's, it's been a
• 49:40
  great way for me to keep up with that.
• 49:41
  And I think people have enjoyed that as well.
• 49:44
  Judges based on episode numbers like our sponsor episodes do
• 49:47
  just as well as our quote UN quote normal episodes.
• 49:51
  Yeah, You know, I think I was, you know, sometimes you think
• 49:56
  there's going to be resistance. I thought there'd be resistance
• 49:59
  from our sponsors, like, hey, you know, I'm paying, I'm
• 50:03
  donating for this 45 minutes, right?
• 50:06
  I want to talk about my product the whole time.
• 50:08
  That's absolutely not been the way it's gone.
• 50:12
  Pretty much everyone who's come on the show, and I shouldn't say
• 50:15
  pretty much, I think it's 100% of our sponsors are like, we
• 50:19
  want to do a regular episode, but we want to mention our
• 50:22
  product and like how we do it. But you guys have a formula that
• 50:26
  works. The formula that works is like
• 50:29
  it's not a infomercial. It's educational.
• 50:32
  Hopefully it's entertaining. Hopefully, you know, with the
• 50:35
  sponsored episodes, it's like people get to go on saying this.
• 50:40
  Something I want to do further investigation on.
• 50:42
  I'm going to reach out to this company or they can watch him be
• 50:44
  like, yeah, I'm glad I listened to this.
• 50:47
  They don't have my e-mail address.
• 50:48
  They're not going to be bugging me.
• 50:50
  I don't have it. This doesn't scratch the itch
• 50:53
  that I have. Yeah, I mean, it's perfectly,
• 50:58
  perfectly put, no notes. All right.
• 51:02
  So 2023 was also like a lot of convergence, right?
• 51:05
  As I mentioned, like the security tool and stuff like
• 51:06
  that. It feels like 2024 was a lot of
• 51:09
  like privileged access management stuff, protecting the
• 51:12
  keys to the Kingdom, those kinds of ideas.
• 51:15
  Our top episode that year was episode 294 navigating
• 51:18
  privileged access management. And you know, there was just a
• 51:22
  lot of growth that year. I think we started to hit more
• 51:25
  conferences. You know, we went from like
• 51:27
  100,000 to I think by the time 2024 was done, we were already
• 51:33
  over like 400,000. So we had like a 400% growth in
• 51:37
  that year in downloads. I think a lot of it was, you
• 51:39
  know, being at conferences and people starting to pick up on
• 51:41
  stuff like that. But it seemed, for whatever
• 51:43
  reason, like Pam was 2024's theme.
• 51:48
  Yeah. I mean, here's one thing about
• 51:50
  the podcast, right, is that we tried to keep our pulse on
• 51:55
  everything that's going on, keep a pulse of everything that's
• 51:58
  going on. So we'll, we had episodes in 24
• 52:02
  about customer, IE about IGA and also the the newer technologies,
• 52:11
  privileged access management, I think kept coming up or is
• 52:14
  probably if you had to pick a theme, that's what it would be
• 52:17
  because of the breaches. You know, it's like what was
• 52:21
  happening in the world at that time is like companies were
• 52:25
  getting exposed, ending up on the front page, becoming the top
• 52:29
  story on CNBC because they got breached and they either paid a
• 52:34
  ransom or, you know, their business got shot down.
• 52:38
  And usually if you tie those all the way back, the bad guys got
• 52:43
  their hands on a privileged credential and we're over able
• 52:46
  to overtake some pretty important infrastructure and
• 52:50
  maybe shut the company down. So decision makers, senior
• 52:56
  people were willing to invest in solutions that kind of help
• 53:02
  prevent those things from happening.
• 53:04
  Yeah, Again, I think a little bit of like clean up from prior
• 53:07
  years. You know, we saw like a lot of
• 53:09
  MFA adoption the pandemic years and it's like, OK, we've got
• 53:12
  that solved. We think we, we think we've got
• 53:13
  authentication good enough. Now let's start to look at
• 53:16
  things elsewhere. Yeah, yeah.
• 53:19
  I mean, I think you're right on with that.
• 53:20
  It's like there's the cleanup and we spend time talking about
• 53:23
  like, hey, for the practitioners that are out there and you're
• 53:28
  breaking your axe trying to fix these problems.
• 53:31
  Like we have episodes that are dedicated to it.
• 53:33
  I mean, over the years we've done episodes on role based
• 53:36
  access control. It's not sexy, right?
• 53:39
  And we've been doing it since before we were doing podcast,
• 53:42
  but it's still something that practitioners in the field are
• 53:45
  breaking their acts like implementing.
• 53:48
  But it's the same time we'll have somebody like Annie and
• 53:50
  Glazer come on and he'll talk about 0 sending privileges.
• 53:53
  So it's like, OK, this interesting because now we're
• 53:56
  talking about what's coming next, right?
• 53:58
  And a lot of times, like, you know, some companies says,
• 54:03
  here's what's happening now. But for a lot of US who are the
• 54:07
  practitioners and breaking our acts in the world, it's and it's
• 54:11
  listen to somebody like Ian or an Eve or somebody like that
• 54:14
  who's talking about, hey, these are the things that are up next.
• 54:19
  Yeah. And I think sometimes what you
• 54:21
  end up seeing, a lot of conference talks are sort of
• 54:24
  like the future. And so it takes time for those
• 54:28
  concepts to filter into the real world, right?
• 54:32
  Not many companies can afford to be bleeding edge on 100% of all
• 54:36
  I am functions across the board. Like they have to pick and
• 54:39
  choose. And so they say, OK, well this
• 54:40
  year we're going to try and tackle IGA and we're going to
• 54:44
  work on that for the next, you know, well, 18 months to three
• 54:47
  years, right, Whatever it looks like.
• 54:48
  And that's like, OK, we've got some breathing room now there.
• 54:51
  Let's improve our Pam and then let's let's go back to
• 54:54
  authentication and start working on pass keys and replacing, you
• 54:58
  know, legacy MFA, right, things like that.
• 55:00
  And so as much as you go to conferences and you hear about
• 55:03
  all these great ideas and they're, they're needed because
• 55:06
  they have to start somewhere, it takes a while for, you know,
• 55:11
  businesses to catch up to that. That's right.
• 55:15
  So 2024 privilege access 2025 was really about frictionless
• 55:21
  authentication. So what I mean by that is we saw
• 55:23
  a lot more uptake in like pass keys, improving user
• 55:26
  experiences, you know, identifying, you know, who
• 55:30
  people are when they need to get something done, whether it's,
• 55:33
  you know, calling a help desk, whatever it may be.
• 55:36
  Our top episode was the one we did with Ori from Trusona.
• 55:40
  So episode 360. That will always be a memorable
• 55:43
  one for me because one Ori is a great speaker.
• 55:46
  He's he's entertaining in his own right.
• 55:47
  He's just a very interesting guy.
• 55:49
  They have, you know, a very interesting product.
• 55:51
  It's a good product. It works and you know, he's put
• 55:54
  up money. Like this is the first time we
• 55:56
  ever had like a sponsor say come break our stuff.
• 56:00
  I won't use the S word, come break our stuff.
• 56:02
  If you can find a hole in it, there's a $10,000 bug Bunny for
• 56:07
  that. That's the first time anybody
• 56:09
  has ever come on the show like put their money where their
• 56:11
  mouth was. And so I think it was for like a
• 56:13
  month they ran this and as far as I'm aware, nobody was able to
• 56:16
  break it. You know, you could have won
• 56:18
  $10,000 and a slide whistle for for Maury.
• 56:21
  That was a lot of fun, right? And I think that kind of shows
• 56:24
  like, hey, there is, there is a need here for identity
• 56:26
  verification for a bunch of different things and come poke
• 56:29
  holes in it. And and I hope that we get more
• 56:31
  opportunities like that in the future to be able to kind of
• 56:34
  have some more fun with that, but address like real problems
• 56:37
  like that. Yeah, no, I mean, one of the
• 56:40
  cool things that you're right is like that you and I got get to
• 56:44
  do because of the podcast meeting people like Ori getting
• 56:50
  behind the scenes, look at the technology that he has.
• 56:53
  I was like, man, why? Why didn't somebody invent this
• 56:57
  like 1520 years ago when, you know, I was doing end user
• 57:03
  support and you could say you could see like, hey, this person
• 57:08
  says they're calling from California, but they're really
• 57:10
  in Vietnam because I can look on the map and see physically where
• 57:15
  they're located. So that was cool.
• 57:18
  But I thought 2025 was like, I don't know.
• 57:21
  I felt like it was the year of identity at the center.
• 57:24
  The podcast really took off this year.
• 57:27
  Or almost 1,000,000 downloads. Million downloads almost in one
• 57:32
  year. That's mind blowing.
• 57:34
  I hope we can at least duplicate that this year, if not do
• 57:38
  better. I think you're right.
• 57:41
  The frictionless authentication was huge.
• 57:44
  I think there's just so much stuff happening in this space.
• 57:48
  I think, you know, the industry was starting to say, all right,
• 57:52
  we've we've been talking about for a while like 00 trust and
• 57:57
  every product was more zero trust and now started to become
• 58:01
  in 25 the with AI. So is AI for I am.
• 58:08
  I think we're just going to see more and more of that.
• 58:11
  Yeah, I mean, definitely like, you know, AI has kind of taken
• 58:13
  over the last year. It's been, it's been a thread I
• 58:16
  think through every conversation we've had for the last year or
• 58:19
  so. And so let's kind of wrap this
• 58:22
  up with like 2026 is the year of what, you know, it's February
• 58:26
  when this episode comes out. We've got a handful of episodes.
• 58:30
  It seems to me like a gentic identity is going to be like the
• 58:35
  theme for this year. What do you think?
• 58:38
  I think it is to the point that when we do the 500th episode,
• 58:44
  it's going to seem like, oh, it's so obvious.
• 58:46
  I think the agentic AI is moving so fast and now AI is able to
• 58:53
  write its own code that I think organizations are going to start
• 58:58
  re platforming applications in such a way that it's going to go
• 59:02
  fast. And maybe re platforming isn't
• 59:05
  even what's going to happen. Maybe it's just that
• 59:09
  organizations, you know, we used to do build versus buy analysis
• 59:13
  in IT like 2025 years ago. And that got to the point where
• 59:17
  it was like who the heck would ever build their own IT
• 59:22
  applications? I've seen a resurgence of it.
• 59:25
  I'm seeing organizations, my clients build applications in
• 59:32
  AI. Why?
• 59:33
  Because they can build them way cheaper than they can buy them.
• 59:37
  This need to have AI built in or I'm sorry, I am built into the,
• 59:42
  you can't just forget about the security.
• 59:45
  So The thing is it's moving so fast.
• 59:48
  I don't know what it's going to look like, you know, 12 years,
• 59:51
  12 months out, much less, you know, 2-3 years out, I mean.
• 59:57
  I mean, it's hard to predict anything in this space.
• 59:59
  It's the one thing I've learned over the years is like, just
• 1:00:01
  when you think you're getting comfortable and like, oh, I kind
• 1:00:03
  of got a handle on it. No, something new comes along
• 1:00:06
  and pulls it out. It's just, it's part of it.
• 1:00:08
  But you know, AI is just that thing.
• 1:00:11
  It'll be another thing, you know, episode 500.
• 1:00:14
  Well, I think so. It's another.
• 1:00:16
  It's another tool that we're grappling with to figure out how
• 1:00:20
  to leverage it, how to secure it, how to use it in any number
• 1:00:24
  of ways, both good and bad. It will just become, you know,
• 1:00:27
  like the calculator or the Internet or other things, you
• 1:00:31
  know, it's going to be very disruptive.
• 1:00:32
  We just got to figure out how to how to work with it.
• 1:00:34
  It's not like it's going away like that cat is out of the bag.
• 1:00:39
  Yeah, I just don't know if it's like just another revolution or
• 1:00:46
  it's like the revolution. I mean, you know, from things
• 1:00:50
  I've been hearing and researching, and I listen to a
• 1:00:54
  lot of podcasts, especially about AI is, you know,
• 1:00:59
  especially like it seems like Anthropic and Clod are the ones
• 1:01:03
  that get pointed to the most in terms of its ability to just
• 1:01:07
  write really good code. And it's just going to take a
• 1:01:12
  lot of jobs away from developers.
• 1:01:15
  And then it's going to be able to write applications 24 hours a
• 1:01:20
  day. I mean, people can't do that.
• 1:01:23
  People can't work 24 hours a day.
• 1:01:25
  So if it's already starting to do that now, where's it going to
• 1:01:29
  be a year, 2 years, three years from now?
• 1:01:33
  Well, it's like anything else that's going to continue mature.
• 1:01:35
  It'll become cheaper, more capable, and we will have found
• 1:01:40
  new and exciting ways to secure and unsecure things with it.
• 1:01:45
  There will be something else, right?
• 1:01:47
  It, I guess it's hard to, it's hard for me to call it the
• 1:01:50
  disruptor when you're in the moment.
• 1:01:52
  It is a disruptor. But so was the Internet.
• 1:01:56
  So was, you know, a calculator. So was indoor plumbing, right?
• 1:02:00
  There's so many of these things that come along in your
• 1:02:03
  lifetime. I do think it is going to be
• 1:02:06
  very disruptive. It already is.
• 1:02:08
  But we're going to have to figure out how to coexist with
• 1:02:12
  it. It's not going to go away.
• 1:02:14
  And so we have to figure out how do you make it secure?
• 1:02:16
  How do you make it usable for people?
• 1:02:17
  How do you try to put guard rails or, you know, train tracks
• 1:02:21
  maybe in certain cases where, you know, people are only doing
• 1:02:25
  the things with it that you want them to do that?
• 1:02:28
  That's the kind of situation I think we're in right now.
• 1:02:32
  Yeah, it could be. You know, you and I were talking
• 1:02:35
  about this before the show. I was thinking that we should
• 1:02:39
  should have hit record. That happens so often with you
• 1:02:41
  and I and even with our guests. Like we get to have a slide
• 1:02:45
  conversations like, darn it, we should hit record.
• 1:02:49
  But we're talking about how fast is moving.
• 1:02:52
  And the thing everyone always points to Will Smith eating
• 1:02:56
  spaghetti. You just have to watch the
• 1:02:59
  benchmark. For any maturity that should be
• 1:03:01
  like all of our IM maturities is Where are you on the Will Smith
• 1:03:04
  eating spaghetti scale? Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:03:08
  Yeah. So if you haven't seen that
• 1:03:10
  already, look it up. It's pretty hilarious with like
• 1:03:14
  comparing that. And it's basically it's AAI
• 1:03:17
  generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti and then one
• 1:03:22
  that's, you know. That's like literally what it
• 1:03:25
  is, right? Yeah, right.
• 1:03:27
  Exact code like that is. It is exactly what it says on
• 1:03:30
  the tin. Yeah, Will Smith, the actor, and
• 1:03:32
  he's eating spaghetti and then they show like him doing it,
• 1:03:36
  like a video generated of him doing it now.
• 1:03:39
  And I don't even think it's now as in, you know, February of
• 1:03:43
  20/20/26, I think it was like sometime in 2025, like the
• 1:03:49
  current video. And it's like, my gosh, she can
• 1:03:51
  barely tell this the day I generate.
• 1:03:54
  Yeah, that's what I keep thinking.
• 1:03:56
  It's like of this 2026. What's it going to be like in
• 1:03:58
  20-30? Like that's four years from now.
• 1:04:01
  That's nothing. Going to be more capable, going
• 1:04:05
  to be more realistic. We're going to have to figure
• 1:04:06
  out ways to do content authentication and verification.
• 1:04:11
  And talk about AGI and they say AI is going to be smarter than
• 1:04:16
  any person on the planet and that's like 3 to save eight
• 1:04:23
  years away that AI will be smarter than any person on the
• 1:04:27
  planet. And then they talk about
• 1:04:29
  artificial super intelligence, I guess ASI or AGSI, and that's
• 1:04:35
  where AI reaches the point it's smarter than the collective
• 1:04:42
  knowledge of everybody on the planet.
• 1:04:45
  I mean, when I kiss that point, do you think it's really going
• 1:04:47
  to need a human to tell it what to do?
• 1:04:51
  Or is it just going to know what it needs to do and do it and
• 1:04:54
  that humans just really won't be able to add value to that
• 1:04:58
  process? I think we were talking earlier,
• 1:05:02
  you said, well, the creativity, and I definitely would have
• 1:05:07
  agreed to like, I think if you think about where AI is now, you
• 1:05:12
  definitely reach the limits of its creativity sometimes.
• 1:05:16
  But I've seen it gotten got a lot better in say the last year.
• 1:05:21
  But that's looking at it like where it's at now.
• 1:05:26
  I think that, you know, it's not just random number generator.
• 1:05:29
  It's going to actually like I'm constantly shocked like I was
• 1:05:32
  talking about with writing this book, I asked it to come up with
• 1:05:35
  things and sometimes it's like it's just not very creative.
• 1:05:41
  But I just think it's just a point in time of where AI is at.
• 1:05:47
  I guess I'll just get more capable and we'll just have to
• 1:05:49
  figure it out. I think AI is going to become
• 1:05:51
  more personal. Too.
• 1:05:53
  So rather than having like these generic models that are like
• 1:05:57
  everybody is, you'll have your own little sort of like personal
• 1:06:00
  AI that you lean on. And you know, some of us are
• 1:06:03
  probably already doing some of that, right?
• 1:06:04
  Whether you're doing like your own gems and Gemini or your own
• 1:06:07
  little GPTS and ChatGPT or Spaces and clawed right, or
• 1:06:11
  using notebook LM, you know, whatever it may be, I think
• 1:06:14
  there will be a person, a personal touch that will make
• 1:06:18
  it. The idea is that will make it
• 1:06:21
  more enhancing of someone's life.
• 1:06:24
  So I'm in a beta right now with Gmail for this thing called CC.
• 1:06:29
  And every morning I get an e-mail that is like a summary of
• 1:06:32
  all the things that are happening in my Gmail and my
• 1:06:34
  calendar. And it's nice.
• 1:06:36
  It's like having a little assistance like, Oh yeah, I
• 1:06:38
  forgot about that. I have to take care of that.
• 1:06:39
  And it's, it's just every morning I just get this brief
• 1:06:42
  and I can respond to it as a person.
• 1:06:44
  Just reply to the e-mail and say, Oh yeah, remind me about
• 1:06:46
  this or yeah, can you look that up and just come back to it
• 1:06:49
  later and treat it as like an offline agent, you know, type of
• 1:06:52
  approach? Is it perfect?
• 1:06:54
  No. But I think stuff like that
• 1:06:56
  will. It'll be interesting to see how
• 1:06:58
  this all plays out because there's going to be some people
• 1:06:59
  who are going to be willing to place that trust into it and
• 1:07:01
  some people who aren't. And that's fine.
• 1:07:03
  We have to figure out where do those two, where do those those
• 1:07:07
  roads meet and intersect? Yeah, I think those choices get
• 1:07:11
  taken away after a while. I think look like self driving
• 1:07:16
  cars. That's, you know, I don't think
• 1:07:19
  you'll be able to buy a, a car that you drive and people will
• 1:07:22
  stop knowing how to drive a car, just get into a car, tell where
• 1:07:27
  they want to go. The car will take them there.
• 1:07:31
  That's not far away at all, right?
• 1:07:32
  That's already being done. I think there's going to be
• 1:07:35
  robots. I think five years, at least a
• 1:07:38
  minimum 10 years. You'll see robots walking on the
• 1:07:42
  street and you'll go into places like the grocery store and
• 1:07:45
  robots will be working in the grocery store.
• 1:07:49
  So it's going to change our physical world for sure.
• 1:07:53
  Yeah, I'm not saying it's not. It definitely will.
• 1:07:56
  We're really like, pontificating and waxing poetic here.
• 1:07:59
  Yeah, I don't have any. I don't have any answers.
• 1:08:02
  I just know that we're going to have to do what humans have had
• 1:08:06
  to do forever. Adapt.
• 1:08:09
  That's right. Fire Hammer.
• 1:08:11
  Bronze Age plagues, pandemics, you know, going to the moon, if
• 1:08:17
  you believe in that, right things like that right we've
• 1:08:20
  we've had to adapt and that is what humans are really good at
• 1:08:24
  adaptability generally I. Think identity has adopted
• 1:08:29
  Identity has to follow the technology, right?
• 1:08:33
  It has to. You can't do it any other way.
• 1:08:36
  I mean, look at what we're doing right now in the US with mobile
• 1:08:38
  identity and driver's license, right?
• 1:08:40
  We've got a little less than I think half of the states are
• 1:08:43
  coming online this year. You know, couple years ago was
• 1:08:46
  half of that, before that was half of that.
• 1:08:48
  So it takes time for these things to all catch up.
• 1:08:52
  But eventually we get there and then we figure out, OK, what's
• 1:08:55
  next? What thing do we have to solve
• 1:08:58
  for? Jeff I'm looking forward to the
• 1:09:01
  next 100 episodes and maybe 500 after that.
• 1:09:06
  Yeah. I think I'm thinking 500 is
• 1:09:08
  probably sometime in 2028 based on our current run rate of like
• 1:09:13
  somewhere between like 65 and 70 episodes a year roughly.
• 1:09:18
  It's been a fantastic ride to be on with you, man.
• 1:09:21
  So I always express my gratitude to our sponsors and to our
• 1:09:25
  listeners. But I'm also, I've had a lot of
• 1:09:27
  gratitude to you because you and I have been doing this
• 1:09:31
  consistently. I've been good friends now for
• 1:09:34
  longer than we've been doing the podcast.
• 1:09:36
  But you know, when you do something like this, like
• 1:09:39
  there's times where the other person does something that
• 1:09:42
  annoys you, right? And that happens on both ends.
• 1:09:46
  And we always get past it, maintain our friendship.
• 1:09:50
  And I hope that comes through in the podcast.
• 1:09:52
  I hope people know that we appreciate each other and that
• 1:09:55
  we are friends. And, you know, sometimes we get
• 1:09:58
  into our debates about identity or whatever it might be.
• 1:10:03
  We always come out and we're still friends.
• 1:10:05
  Because we talk that simple. Yeah, we got to get more people
• 1:10:10
  in this world to do that. You know, is what is I don't
• 1:10:14
  want to, I don't want to turn political.
• 1:10:15
  But yeah, we couldn't be more opposite.
• 1:10:17
  And somehow we still make it work and it's good.
• 1:10:20
  So there you go. Let us be the shining example
• 1:10:23
  for the world. Let's put it that way.
• 1:10:25
  We are the world. I'm going to isolate that and
• 1:10:28
  that might be the part of the clip for this episode.
• 1:10:30
  Anytime you say I always, but see, I'm recording isolated
• 1:10:35
  tracks, so I can totally steal that.
• 1:10:37
  Gosh. All right, there we.
• 1:10:40
  Go, let's go ahead and leave it for this week.
• 1:10:42
  Thanks again to everybody who supported us over the 400
• 1:10:44
  episodes. Here's the next 400.
• 1:10:47
  Find us on the web, IDC podcast.com.
• 1:10:49
  Like, subscribe, use our discount codes.
• 1:10:52
  We're always on our main page for idcpodcast.com that helps us
• 1:10:56
  continue to grow the show and bring more content.
• 1:10:58
  And you know, thanks to everyone for for the ride that we've been
• 1:11:01
  on and the ride that we'll continue to go on.
• 1:11:04
  So thanks everybody for watching and or listening and we'll talk
• 1:11:07
  with y'all in the next one. You've been listening to
• 1:11:12
  Identity at the Center. We hope you've enjoyed the show.
• 1:11:16
  Make sure to like, rate and review, and we'll be back soon.
• 1:11:20
  But in the meantime, hit the website at
• 1:11:23
  identity@thecenter.com. See you next time on Identity at
• 1:11:29
  the Center.