You don't just want to sit in a chair and listen to people talk
about stuff. You want to engage with the rest
of the industry, talk to people you don't get the opportunity to
talk to. You know, there will be people
there whose names you may recognize, who are involved in
standards and specifications, who you know, are deeply
involved in, you know, writing the rules for how passkey works,
for example, a web auth N right, updating a wolf, right the way
through to folks who are doing literally solving the same
problem that you're solving, but just at a different enterprise.
And so the opportunity to get together with those folks in a,
you know, less formal context and share stories, share
knowledge, share approaches, help people grow in their
careers and develop in their careers and change their career.
All of that goes on and later in the verse as well.
And now I'm going to cheat and I'm going to turn the question
around because I know you guys have both been to Identverse
multiple times. So I would love to know from you
what Identverse is for you guys. This is identity at the centre
if it has anything to do with IAM.
This is the go to podcast now your hosts Jim McDonald and Jeff
Stedman. Welcome to the Identity at the
Center podcast. I'm Jeff and S Jim.
Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
I'm OK. How are you?
Good. I had a little bit of a stutter
there. Huh.
You did. But I was about to say good
morning, Jeff. But I guess that would be, even
though it is morning that we're recording, that would be very
unusual for the beginning of the show.
So I decided to stick to How are you?
I think the the morning delay is showing, right?
It's like, OK, hold on a SEC, we still got to get woken up here
and start the brain starts firing.
I've got to get my caffeine in still, but you know one thing I
do in the morning? As I scroll through LinkedIn and
this morning I came across a post by our friend Henrique
Tashara over at Savior and his post was about a new Gartner
paper that was that just came out and it was putting some
definition around this idea of non human identities.
Talked about non human identities and machine
identities and what the difference is and so they set up
a framework where machine identities is actually a subset
of human identity or non human identities.
And also the other type of non human identities are software
identities. And that kind of maps to the
framework that I've always had in mind, which is when you think
about non human identities, there's workloads software and
there's devices or machines and I I started to kind of question
my framework and think that, you know, the Gartner framework
probably makes a little more sense.
So devices that it's not that the word devices using the
English language is a bad word for machines.
I mean, they're kind of like synonyms, but I think in our
minds, devices are your phone, your tablet, maybe a kiosk or
something like that. So it is more narrowed down and
it would exclude IoT like a thermostat or something built
into a manufacturing device. Also workloads you might not
think of like service accounts in your Active Directory as a
workload. You might, even though I think
technically it is. So I think it's nomenclature.
This kind of maps to what I was thinking, but here's the thing
that it took that was I thought funny was that Gartner's
definition of non human identities also includes
organizational entities and animals.
And it's like an animals. That's pretty interesting.
Like what is an animal identity? And then I started thinking, OK,
well, potentially animals could have chips inserted into them
and things like that. So maybe that's where they're
going with it. What?
What are your thoughts? I don't know.
I don't know where where this was going.
So I was trying to figure it out.
I was thinking when you said animals, for whatever reason, my
mind jumped like neural link and the monkeys are, you know, I
guess a chick and an animal makes sense.
I guess it's not human. So we have to have some way to
classify non human organic beings.
Now I'm starting to think like we're talking like the Borg or
something like that. I mean, I, you know, human and
non human makes sense. I think it used to be carbon and
non carbon based. So this is the great thing about
identity is there's always a new framework, a new, you know, way
to look at things, a different definition for the same words
that we use in other parts of the language.
The key part will be making sure that everyone understands the
context that we're talking about.
But yeah, the animal one threw me for a loop there for a second
and I was like, OK, I guess, you know, that is something we have
to consider. Yeah, that was the later part of
my morning. Yeah, Can you imagine?
You know, I need to send an e-mail to my my dog.
And they have their own, they have their own ship and their
own identity and their own account.
I don't know how that would work.
I mean, if it makes sense. I've got GPS trackers with the,
you know, trackers and accounts, you know, for my, for my, my
furry friends. But.
Well, yeah, I was thinking for your dogs, Jeff, you probably
might be offended by that definition to call them non
humans. Oh, they're non humans.
I mean, look, my dogs are my kids, but I'm, I'm not that that
so far. You haven't gone that far yet,
right? Yet.
Right. I don't dress them up, you know.
So there is still a a distinction there that we draw
and they ride in the back in a hammock.
Though there you go. Yes.
OK I was going to say the leash thing but some people have
leashes too so go down that route.
Yeah. OK.
Well, I think we've kind of like gone off track a little bit.
Maybe we should get into or it's just a bit outside, maybe we
should just go over our conferences.
Yes, we've got London coming up. So this is going to be coming
out the week of March, but coming up March 24th, the 25th
is the London Gartner IAM Summit.
If you use the code ID AC425, you say 425 euros, I believe
some currency 425 amount of some people want to check that out.
And before I get too far along, you know, all these will be our
in our show notes below, but they'll also be on our website
idacpodcast.com if you just Scroll down and anything that
we've got active for, you know, discounts will be there too.
So you and I will not be there. But the one that we will be at
and that we're both looking forward to is in Berlin this May
6th or 9th and that is the European identity and cloud
conference. We're going to be there.
We've got a discount code. So thanks out to the conference
folks there. ID, AC25, NKO get you 25% off,
which is pretty cool. We're going to be doing some
podcasting and then you're taking vacation before that and
ending Europe in Berlin. I'm starting Europe in Berlin
and then taking about a week off after that to tour somewhere and
then go from there, so looking forward to that.
Yeah, it's going to be fun stuff.
So I'm going to Oslo the week before we're going to do
identity beer. It's probably going to be the
Wednesday before Berlin. So if it's if it's possible, if
that's going to work for you and the the Wednesday part is not
guaranteed, it could wind up being Tuesday, for example.
Please reach out to or just start with by reaching out to me
and I'll loop you in with the rest of the group.
But expecting a pretty good turn out.
Yeah, it's pretty cool. I don't have any plans at this
part. My life.
I still have not. I have a flight to Berlin but I
as of right now have no exit planned to the US, so I'm still.
Are you sure you're coming home? I may not.
Who knows, I might have decided just to stay.
I always, I liked London, I like Paris.
So, you know, international man of mystery.
We'll just leave it at that. Yeah, but I do have to actually
come back for Dan Denver's conference because that's coming
up right after that. That's June 3rd to the 6th.
Denver's 2025, and we have a conference for that one as well.
IDV 25-I D AC2525 percent off. Hopefully people are able to
take advantage of early bird discounts.
I think by the time people listen to this, at least one set
of early birds will be gone. I'm not sure what it'll look
like on Monday when this people people are starting to listen to
this, but that code still is in effect.
So people can take advantage of that.
And obviously if you've read the title for this episode, you know
that we're going to be talking to Andy Handle here in a minute.
But let me get the, let me get that out again.
IDV 25-IDC25. That gets you 25% off.
And then let's talk about authenticate real quick because
I know Jim, that's going to be coming up.
And right now the plan is you and I are going to be there as
well for that. Yeah.
You really need to be thinking about it early in terms of if
you want to be a speaker, get your your paper submitted.
I know that that's already closed for Identiverse for
example. So folks, you really need to be
thinking ahead and getting those applications in early.
But I think the proposals are due no later than March 3rd.
So this would probably be the last time we announced this, but
go out to authenticatecon.com and you'll easily find a link to
submit a proposal for speaking at the Authenticate conference.
Yep. So let's go ahead and get into
our Identiverse 2025 preview. The last time this gentleman was
on the the show was last year's preview.
We were drunk and record like man, we got to get you on and
talk about other identity things.
Something just identity verse. So I want to welcome back for
the 5th time, Andy Handel. He's the conference chair for
identity verse. Welcome back, Andy.
It's yet again a delight to be here.
Thank you for having me on. Well, the pleasure is all on
this side of the table. But before we get too far, let's
talk about Identiverse. Let's hear straight from, you
know, the source. What?
Is identiverse. See, that's that's just a big
question to start with, right. You want to start with something
small and we could talk about non human identity some more for
a bit that kind of warm up to what is identity.
So look identiverse. I've been involved for what 10
This will be my 11th 1. The event itself has been
running for 16 years this year. These days, I think it's fair to
say that we are the primary digital identity, identity and
access management conference and event in in the calendar.
I think, you know, our audience tends to be the core digital
identity professional, right? So folks who are doing this work
day in, day out, figuring out how to keep our identity safe,
how to keep our company safe, how to keep our organization
safe, how to enable people, right?
How to make, you know, customers, consumers, citizens
able to, to access their stuff in a Safeway and how to keep
people appropriately private in, in that process, right.
So, you know, at, at the most basic level, that's what
Identiverse is. What that means is that we have
4 days of full on conference content.
We'll talk a little bit about that I'm sure in a minute.
Alongside of that, we've got a pretty large show floor where we
have lots of sponsors doing lots of things, talking about all the
different ways that they can solve problems for folks, lots
of entertainment around the edge, right?
So we've, we've tried for years and we continue to do this to
make, you know, you're going to be at a conference for a week,
right? You don't just want to sit in a
chair and listen to people talk about stuff.
You want to engage with the rest of the industry talk to people
you don't get the opportunity to talk to.
You know there will be people there whose names you may
recognize who are involved in standards and specifications,
who you know are deeply involved in, you know, writing the rules
for how pass key works. For example, a web auth N right
updating a wolf right the way through to folks who are doing
literally solving the same problem that you're solving but
just at a different enterprise. And so the opportunity to get
together with those folks in a, you know, less formal context
and share stories, share knowledge, share approaches,
help people grow in their careers and develop in their
careers and change their career, all of that goes on in Idani
verse as well. And now I'm going to cheat and
I'm going to turn the question around because I know you guys
have both been to Idani verse multiple times.
So I would love to know from you what Idani verse is for you
guys. You know, for me it hit right
when you said the doers is kind of what I have always thought of
it of is, you know, real identity, people doing real
identity things. Some of it is obviously is
conceptual and some of the ideas that are planted there, but it's
just a lot of people, really smart people, fun people.
It's a great community and you get to see and hear from those
folks. I think Identity Versus has done
a really good job over the last several years of really
incorporating new and existing voices in the space.
You know, obviously, you know, the existing voice has been
around for a while, but we need to continue to promote new
voices, new ideas, you know, new things like that that that come
out and and encourage people to continue to give back to the
community. So I'm excited about that.
But yeah, you hit it right in the head.
I was like, these are the doers that are showing up for for this
type of stuff. And you can kind of, you know,
commiserate to some degree. You can articulate and you know,
ideate, you know what the most people hold and and you can also
eat folks you know in in Vegas. So that's kind of what it means
to me. Jim, what do you think?
What it when you think about Denver's?
Well, I think that Denver's probably the largest conference
in the space now, but there are a couple that are, you know,
similarly sized, but I think at least for vendor agnostic
conferences is probably the largest.
I think it pulls together a fantastic group of
practitioners, people that I mean, I make new contacts every
year. So I think a big part of it for
me is about the networking opportunities, sitting with
people at, you know, at various events like lunches and
breakfasts and things like that. Also just attending the, the
sessions and hearing people talk and understanding.
I, you know, what one thing that Andy mentioned that to me I
completely connected with was hearing, you know, you're at
Enterprise and you're hearing what another enterprise did
already and how, what their success story was because
they're not going to usually come and present about a
failure. You know, there are sessions
almost every year where they talk about like, hey, these are
things that we've done in the past that have failed and here's
things to avoid and pitfalls to avoid.
All that is how you grow your own personal body of knowledge.
You know, there's things that there's only so much that you
can do. The rest you have to learn from
other people. And it's a great place through
either personal interactions or sitting in on these sessions
where you learn from other people and they learn from you.
And then you make these connections that last beyond the
conference and you know, they turn into friendships over the
years. Yeah, good question, Andy.
Kind of like, OK, you know, and I think there's a little bit of
something for everybody too. I don't think that this is for
not necessarily just for like experienced people.
I love seeing new folks to the space come to the.
Yeah. And I'm actually glad you
mentioned that. And you mentioned that the, you
know, hearing from new voices as well, right.
And both of those aspects are, are things that have been really
important to us over the years in which we continue to really
focus on. So one of the things we started
a couple of years ago in conjunction with ID Pro is that
we started a newcomer session which runs right before the sort
of main conference agenda starts.
The first year that we did it, actually the first year we
experimented with it, it really was an experiment and it was
very last minute, very thrown together and it told us enough
that we had to do it properly the following year.
So the following year we did, we gave it some actual space and we
put it on the agenda and we, you know, we let people know it was
happening. Got some really good feedback
out of that. In fact, we had so many people
attend that that they didn't fit in the room that we allocated
because we were just guessing. We're like, oh, I don't know,
maybe like 50 people will show up and we have like 250 in this
room. So last year we had a much
larger space, you know, with, with dedicated time.
And again, I mean, it was absolutely full to bursting.
So I usually try and show up at this thing and just kind of say
hi and welcome so that, you know, folks who haven't been to
the conference before. Mostly what you see of me that
week is I'm up on the mainstage kind of orchestrating things or
I'm rushing around, you know, trying to fix stuff behind the
scenes or I'm asleep. But, you know, it's nice,
particularly for the new folks for me to actually be in, in a
smaller space and to say hi and welcome and, and do those
things. So, so last year I was a little
bit late and I, I kind of got there and everyone was already
in this room and I was trying to get, you know, up to the front.
So I kind of, you know, worm my way through and I get to the
front and I say four or five things and I'm like, and I'm
really sorry I've got to go. So I've got a keynote rehearsal
and, and off I go. And behind me, I can hear
Heather Flanagan, who was running this session together
with Alan Foster. Same.
For those of you who don't know, that was Andy, who's the
conference? I totally forgot to introduce
myself. So yeah, you know, we try really
hard to make it a welcoming environment for folks who either
haven't been to the conference before or haven't been to a
conference like this one before or who are new in, you know,
relatively new to the industry and and kind of don't know where
to start. Right.
But the other thing that's really important you mention
this is, is the new voices. So for those who don't know who,
who haven't, you know, attended Identiverse before the
Identiverse agenda, almost all of the, the conference agenda
gets built out of a call for presentations, which, you know,
to Jim's point earlier is closed.
We've made those decisions. Thank you very much.
Please play again next year. But we have a, a content
committee that I have the honour of chairing and we spend, you
know, basically six weeks from the beginning of January going
through an enormous number of proposals and trying to figure
out as best we can how to construct not just a high
quality agenda, but also an agenda that touches on as many
of the important topics as we can in any given year.
Now, topics go in and out of favor, right?
They are more or less important. There's more or less to say from
one year to the next, but we try and construct something that's
that's reasonably comprehensive. And so, yeah, that means
including material that's suitable for folks who've been,
you know, doing these kinds of jobs for 15 years.
It also means including material that's suitable for folks who,
you know, just started last year out of university, right?
But we also want to hear from people who haven't spoken
before. And so one of the metrics that I
look at is, you know, do we have a reasonable proportion of yes,
well known, well recognized voices in the industry, folks,
most of whom I know have been, you know, on on the show here,
right? So folks like Ian Glaser and
Nishant Kaushik and Heather Flanagan, who I mentioned
earlier and Eve Mailer and so on and so forth.
But we also want to have and we aim for about 50%.
We're usually pretty close. We want to have around about
half of our our agenda be voices that we haven't heard from
before, whether those are people who.
Are. Seasoned presenters who just
happened to have not spoken on identifiers before or whether
they really are, you know, brand new and we get a mix of that.
I think that's really, really important to make sure that that
we continue to offer those sorts of opportunities and that
people, people can hear, you know, fresh perspective every
time, every year they come along.
Yeah, I love, I love hearing new ideas and, you know, keep it up,
I guess, right? Let's try to keep it fresh.
I think it's the one thing that helps prevent it from getting
stale. We talked about what it is and
when it is. Is June 3rd to the 6th?
Jim, do you have something you want to bring up here?
Yeah, I just wanted to just tag off of, so you talked about
people like Heather Flanagan and Alan Foster, and we've had both
of them actually on the podcast. And Alan came on to talk about
the the Mount Rush, War of Identity.
And he named a lot of people that folks who are listeners
probably didn't even know. There's people he mentioned a
few people that I had never heard of.
So you know, Alan's been in the industry since the 90s, but you
go and meet him and it's like you could be brand new, never
gone to Identiverse before and he's going to treat you as an
equal. And, and I think that's the
community and identity Pro like kind of embodies that community
and Identiverse is the place that we get to meet up in
person. So, yeah, I, you know, you talk
about Alan, I think he's the quintessential example of this.
But I think that everyone in the industry behaves the same way,
right? And, and you see that day-to-day
in the industry, but I think you see a particular idea of this.
I think we talked about this last year that you know, it,
it's easy to go to these things if you're new and to feel like
you can't go up to people and talk to them.
And I would really encourage people to to go up.
The worst thing anyone's going to say to you is, look, I'm
really sorry I don't have time right now.
Let me try and catch you later, right?
That's the worst that's going to happen.
Much more likely is you get in a conversation with somebody and
that leads to one of those connections, Jim, that you were
talking about that can, you know, change a career, right?
Yeah, I mean, I think Doug, this is an open invite.
If you see me walking around the halls, I, you know, please come
up, say hello. I love to meet new people.
And I think you'll find that that is a attitude shared by
99.9% of the people who are at these things.
Yeah, we might be busy and know something, but, you know, I try
to make the point of like, hey, can we talk in half an hour?
Or hey, can we meet over here later?
But please come up, say hello. You know, we, we love to meet
new people, especially Jim and I.
So, you know, and you'll be able to spot Jim.
I'm sure he's usually wearing some some funky jacket if we're
in Texas, maybe even a cowboy hat, you know, definitely, you
know, come up and say hello and and and meet new people.
Look, I get it, you know, and everybody's, you know, as
socially, you know, adept, maybe feel a little bit awkward.
I used to be the same way. Now it's just like, Hey, I'm
Jeff, blah, blah, blah. Great to meet you.
Cool, that's it, right, You know, or maybe we can get a
conversation about something. So please come up and say hello.
Speaking of coming up and say hello, Andy, this is in Las
Vegas, which I love. I love Las Vegas.
I know that I feel like I'm I'm slowly getting into the minority
of people who like Las Vegas. But if someone who doesn't
really gamble, doesn't really drink, but loves kind of the the
show and the environments and the excitement and then the the
plethora of activities and food options.
Tell me a bit about where this is going to be because it's not
at the Aria like it was last year.
We've changed locations. It's not at the Aria, you are
right. It is at the Mandalay Bay.
Now I need to preface this with a couple of things.
The first is that my only interactions with Vegas have
been in the context of identivers.
And so I don't get to see very much, right.
I see the inside of the venue and that's it.
And the other thing is that I've never actually been to the
Mandalay Bay, right. So I, I wasn't able to go, we
normally do a site visit and, and the rest of the team were
able to do that. I just couldn't make the dates.
And so I'm kind of working off a floor plan and figuring out
where things are going to be. But I literally can't tell you
the first thing about, you know, what the Mandalay Bay experience
is going to be like. I do know that lots of people
have been there and probably have some good perspective.
I think, you know, on a very practical level, my
understanding is that we have a lot more space available to us
at the Mandalay, right? It's, it's going to be a much
more spacious environment for us to be in.
We can do more on the show floor.
We can do more in the breakouts we've got.
It's it's just bigger and, and better in that sense.
Beyond that, I, I. That's as much as I know.
Well, let me fill in the gap because I've been there I guess
several times at this point. It's a great spot.
It is down at the very South end of the strip.
It's kind of near Luxor. It's probably the next closest
hotel. So if you stay, you can either
stay at M and delay and walk over to Conference Center and
there's plenty of food options, plenty of things to do and the
tram that runs. So it's a good spot.
It's a good location. You know, they're well set up
for it. So I think hopefully, you know,
I think you'll be kind of pleased with the with the
wakeworms out. I like it.
I think it's good. That's Vegas.
You can kind of get anywhere pretty quickly either, you know,
on public transport or Ubers and Lyfts and cabs and stuff like
that. So it's a good spot.
Definitely, definitely approve. The one thing that I will give
as a pro tip is always try to stay at the conference hotel
because you do not want to be walking.
You know, Luxor is the next closest, but it's a, you know,
it's a good 15 to 20 minute walk to go from Luxor all the way to
the opposite end of Mandalay, which is where the Conference
Center is. So you definitely want to be as
close as possible and and stay in Mandalay if you can.
Yeah. And I, I, I think that's a good
tip generally, to be honest, right, For anything that's,
that's, you know, larger than, I don't know, say 50 to 100
people, right? Really being in the same place
as where everybody else is or the majority of people, I think
is really helpful. It's more convenient for you,
right? If you get tired, you can just
go and, and bail. This is always an issue for me
with jet lag, right? But it also means that, that,
that those serendipitous encounters, right?
The chance meeting at a bar or, you know, out for a run in the
morning or in the gym or whatever it might be is much
more likely to happen because everyone's in that same space.
So I would, I would take advantage of that.
I think you're right. Yeah, I think that's always a
good pro tip. So Andy, I wanted to kind of
transition into the content that people are going to come away
from the conference with. So the the focus that I think I
wanted to take on this was you guys have established a few
topic areas. So let me first ask the general
question. So is the topic mean?
Is it equal to like a track? Like you get on a topic you're
interested in non human identity, so you attend all the
sessions in that topic or in that quote UN quote track.
Is that how it works or is it something different?
It's a little different and I'm really glad you asked the
question. This is the biggest thing that I
have struggled with year over year over year.
And we've tweaked it and changed it and it still isn't perfect,
but it works OK once you know how to deal with it.
So we do not have tracks in the traditional sense.
And by track, I think what most people understand is, is pretty
much what you describe, Jim, right?
Which is, OK, I'm interested in this thing.
I'm going to go and sit in this room and hear about this thing
for the next however long it is, right?
We realized a long time ago, right?
I mean this, this goes back to when I, when I first sort of
started doing this, that identity is very horizontal and
broadly applicable. And so it's actually really hard
to build a track in that sense. People don't stick in those
rooms, they move. And so, yeah, we have these
topic areas and I'll, I'll talk through them in a second that
act as one organizing principle. And that's helpful.
It's really helpful for us for the, for the call for
presentations and for building out the agenda.
But what we tend to find is that people then will will migrate
across different paths through the through the content.
Sometimes that's to do with the vertical sector.
So if you happen to work in banking, it may very well be
that you go and you identify all of the things that are directly
relevant to banking, whether that's because it's being, you
know, specifically about a bank. So this year we've got several
things about open banking because there are some changes
coming in in the US that are going to have some impact there.
So you might say, OK, well, there's a thing about open
banking in the architecture and standards topic.
I want to understand how open banking works.
I'm going to go and listen to that.
Then there's a thing about, I'm making some of these upright.
There's a thing about open banking security and the
security topic here. I'm going to go and listen to
that somewhere else. And then there are these three
presentations by somebody from M&T, someone from Capital One
and someone from First Insurance that are all in deployment that
are interesting to me because I also work in the bank, right?
And so there I've gone through, you know, two different,
actually three different topic areas and I've selected things
based on the material in a couple of cases and the
presenter in a couple of other cases.
And that's typically the behaviour that we see.
So back to the start of the question, right?
We have and, and these have been consistent now for, I want to
say 3 or 4 years, if if not a few more.
We've got 8 primary topic areas that we look at and those are in
alphabetical order because that's the order I've got them
written down. And I have got them written down
because otherwise I'm bound to forget one.
And then those people will be very upset that I, it's like
Oscars, right? It's like, I want to say thank
you to my mom and my dad and Oh no, I forgot my cat.
So we have architecture standards and standards and
engineering. We have a thing that we made-up
which is C3 IAM. So that is customer, consumer
and citizen and we wrap them all together.
But if you put all the words, really it ends up really long.
So we just made it C3 IAM. We have deployments, leading
practices, identity for security, identity and business.
And that one's really about the business impact of identity,
right. So not how do I make money out
of an identity, but what impact does my identity program have,
you know, on my business or how can I explain to my business the
impact that my identity program's going to have?
I just say I love that topic, Andy, I know you and I've talked
about this offline for the last couple years, but the business
of I am is such an overlooked part of the identity space.
I love to see content on it. So thank you, thank you, thank
you. And thank you and we will.
We will keep pushing on that one.
It's so important because getting executives to understand
why our stuff is important is hard.
And some organizations have been really successful at it.
And so hearing from them and then being able to take those
arguments back to your enterprise and say, I, you know,
this is what they're saying over at Chase.
We might want to pay attention to that, right?
Or, or wherever it is. Again, I'm, I'm picking company
names out of thin air, but privacy and ethics, that one's
close to my heart. It's one of those adjacent areas
for us, but it's increasingly important and I think, you know,
paying attention to it is, is very worthwhile professional
skills and development. So that one's really about those
soft skills. How do I develop my career?
How do I present better? How do I present my ideas
better? How do I make a business case
better? Those sorts of things.
And then vision, strategy and futures, which is exactly what
it says on the tip, right? It's what's coming down the
pipe. So, so those are kind of the,
the core topic areas that we look at.
But like I say, people are going to drift across those.
And it's not like when you register, you have to say, oh,
and please register me for this track, right?
The whole thing is, is open with a full conference pass.
You look at the agenda, spend a little time with it before you
go and figure out which things are going to be most relevant to
you. To help with that, over the last
few years we've done a couple of other things.
One is that we'll typically post some, you know, blogs or other
articles in the run up to the conference, which will look at
the agenda through different lenses.
And we've we've played around with this different ways.
I don't know exactly how we're going to do it this year, but
we'll do something that will just surface some material and,
and reorganize it in a slightly different way.
So we've looked at it sectorally in previous years.
You know, here are the things about banking, here are the
things about manufacturing, here are the things about higher Ed.
We've done it with sort of subsidiary topics, right?
So we'll pick on passkey just for the sake of argument, right?
Is there going to be some passkey material in the agenda
this year? I think there is, but it's going
to be spread out across different areas, right?
There'll be some stuff about standards, right?
What's coming, What's new? There's going to be some stuff
about deployment, right? Here's how I rolled it out.
There's going to be some stuff about security.
Here are some, you know, Dean Sacks will probably come and
talk about, you know, some of the concerns that he has and how
to address those, right? How to make sure your deployment
is safe. That's, you know, why these
things turn up in different areas.
And so we might very well do you know, a blog post that says, OK,
if you're interested in in passkey and and password less
hate that word, you know, here are the things that you might
want to come and and and look at.
So, so Andy, in in my mind, like as you're describing this, I'm
almost thinking that these are like tags on the presentation.
A presentation should be tagged with financial services
presentations are are making the business case and pass keys.
And if you're interested in one of those 3 verticals or topics
or tags, that might be for you. In fact, if none of those are on
you, you're still welcome to come in and sit in on that.
Now I have a question for you. Are there sessions that you need
to pre register for that? In other words, kind of limited
space? So that's a really good
question. I'm just going to pick up on the
tags thing first up, because you're absolutely right.
That's a really good way to think of it.
We're somewhat constrained by the technology that gets used
and and is available to us for things like the website and the
mobile app in terms of how we can represent that out to the
audience. So we've had years where we've
had solutions that let us put those sort of, you know, tags in
other years where we haven't. So we actually have that
information in the back end. It's just whether we can easily
make it available out in the front end.
But, but it's, it's something that we, we've certainly tried
to do and I know we'll try and do again if we can, but it's a
good way to think of it. So if you're building your own
agenda, that's, you know, that that's quite a useful thing to
do. It's just look at it, you know,
mark up the ones you're interested in with those kinds
of tags and then just, you know, build it out that way.
The other thing which just occurs to me as we're talking,
which I'd be fascinated to see if somebody wants to experiment
with this, wouldn't it be interesting to grab the whole
agenda in a CSV, throw it at something like ChatGPT or Claude
right, and say, hey, I'm interested in these things.
Which session should I go to? I feel like somebody should do
an experiment and let me know if that works or not.
I'll be honest Andy, that's the first thing I thought of when we
start thinking about tags like this.
Sounds like a a total nerd project that I would totally be
like, all right, let's throw this in here and let's like come
up with a customized agenda personalized based on, you know,
your topics of interest or whatever it be.
But yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing.
Like there's got to be an AI angle here, right?
We can't get away from AI right at this point.
So Jeff, you and I are going to do this as a side project.
I will get the data for you in a useful format.
I'd love for you to run that and see what the outcome is.
And then let's come back around, you know, and, and let people
know if it worked or if it didn't.
I'd love to find out. Send it to me and I can mention
on a future show as we get around to it, some of that so we
can refer back to the, hey, here's where this started the
idea. And who knows, maybe it's a good
answer, maybe it's a silly answer.
Who knows? Let's find out, right.
So Jim's question which was are the things you have to pre
register for. So for the longest time we have
not done that and by and large that is still true.
If you go back very early on, So way, way back I want to say like
12-13, fourteen years ago, the very beginning we did used to
have some, some they were actually called pre conference
workshops at the time and we did require separate registration
for those. We did away with them for a
couple of reasons. One is frankly, we needed the
time for the rest of the agenda and the other is that it does
get complicated just just organizationally to manage all
of that and checking in and checking out.
And for that, for, you know, anyone listening and, and for
you guys who've been to Idaniverse, you'll know that our
sessions tend to be pretty short.
And so, and the gaps in between are not long.
So, you know, you suddenly start having to scan sort of, you
know, 300 people into a room and then 300 people out of a room.
It, it doesn't really flow terribly well.
So most of the agenda, and this is true again this year, most of
the agenda, pretty much all of the agenda actually is available
to you if you have a full conference pass, right?
The one exception to that this year is something new that we're
adding. So this year the conference
formally starts on Tuesday, which is the 3rd of June.
And we'll start with, you know, main agenda content around about
lunchtime in the morning on Tuesday.
We've got 5 discrete 2 to 3 hour workshops on specific topics.
First time we've done these, like I say in a long, long time.
Those do require separate registration.
Some of that is, is to help us manage numbers and some of it
because it's additional, you know, in depth content.
It's funny, we're coming at this kind of in reverse, right?
We're going to talk about these workshops and then I'm going to
talk about how those topics fit into this overall sort of theme
that we've got for the show this year.
So those five workshops are four specific topics that we've
identified as being really key in, in the industry, probably
not just for this year, but but for several years, I expect.
And then the Sam's Institute is going to come and do a, a
workshop and those details will be coming on the website, the
idanoverse website in due course.
The four topic areas that we've got workshops on are artificial
intelligence. I bet everyone's shocked, right?
You're sitting there going, wow, how did you think of that?
Pikachu faith. Right.
Yeah. So we're going to talk about AI.
But what much of that is going to do is actually explain
there's going to be quite a lot of of work done making sure that
people understand what AI is right, what the different kinds
of AI are and how they operate, and then what impact that has
from an identity standpoint. I think it's going to be really
interesting. So Jonathan Sanders leading that
one. There'll probably be a few other
folks involved. We've got one on non human
identity, which I suspect we'll come back to in a little bit.
Jim, I was fascinated to hear about that Gartner paper and,
and I, I agree, right? I mean, in my head, you talk to
people about non human identity and you tend to get a lot of
either workload or, or process or IoT.
In my head, it also includes things like business entity,
legal entity and fascinated with the animal one.
I have to say my thought went more broadly to things like
supply chain. So you know, one of the things
that came up with I'm going to be the first person that has to
take a drink on the podcast today.
Blockchain some years ago was, you know that the, the whole use
of a blockchain in supply chain and material provenance and that
kind of thing. Well, you think about if you put
let's say an RFID tag in, oh, I don't know, some lumber that's
going to be exported from somewhere.
Well, that has an identity. If you're managing a large farm
and you want to put tags in your, you're managing identity,
right. So when you talked about
animals, that actually was where my head went to was was the
supply chain use case. Let me ask you a question about
that. Sure.
Yeah. Let me ask you.
So let's just say it is the the use case for animals is the RFID
chip. Is that then if we use RFID
chips on inventory in a clothing store, right And there's
thousands of pieces of clothing and each one has an RFID chip,
does that mean that all those shirts have identities?
Cool. Or maybe you group them, right?
So maybe it's all large yellow button cuff shirts have an
identity because maybe you don't need to know each individual
one. If you're dealing with high
value goods, then actually you probably do, right?
So in the same way that you have a serial number for something,
that serial number has a might still an identity problem,
right? So my lovely microphone that
finally after five tries, I'm actually using this time around
has a serial number and it has a warranty and somebody's tracking
that somewhere, right? It it, it has an identity.
Now, at the moment it doesn't need to do anything, but if it's
connected, it absolutely does need to do things.
And and then we have, you know, then then the thing explodes
very quickly, so. Yeah, We have quadrillions of
entities around the world. If we start saying that every
individual piece of inventory has identities and it explodes
the scope of, you know, originally I, I, when I got in
this industry, we're talking about people who has access to
what right. And, and so now it's really
taking much bigger. So I wanted to pull this back,
though, actually to the idea of Jeff and you collaborating to
build an AI because I was thinking of hallucinations.
So what if you say I'm interested in machine or non
human identities and blah blah blah and it says you should
attend the session on animal identities and that doesn't
exist. That would be really interesting
if somebody goes out and, you know, thinks they're going to go
to the animal identity session and there is no session for
that. That would be interesting, and
that's why we're going to experiment with this before we
suggest that people actually do it for real.
That's a good idea. Maybe maybe it highlights gaps
and topics that like, oh, we never really kind of thought
about that. So who knows, maybe there will
be a a, you know, dog identity session next year or something
like that. You never know, back to my
workshop. So we've got AI, we've got the
Non human identity one, and we've partnered with the Non
Human Identity Institute, Lalit Chodo to help us with that one.
Again, there'll be a few of the folks involved, but Lalit's kind
of driving that We're going to spend some time.
We've got a workshop on personal identity.
So that's digital identity wallets and and mobile driver's
license and all of the things that go along with that.
Christina and, and, and Teresa, we're going to sort of headline
that one. Again, we're expecting there'll
be a few other folks coming in to help out.
And then the last one is continuous and event driven
identity, which Sean Adele and Andrew Cameron are primarily
going to do. And again, they'll, they'll pull
in some folks and all of that. So those four workshops plus the
Sands Institute workshop will all run on the Tuesday morning
on the 3rd. And so if people are making
travel plans, you're probably going to want to think about,
you know, getting in on, on Monday in the, in the evening.
Probably those do require additional registration, right?
So all of those details are up on the Idenovus website.
When you go and register, you can select to, to add one of
those workshops and you do have to preselect that one for sort
of self-evident reasons. All of that wraps up under a, a,
a sort of overall conference focus for us this year.
So again, I'm avoiding words, right?
Just like I tried to avoid the word track earlier and we talk
about primary topic areas, I also try to avoid the word
theme. And the reason I try to avoid
the word theme is that I think you go to a conference, it has a
theme. There's an expectation that most
of the things that you attend are going to be about that
particular theme, right? So we have what I like to call a
primary focus and I think of it like an infusion, right?
So it infuses the agenda, but it isn't, it isn't everything,
right? It's just a flavour that that
you get through the course of the week.
And so for us this year, that's innovation, which I know is
really big and really broad. But the reason that we picked
that is there is an awful lot of new, right?
Part of the reason we have those four workshops is those are four
big areas of new development. There's a lot going.
You could pick any one of those areas and say we'll spend a week
talking about that, right? And there are four of them.
And I'm sure that some other group of people would look at
the industry and go, no, no, there are four other ones,
right? There's a lot going on.
And so it felt like a really good opportunity for us to talk
about some of the new that's happening, to talk about how to
deal with how to handle some of the new that's happening, right.
I mean, if you're in this industry, there's enough to
think about as it is. And then somebody comes along
and says, hey, by the way, we're going to put RFID chips in all
of our cats. How are you going to handle
that, right? There's a lot of change and, and
so understanding how to deal with that, understanding how to
make use of that, right? When is it appropriate for me to
innovate? When is it appropriate for me to
stick with what's tried and tested, right?
Those are all things that I think are really important and
it's really exciting, right? I mean, it's incredibly exciting
to see the amount of stuff that's happening in the industry
is, is, I think it feels to me like it's more than we've seen
in, I want to say 15 years and it might be longer, right?
I mean it, there's just a lot. Yeah, that's a, that's a really
good point. So beyond kind of everything we
just talked about, I think the last thing that I'd want to to
know would be, well, you know #1 what can we expect out of the
keynote keynotes this year? And hey, we're going to Vegas.
What are some of the after hour things that are planned within
the conference? Yeah.
So the mainstage for us has always been about setting broad
context for, for the industry, right.
And adding a little bit of what one of my colleagues likes to
call Sparkle, right? You, you, you want to have some
fun with the mainstage. And we've always tried to put on
a, a, a good show, right? I mean, the, the AV company that
we've worked with historically does an amazing job there and
it's honesty. I mean, I get to go and, and
play on the mainstage and I love it, right?
I mean, it's just, it's just an amazing environment to be in.
So we've got a, a few things, right.
I guess I'll, I'll probably be up there a little bit saying
some stuff. Andre Duran will be up there.
So he's the the founder of Identiverse originally and it's
always nice to have him along and, and talk about his
perspectives on, you know, what he sees happening in the
industry at the moment. We've got a handful of guest
keynotes that we've already confirmed there'll be some more
coming later on. So it's definitely worth keeping
an eye on the website as we make, you know, more
announcements as we get a little closer.
But three that I'm I'm particularly excited about.
In no particular order. So Hannah Rutter.
Hannah is the Deputy Director of Digital identity with the
Department for Science, Innovation Technology here in
the UK. So she's going to come across
and talk about some of what's happening here.
And I think for me, that's exciting partly because I look,
you know, I'm based here, I'm based in the Uki am British.
It's always nice to be able to put some some, you know, British
perspective into the show beyond just mine.
But more importantly, and we did this last year, having folks
from outside of North America common and help expand that
horizon a little bit, there's a lot going on within the US.
There's also a lot going on outside the US and we can all
learn from from that sort of global perspective.
So we had some folks from Australia come and talk to us
last year. It'd be really good to have
Hannah join the conversation this year.
We've got a gentleman by the name of Michael Coates.
So Michael was the first CSO at Twitter when Twitter was still
Twitter way back. He was also the cease at
Mozilla. He was the chair of a WASP for a
number of years and he's done a whole bunch of other stuff.
So again, you know, hearing his perspective on on what he's
seeing today and and how he thinks about this industry, I
think is going to be really, really fascinating.
And then a wonderful woman called Rommid Ben and Kassar.
And I recommend people go and, and you can sort of look up her
profile online, but Robin has an amazing history of, you know,
being an endurance athlete, an ultra athlete.
She has a number of world records and some fascinating,
you know, long distance kayaking things.
She's also a firefighter over in San Diego in that area and has,
you know, lots of other things to talk about.
So that'll be something a little bit different for everyone up on
the mainstage. I'm really, really looking
forward to that. Then we've got some folks from
within the industry whose names people will recognize.
So I'm, I'm particularly looking forward at the end of the week
on Friday, again, Sean Odell and and Andrew Cameron, you know,
talk to us about continuous identity and in the slightly,
you know, broader context up on the mainstage.
I'm really excited about that one.
And we'll have a few others like I say, that will announce
between between here and and the show.
So yeah, lots to lots to get stuck into.
And that actually reminds me, it gives me an opportunity to say
it is worth remembering that the event really does run through
until Friday lunchtime. I think if you've been to other
shows, there's this this sort of expectation almost built in that
OK, well, by the time I get to Thursday night, it's pretty much
done, right? No, we have a big block of
content and it's really in depth content on Friday morning
leading up to the closing keynotes.
If you can, it is absolutely worth staying through that
because that's where a lot of the meat of the of the agenda
ends up being is on that Friday morning.
So really recommend that people if, if you can kind of make
travel plans around that stay through, you know, see the
closing keynote, it's up to lunchtime and then head off
after that if you possibly can. Yeah, there's, there's too much
good content in. That's the problem, right?
It's like, it's so much, yeah. I always end up struggling and
say OK I want to go to like these six different things
taking place at the exact same time.
Yeah, it's the hardest thing every year.
I mean, we, we have this problem when, when you know, the
committee and I are sort of doing the, the CFP process.
And again, that's, you know, 6 to 8 week process for us of, of
really looking through. I mean, you know, I think you
guys know this, but I know there'll be people listening who
don't, right? Every single proposal that comes
into the CFP gets at least three reviewers looking at it, me +2
and usually it's me plus three others.
And then we have calls for each of those topic areas, quite
lengthy conversations about, OK, well, here are the things, you
know, here's what we thought. Let's see and see what we can
start. And every year we have to turn
down. I mean, you know, we had space
to accept about 1/5, just under 1/5 of everything that we
received. And we could have picked, you
know, a different 5th and it still would have been awesome,
right? It's really, really hard.
And I have a huge amount of admiration for my wonderful
content committee. You put in the effort, but I
also have a huge amount of admiration for every single
person who puts in a proposal every year.
They're all great, and I'm really sorry we couldn't accept
them. All right.
I mean, I'd love to be able to do that.
So, you know, the end result is, yeah, you know, we have a, we
have a pretty solid week of content.
It's one of the reasons why we keep the most of the sessions
quite short is because there's a lot to get through.
And the reality is it's hard for people to sit through more than
about 20 minutes and really pay attention.
Actually, the number of people that can present well for more
than about 2025 minutes is is not large either, right?
So it's one of the reasons we keep it short.
And there's lots of opportunity sort of after hours to, you
know, to come back around, find the presenter, have a
conversation, dig into stuff in in a little bit more more depth
and more detail. And so that brings me to the
after hours, which I know Jim, you asked about.
So couple of things that that we already know that we can talk
about on the opening evening. So on the Tuesday, right after
the opening keynotes in, in the late afternoon, we'll have a big
welcome reception in the Expo hall.
That's always a lot of fun. I'm hoping that we might have
you, you guys at IDAC doing something in there.
I know that's still a little bit up in the air, but fingers
crossed that comes off and there'll be lots of other stuff
going on in there as well. Actually, I didn't mention it,
but I talked about non human identity earlier.
We've actually on the show floor, we've got a non human
identity pavilions. There's going to be, you know, a
whole bunch of of very specific stuff going going on there.
Bunch of new sponsors, new vendors in in that particular
space that I think it's going to be really, really interesting to
see. A lot of the vendors also have,
you know, demonstrations, presentations down on the show
floor. So it's a, it's a pretty vibrant
environment both for networking and for learning.
Actually down there, I'm saying that'll be a lot of fun.
I'm saying down there, by the way, because in my head, I'm
still visualizing this in the Aria from last year where it
really was downstairs. This year, I think it's all on
the same floor, so it's a little easier to navigate.
So that's the the welcome reception.
We'll also have a closing party on the Thursday evening.
Again, remember, if you go to the closing party that there is
going to be material starting at 8:30.
Please be respectful. But that should be a lot of fun.
I don't have the details of that yet.
I know that it's happening. I know that it'll be great.
You know, there's, there's lots of opportunity in Vegas to have
fun with those sorts of things. So I'm sure that'll be fabulous.
And then I know that a lot of the kind of industry groups will
have various things going on during the week, right.
I know for sure that ID Pro will be doing something.
I don't have the details. I just know it's going to
happen. I have no doubt that there will
be others as well. And those will start to emerge
over the course of, you know, the the next few months between
now and and June. So there's, you know, there's a
lot to get stuck into. One of the tricks and Alan and
and Heather always like talking about this at that newcomer
session is pacing is really important, right?
There's a there's a lot during the week and if you want to get
the most out of it, you it's definitely a marathon, right?
You want to pace yourself very, very carefully so that you leave
at the end not feeling like you've, you know, completely
used up every last sort of gram of energy that you have.
Erg of energy. Save that for the flight at
home. That's when you can sleep.
Right. Yeah.
Drink lots of water. And I mean, there's just so many
good things going on. I think, you know, in addition
to everything you just talked about, you know, of course every
vendor is going to have like their own things going on.
So I'm sure people are looking forward to having their e-mail
inboxes inundated with every single vendor that they've done
business with or might do business with or never heard of
inviting them to do a bunch of different things.
Go have fun. You know, these, some of these
events are kind of cool. It's like, hey, go take
advantage of that kind of stuff. So it's, it's, it's a way to
kind of see the town sometimes and a lot of things going on.
But yeah, all and pace yourself. It's really good.
It's it's really good life advice, not just for
Identiverse. It's great for Vegas and it's
just great in general. OK, you guys need a new tagline.
I don't need the Santa Claus advice for identity advice for
life. I don't know if we can provide
any good advice for either of those things, but I'll take it,
you know, who knows? So Speaking of Vegas, kind of
end on a lighter note here. There's so much to see and do in
Las Vegas and I've been there many times.
I think at this point, I feel like I go there at least once or
twice a year for like the last 15 years or so.
Is there something, Andy, that that comes to mind when I say
give me like a place, an activity, a thing that people
should be checking out the next time they go to Las Vegas?
I was hoping you were going to phrase that question as what's
your favorite place to be in Vegas, and then my answer was
going to be, In all honesty, at the end of Identiverse week, my
favorite place to be is the departure lounge at the.
Airport say Mccarran International.
I don't think it's Mccarran anymore and whatever it's
called, but yeah. Yeah, whatever it's called.
You know, I in all fairness, I get so little time when I'm,
when I'm there to kind of get out and experience stuff.
And I know there's a huge amount to see and do there.
So I'm probably not the best person to give recommendations.
I will say this though, some of the food in Vegas is, I mean,
some of the restaurants are just out of this.
Well, I mean like like world beatingly good, right?
Like proper, proper world class quality.
And so to the extent that folks are into, you know, really good
cuisine, there's there's some great food in Vegas.
And I think, and most of my experience there has been with
the sort of hiring places, but I think if you go looking a little
bit, there are some really straightforward, you know, good,
honest home cooking kind of kind of food.
But it's really good, right? So yeah, I, that's, that's my
thing. I'd love to be able to get and
see some of the shows and, and all the rest of it.
And I'd love to get out of the city and go explore, you know,
I, there's a bunch of stuff to do and see around Vegas as well.
But yeah, apart from the departure lounge, it's all about
the food for me, so. There's nothing with that.
I, I still think of a nice Wagyu cut that I had four years ago,
Universe at, at Caesars. It was literally the best day
I've ever had. So I absolutely echo world class
when it comes to food and, and the entertainment goes around
it. Jim, what do you got for like a
place or an activity or something?
And I have a feeling I know what you're going to say, at least
one of the things you might say. Yeah, So I mean, I've been to
Vegas over 20 times, more than 20 times.
So I'm going to sound a little bit like a broken record because
I have to pick a few items, right?
And what I want to do is pick those within the context of
folks are only going to be there probably for a week, maybe tag a
few days on which I think is a great idea.
If you can do it. I would tag them on to the
beginning, but because by the end of the conference, you're
just going to want to leave. So my my pro tip would be if
you're going to tag on time, the preference would be before.
So number one, last year I went to this sphere.
I think it was pretty new at the time, so.
That's the one I thought that you would mention.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just like you
probably have never done anything like it before.
I know when I went, when I'd gone, it was a totally immersive
experience. I mean, I've done IMAX and
things like that, but being there at the Sphere, I had to
keep taking my eyes off the screen because it was so
immersive. Like I was starting to feel
scared, like I was flying and super.
Cool and you can see it flying in.
So if you're on a window seat, raise that window and depending
on the, the flight landing pattern, you can see it.
It's obviously much more visible at night.
And they usually do cool things on the side of it, you know, at
night or around it. But it's it's, it's a sight to
behold. I paused that sentence
completely wrong. I I had visions of the whole
sphere flying in, which was a whole different kind of.
That's a different experience, yeah.
So, so that's number one, that's on the strip #2 would take you
off the Strip to downtown Vegas. And I recall Fremont Street,
you'd probably have seen videos of it.
There's like an overhead canopy, which is actually like a huge TV
screen. And it's like what I think you
would think of Vegas if you, if your only experience was not
just going to the Strip. I mean, you know, on the Strip,
literally some of the hotels, if you get a cocktail, you can
spend $35 for a Margarita, which is insane, right?
Whereas you go to Fremont Street, you're talking about
under 10 bucks and it's a lot bigger.
So just that's just an example. I think overall it's just, you
know, kind of a more authentic experience and living within the
bubble of a resort on the Strip. It's very expensive and like, I
think it's just fun to break away from that.
The third thing I was going to mention, Mandalay Bay has a
really cool pool. I think it's like a beach and
from what I'm remembering, it has like a wave pool.
So it's kind of like that. If you ever been to a wave pool,
that's kind of the experience of the beach.
They actually have like real sand and everything.
So it's been a few years since I've been there, but it's kind
of a unique hotel from that perspective.
Mano is a cool spot. Mano is a cool spot.
I like Fremont Street. I didn't discover that until
maybe one or two years ago. And it's one of my favorite
places in Vegas. If you like live music, they
have like 4 different stages with different acts playing and
the place is big enough that you know they're, they're not
interfering with each other when you know when they're playing.
But if you're looking for something to do Friday night,
like after the show ends, like that's a great spot to go out
to. I mean, it'll be busy, it'll be
packed and you know, hopefully weather is, is good right from
like a heat perspective in Vegas.
But it is a cool spot to go to for sure.
I definitely like Fremont Street for just for the live music
aspect and and being outdoors. Because usually what happens is
I go to Vegas, I land, I go from the airport to the hotel and
then I don't see daylight sometimes until two or three
days later. But I definitely echo Fremont
Street. The one that I'm going to bring
up is a place that my brother introduced to me, I think it was
last year. It's called Area 15.
So he lives just South of Vegas on the just South of the strip.
And it's a place called Area 15. It's like AI don't know how to
describe it. It's kind of like a experience
type thing. Just weird, wild, you know, EDM
type music and it's just kind of a fun place to go to and just
try a bunch of different things. They had this really cool kind
of like immersive experience where they have it's a giant
room and there's projectors and it's not the sphere, you know,
quality or that level, but you're in this giant room and
the projectors are showing like a surround view, 360° space
travel and like being on the moon and a bunch of different
stuff. It's kind of super trippy and
it's a totally different vibe than anything else that done at
Vegas. And it's off strip.
So it's on the North End. I want to say it's kind of close
to Stratosphere, sort of to the West of that past the highway
there. But it's just a cool little spot
and it wasn't too busy last time I was there.
Maybe it was there, you know, off times and off season.
But it's a cool spot to kind of get off the strip and do stuff.
And they have a bunch of different things you can do
there. So, you know, one of those
silent discos right, where you put on the headphones and you
just kind of do, you know, black flight type things with trippy
music and different visual effects.
You know, I'm sure there is a a certain population that might be
listening like, yeah, that sounds totally for me.
And then there is like, just as making it like that sounds
terrible and I'm never going to do that.
So Jeff, you've always been a big fan of Vegas.
Are you big enough fan that you would actually live there?
I would, I would not. I mean, I would probably live
off strip somewhere obviously, but we know you're.
Not that rich to live on shrimp, yeah.
Right. We're going to do a we're going
to get a few more sponsors, make really identity at the center to
have me at the center of Vegas. There you go.
Life goals, that kind of thing. But yeah, I would live in Vegas.
I like the area. And, you know, I know it's a
desert and he's like my kryptonite, but it's a dry heat,
and that's what air conditioning is for.
I stay indoors, and then I go out at night like a vampire.
Yeah. So I would do that.
Sharp's answer is yes. And that's that's it.
That's what I'll take it. What does that shock you in any
way, Jim? No, I just, I mean it, it's
great. It's a great place.
I always look at it as like, it's a great place to visit, but
I wouldn't want to live there. But at the same time it's like I
see different videos of, you know, me, I like to go to the
gym. They've got some of the, they've
got a number of the best gyms in the world in Vegas.
So as far as like things to do and being the top quality, I
think I could, but it's expensive overall.
It's hot in the summer and I don't think I want to live in
the desert. It makes my nose very dry and I
don't like how that feels. So every time I visit a desert,
my sciences get very irritated. I That sounds like a minor
thing, but if you have to deal with that like every day for the
rest of your life, that's not a minor thing.
No, I get it. And I and I think I'm, you know,
the mindset where, like I said, I don't gamble, I don't really
drink. So those types of vices, you
know, I'm probably more resistant to.
It's not for everybody. I get it.
But I mean, I would live pretty much anywhere.
At least I would try it out. Let's just put that where I'd
say is a different story, but at an end of base number of times,
I would live off strip somewhere and if I want a good meal, I can
go to the strip or find a many number of off strip places.
There are so many good places to eat off strip.
I know we went to one and it was last year was year before that
that Daniel took us to. So if if you get a chance to go
out to dinner with RSM, do it. You're doing someplace good and
it's usually someplace that's not like, OK, been there before
or it's like, you know, kind of ho hum.
Usually we're picked up good spots that are kind of offbeat
and interesting. There you go pro temp self plug
for us as we go out because I'm sure we'll be doing something
dinner out there. We have rambled on for wow,
almost an hour, over an hour and 10 minutes.
So Andy, thank you so much for being part of this and thank you
for putting on helping put in the conference and continue to
advocate for that importance of business.
And I am tracked again. You know, that's something I
feel like we need more about that if we need to be able to
articulate the value of it and not everyone gets identity and
we need to be able to translate it into human speech sometimes.
So thank you for that, Andy. And it still is at the center.
It is still at the center. It is, yeah.
Thank you guys. So we'll go ahead and wrap it up
here. Don't forget we do have a
discount code, IDV 25-I D AC25 gets you 25% off.
Take advantage of that. Stack it up with whatever else
you got going on. And like I said, open invite.
You see, Jen or I, you know, walking around, please come up,
say hello, give us a fist bump, you know, you know, it's just a
nod, Say hey, you know, whatever.
That's cool. I'm always happy to to meet with
folks and, you know, set aside time to kind of chat and catch
up and, and just see what's at at the top of their minds, you
know, when it comes to whatever's going on.
So with that, we'll go ahead and leave for this week.
We'll have one center show notes for all this stuff, so you can
check it out with a link for Andy.
You can talk to him about your famous Vegas experiences or you
know, Andy, when you said earlier, it's like you're
rushing back and forth between, you know, things, that's pretty
much how I always see you. And so I always try to get a
point and say, come on and say, hey, thank you, you know, if
your support and stuff like that.
But I know you're busy. So sometimes it's just like a
nod or a point or something like that.
So I totally got it. So yeah, there we go.
We're on the web, IDC podcast.com, see you at
Identiverse. Check us out on our YouTube
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