You're listening to the identity at the center podcast.
This is the show that talks about identity and access
management and making sure you know who has access to what
let's get started. Welcome to the identity of the
center podcast, I'm Jeff. And that's Jim.
Hm. Hey Jeff, how are you?
Not so bad yourself? Good, go to move my new
recording studio. What do you think?
Well, it's definitely a different backdrop for sure.
I see a nun, long picture in the corner and a plain background,
which is very much like mine. I have not figured out what to
do with the wall behind me yet, as I'm moving stuff around in my
office, but I like the natural lighting.
Well, I'm actually liking this. You know, what is around 4:30
here. 4:30 p.m. And the amount of lighting is
just enough so you can see me but it doesn't highlight every
flaw in my face, every wrinkle and every line.
So I'm actually pretty good with 4:00 when I set this up is about
2:00 and I have a sudden or exposure on my again you know,
just to level set for everybody were in the u.s. in the northern
hemisphere obviously, so southernxposure.
I get the sun beating in through my window and around 2:00, this
afternoon was like Like it didn't the vibe didn't match
with my normal vampire mode. You know.
Normally I like to work in the dark and like somebody opens a
window. It's like the light you would
love the Samsung Beauty filter. On the Android phones that they
have that like does this just over-the-top aggressive
smoothening of facial like stones and features and things
like that. That's definitely way to go.
But that's also why we do an audio podcast because as we have
always said, we've got face. This radio and voices for a
silent movie. So that's just how we roll here.
Yeah, absolutely. And if we ever go video, it's
like, it's going to be the Snapchat version kind of like
you're venting about their. Well, people going to see us at
the, at the authenticate conference.
So we recorded as a couple weeks early cuz I'll be out, you know,
doing that. So, hopefully that'll go well
for us, but it'll be interesting.
Just getting out in the world again and meeting The Identical.
We can always tell people it's like a this, the covid-19. 15,
you know, I mean, we were endorsed the last 18 months,
eating food, and not exercising. And that number is adjustable,
right? So if I say oh, this is like the
covid, 30 or covid, 40, right? I think people would get that.
I think I think the the joke plays, all right what are we?
What are you talk? I did it because I think that's
enough inane banter for today. We're going to get it to a
pretty interesting conversation. One that I think is going to
maybe have questions that we don't all have answers for but I
think it's a good time. To bring these up because of the
prevalence and that's really around identity in the public
sector. So things like identity,
orchestration, identity proofing, those sorts of things
and really to kind of help explain some of the challenges
and opportunities we have around that we're welcoming back to the
show. Mike Vesey is the CEO and
president a tidy ramp. Welcome back to the show.
Mike hey thanks glad to be back. Yeah thanks for taking the time.
So you were with us all the way back in November of 2019, one of
our very first guests episode number One.
And now we're in the 100 and teens I want to say like 118
somewhere in that area. So it's been a while what's new
with ID ramp because the last time we talked was around kind
of Bashan identity and we just had a pretty good conversation
and you know, trying to see you know, what are the use cases
around it. So so what's new at ID RAM and
maybe you can also take this opportunity kind of refresh us.
You know, what is it that I d-- ramp looks to solve?
Sure. Yeah, happy to it.
A lot has changed. And yet a lot is the same, so
happy to be back and talk about, you know, where we're at today
versus a couple years ago. And some of the things that
we're seeing especially in public sector because, man, that
is that. That's a, that's a an area right
now that is moving at light speed, which is not typical for
public sector, right? Normally those things are very
slow and deliberate and we're seeing a lot of transformation.
All because of driven by necessity, you know, the world
changed about 18 months ago. So I d-- ramp we're you know,
still primarily focused on on really the identity
orchestration Journey. So we're helping organizations
Enterprise organizations as well as public sector kind of get
their arms around multiple identity sources as it pertains
to Service delivery. And those services are really
all over the board. They can be common, you know,
services like we all use. Everyday zoom and slack and
things like that or they can be, you know, highly customized
Public Service systems developed for the public sector.
Which is why I think this conversation is so applicable.
Always been focused their you know, very Dynamic platform
allowing you to bring in different identity providers and
and truly orchestrate that process, from what type of an
identity you bring in, will type of factors, want to deploy and
ultimately launching them out into into the service that Or of
their choosing and what's really changed in the last couple of
years is that the conversation we had, you know, very early on
about blockchain identity and really, the ability for us to
generate verifiable credentials. Based on those identity
attributes and allow individuals to control those and bring those
into the verification process. That's really we're seeing some
exciting growth there. And and really it leads into the
conversation, we're going to have today which is how do we
better identify Why, and how do we better use personal
identities as they flow through these very disparate systems.
So, so we've continued building out our products.
We to do things like, you know, integration of multiple factors
into our mobile digital wallet, including, you know, Biometrics
and things like that. That, of course we're seeing a
lot of Aventuras tin and and really just tried to to
complete, make a complete ecosystem.
That that an Your Enterprise can really use to help them from
where they are now and help them move into a more decent
decentralized future. It might give really on the
front line of a lot of these headline-grabbing type
initiatives, like mobile, driver's license.
And to remind everybody, this is something that Jeff.
And I talked a few weeks ago about mobile driver's license.
Starting out in the state of Georgia, which is my home state
vaccine. It's right.
That's on the tip of everyone's tongue, Jeff talked a little bit
about the conference that we're speaking at next week and get to
do some preparation. I would liken that to a vaccine
vaccine passport, if he Wills digitization of That vaccine
card that we had at least for me, it was stuffed in my wallet
and it's a much better way about going about it.
But, you know, digital diplomas of course digital citizen
identity. And what I think is like super
interesting is e-voting or I voting like internet voting
which, you know, at least globally is as got a couple of
seed use cases that maybe you can speak to but I guess I'm
wondering with you being on the Frontline.
What are you hearing from your public sector contacts and
customers about adopting? These kind of transformative
initiatives? Yeah Roy, great question and You
know, as I mentioned in the intro, it's incredibly timely
because things are changing so fast and that's just not typical
e-voting was something, you know, obviously we've talked
about it for years and, and it's always been, it's always been
taken with. Yeah, you know, at some point at
some day and now we have the change happening.
We have the transformation happening as public sector
entities, gear up to work and interact virtually with there.
With their customers, right? Us as Citizens and residents
were now laying the foundation and building the framework that
we can build really cool and creative Solutions like e-voting
on top of because we're going to have to have the identification
layer figured out. And I'm not saying that we've
got that figured out today and everything is downhill from
here. A lot of moving parts and Adam,
we're continuing to evolve and move the needle, but it's
happening. There's absolutely no choice for
our Government to go back to a to a in-person world, right?
There's just no choice to do that anymore.
We have to transform those processes and provide some, some
virtual interaction points. And that's going to allow us to
really lay the found work, the foundation that we can build a
lot of other creative and, and forward-moving processes around.
You mentioned, Health, passports there.
I mean, they're everywhere, right?
We hate the word, passports, nobody likes to use health, But
the reality is, there are things happening that you know u.s. is
talking about opening borders again, Canada is opening the
borders again and all of those things whether we like it or
not, have a dependency of some kind of health, check and, and
status. And and so those processes are
being put in place now. And our hope is that more often
than not, they're in some type of an interoperable format, that
that can be used. And in and in a more broad
context than just, this is my solution.
And that's your solution. So Rodham, interesting things
we're hearing, you know, two years ago when we did or
whatever how long will it go, it's but we did the podcast.
We view to ask me, our primary customer composition, it was all
larger Enterprise organizations and that is dramatically shifted
in the last 24 months. We're now we now have a ton of
interest from government entities, public sector
organizations want Do really cool Solutions and I say cool
but to them it's like just staying alive, right?
They have to deliver their services and they have to do to
virtually I think it's cool because we're finally pulling
the consumer into that conversation and and of course
you know, digital diplomas education.
We're working on a couple projects there that are
incredibly exciting to that. We've actually got a state
that's going to be issuing, digital diplomas, for all of
their graduating seniors. Next year, in an open format,
how cool is that? At, you know, we can use that.
We can use that credential for higher education for Workforce,
consumption all over the place, and those types of things are
happening. And it's just a really, really
exciting time to be an identity. And boy, not many people have
said that, well, it's certainly challenging for sure.
I mean, we're talking about scale and scope, right?
Of a lot of different issues that are out there and you kind
of talked about this already as the velocity with which, you
know, Except there tends to move is not that quick generally
speaking might have been forced into the light here, right?
With pandemic and things like that.
But it's also expensive to get a lot of this kind of framework of
of tools and Technologies and processes and all that stuff,
kind of put in place. I got imagine that that cost in
the complexity has really kind of been pretty significant and
you know with the challenges that we see from budgeting and
funding and all that sort of stuff, I guess, what are your
thoughts on? How do you see, you know, people
who are in the public sector? Who might be listening, might be
decision-makers, kind of navigating, some of those key
challenges. Yeah, the key challenges, nobody
can, nobody can really afford lift and shift.
And so we can't come in with with a forklift solution, right?
We focus a lot, and I know a lot of us in the industry, spend, a
lot of time thinking about those bridges, those digital Bridges.
We have to provide a way to really Understand where these
organizations are no, no sector more important than public
sector because it's it's so diverse and their customer base
is so diverse, in an Enterprise. We have the luxury of saying
here is our remote access process, and it will be adopted.
You don't really have that luxury in public sector.
You have to build your systems a lot more inclusive and open than
that. So standards are huge.
We have to find standards. Based Solutions and we have to
speak their language. So it's one something that we
focus on a lot here at ID ramp is really just how do we provide
the solution that brings value and simplicity and friction
reduction in the Traditional landscape today and then
allowing a modular bolt on, you know, a modular integration
point to to evolve into digital identity and by supporting all
of those, So we don't look at just one solution and say, this
is a solution, we need to sell, we try to come in and and and be
inclusive of what's going on today and then provide options
and flexibility from moving beyond that.
The ultimate goal obviously is that when we get to a purely
decentralized world and everybody's carrying around all
these credentials and verification ID ramp really,
shouldn't be needed. Right?
We, our goal is to put ourselves out of business some day and
that's going to be a long, long time coming but but that's where
we need to get to and we just try to provide that open at open
platform and I think that's the most important thing we can.
We can keep, we can keep in mind because you're right.
It's moving faster than it ever has.
It's costly. And it's very complex to go in
and replace these core systems. So I think we need to fracture
that and really think small and modular.
And you know, that'll that'll hopefully get us.
Get us where we need to be consumers, are going to come
along faster than the providers, right?
I mean, our consumers are incredibly nice.
Like when you put a challenge in front of us, as, you know, as
consumers, we find a way through it.
And with the technology we have at our Disposal today, I think
that's going to be somewhat easier.
The bigger challenge is going to be on the infrastructure side.
Well, I think the infrastructure poses kind of a unique
challenge, right? Because a lot when you think
public sector, you think, you know, for writer for wrong, you
know, archaic kind of old aging crumbling infrastructure whereas
that might be true for one country.
Tree, but not another. I think of a country like
Estonia which does have digital ID, they do digital voting and,
you know, I think some some folks look to them as sort of is
that the future, right? Maybe they don't have all the,
you know, the the, the issues kind of worked out of it yet.
I'm sure there's certain concerns around it, but I think
there's a big challenge between starting fresh or how do you
take, what you currently have and not alienate your existing
citizens, for example, and pull them along into this new world?
All right, and I think there's a lot of challenges.
How do you? How do you basically re-identify
or reissue? A credential to literally every
one of your citizens, if you don't have some way to pull them
along into, whatever this new process, or this new system
looks like yeah, yeah, it's that's a great point.
And actually, in some ways we're fortunate that were that we're
not further along and we don't have a lot of, you know, things
that we need to go back and re-educate or No, for example,
if we would build what I think, you know, is our ideal today and
digital in the digital ecosystem of be very highly decentralized
using things like we talked about last time which is
blockchain. You know, writing those
credentials in public Ledger networks that nobody has to to
own and maintain but had we built this 10 years ago right?
We may not have had any choice but to use some of those
centralized systems. So in some respects, you know, I
feel like that I feel like We are now is is right where we
need to be, which, of course, is a natural feeling and the
technologies that have evolved and come along not to mention
that the power that we all now carry in our smartphones, gives
us a really, really unique opportunity to not only do this,
but do it right, and do it in a way that we can, that we can
continue to build on and not be staring at this thing.
And five years going, well, we screwed that up now.
What, you know, and so I think we have a really interesting
opportunity and I can't say that we could have done this at any
time prior to to now. So it maybe you know, maybe this
is when it's supposed to happen, it might going to take about
public sector and ikey in general was specific to.
I am I think of you know, a heterogeneity, a heterogeneous
type environment so you have a lot of different technologies
that need to communicate with one another.
And they, you know, in architectures, that support that
type of heterogeneity at scale, you need layers of abstraction
you need orchestration and I know those are kind of industry
buzzwords but am I on the right track?
Is that kind of what you see out there and if so, like kind of
talk us through that tacos, you know about how that
orchestration piece in the layers of abstraction fit into
the overall. Picture.
Yeah. Great Insight.
I mean that's that's exactly right.
And I mentioned this earlier standards are are so important
here being able to follow not only some some new
forward-facing standards that are that we try to achieve some
level of interoperability but also existing standards and how
we enter operate with with those identity.
Silos that are filling our world right now.
And, you know, we have to We have to provide that
interoperability, we have to provide some control for us as
as residents and citizens to to play some part in that, right?
We have to be involved in those consent decisions.
We have to be involved in what information we send that this is
just so over utilized. But you know it's the I walk in
to order a drink at a restaurant or something, right?
It's that identity information that I have to disseminate in
order to determine my age. What do we do today?
It's horrible, right? I give them my address, I gave
them my birthday. I give them all this other
information because I'm presenting a paper credential.
So being able to do that digitally, and I need to be in
the middle of that process. So that that's going to
transform things because we're not set up that way.
Right now, all of our, all of our identity, verifications are
based on Legacy systems that homerun all that information
back to some Mothership for, you know, for identity verification.
And we need to break that in order to break that we have.
Brace all of those identities silos and make sure they can be
included in this message as well.
You know, we can't just say, all right, that was yesterday and
this is today. We don't have the luxury of
making that break. We have to include those those
variety of existing Solutions and and really orchestrate them,
right? At the risk of over utilizing
that word, but we have to allow them to play in this journey and
incorporate the ability to do that back.
Backhaul when needed. But then also some options to
take that information and say, okay I know we have to go back
and get it now. But can we just credential eyes
that is there anything in here that we can just that we can
just do to take the dependency off of that centralized
connections, more often than not.
The answer is going to be. Yes, there is.
But sometimes, you know, we may just have to go back and do that
check. And that's just fine.
We'll live with that. And you will evolve out of that.
We can't just simply turn it off.
So, I like that question. It was a It's great and that is
in my mind, right? That's that's orchestration,
that's what it means. We've got all this stuff.
We have to be able to embrace it and Carry It Forward into our
vision of what, you know, tomorrow needs to be.
I mean, you mentioned it, you know?
Oh kind of utilizing that word orchestration.
I feel like identity orchestration has a lot of Buzz
Enos around it in different areas, whether it's Cloud
on-prem. Now we're talking kind of like
Sovereign identity, right? Things like that, you know, I
think there's a difference between talking about it, maybe.
Seeing it trying things out but you know is there anybody doing
this actually in the real world from a production standpoint
where there is an e-government project or something like that
that that you can kind of point to and say you know here's
here's an example of how in the real world some government
entity is kind of moving forward on this and kind of leading this
this identity transformation. Yeah and it's incredibly
exciting. There there are a couple.
I mean there are many I'm sure that have been going on.
For years. But without question the most
exciting is the announcement that was made just probably a
couple of months ago now with Ontario.
So Ontario released a digital identity strategy for all of
their residents citizens. Did an incredible job not only
of Designing the technology to be privacy-preserving.
All of the things that we hit on, you know, before secure
verifiable sovereign. Control and and voluntary,
right? So they hit on all those key
points but what they really did well is is put the education
together, right? So if you go out and find on
their website, they have an entire section of the website
about Ontario, digital service, and digital identity service,
and how it's going to be used where you plant, where you can
plan on using it, how you get it, what it means and and that
is a, it's a great template for for all of us to understand the
thinking that's gone up going on there.
And, and I think it is, you know, that I do know, because
we're kind of involved in the technology.
I know the technology underlying, this and it's solid.
It's great stuff. It is privacy-preserving and it
will work the scenario. I just provided with proving of,
you know, proving of age. It'll have all of those zero.
Knowledge proof fundamental technology, Innovations,
included in this in this deployment.
So I would suggest we all go. Go and take a look at what
they're doing up there because they're doing some really cool
stuff. And, and again, you know, we now
have to build those bridges for all of their existing merchants
and businesses to do to be able to contribute and participate
and try to give them an easier way to do that, you know, to to
embrace this new digital ID, as as consumers evolve themselves
or voluntarily sign up to, you know, Part of this digital ID
ecosystem. So that's a, that's a great one.
There's a lot of movement, there's a lot of stuff going on
in Europe. Germany has a great initiative
over there for digital identity, but without question the best,
I've seen from a organization perspective, and education is
what's going on in Ontario and might confer going to be doing
all these, you know, future facing.
I'd say Cutting Edge technology, initiatives, mobile, driver's,
license, internet voting vaccine Passports, it can't be based on
passwords for a passwords. Are I feel like our our show is
99% around kill the password password stock.
Everybody knows that we can't build the future on the
password. So one I guess you know is that
when you're talking about all these things, can we just assume
the password is not going to be there?
Or is that too, too? Middle of an assumption or is
that too uneducated to think that we're actually ready to get
away from that? And then what is really holding
us back from past for those future in your, in your opinion?
Yeah, password suck. I've got t-shirts, actually that
we made up it just has our logo and it says password suck.
There Is No Escape. I'm going to I'm Really Gonna,
I'm gonna put myself out there a little bit here but there's no
excuse. If an application is written
today that It uses a password then that is on the developer to
own that there is absolutely no excuse to use passwords today.
Even if you use a simple verify, my email to factor credential or
whatever, it's much much better than than requiring registration
and the creation of a password and every single day I want to
interact with some service. And guess what?
The first thing they asked me to do is Create a password so I
could not be more passionate about it.
There's absolutely zero reason. Today, the password is exist
other than our stagnant thinking and and really the the lack of
forward momentum within the Enterprise as the carrier.
And I don't want to blame Enterprise.
I just think they're perfectly suited because they can they can
demand it and and you know, for the most part Part, everyone's
moving that direction, right? In various different ways, some,
you know, better than others. But at the end of the day, if
we, if we remove them, not mask, mm, not put them in some kind of
a manager application that fills it in for me, they're still
exposure there. I want him gone, right?
I have the ability to hold cryptographic connections
between myself by, you know, with help of my smartphone or
whatever and every website. Every person every car,
everything I interact with. I have the power to do that.
I'm just not doing it because the applications have been
retrofitted to to use it yet. But passwords have to go away.
I mean, I hope we can get to a point where we don't even have
to have this conversation. Like I said, I it needs to
become socially, uncool right to create a password.
And once that happens on the consumers, go, well I would buy
your products or I would use your site.
If you didn't ask me to put in a password then I think we can get
somewhere and I see that day coming.
Oh, I just wish it were today. Yeah, and I think that probably
my, I think the bigger issue is exactly where you went, which is
that there's still these edge cases where it's kind of like,
oh well, that's where a biometric wouldn't work or
position based authentication, wouldn't work, but I still think
there are misconceptions related to, you know, Biometrics,
whether it's facial scanning. Or fingerprint that somehow your
your face has now turned into something that if there's a data
breach someone's going to have a picture of your face, right?
So I think there are concerns about the use of facial scanning
technology I'm wondering are there ways that we can still
respect privacy and at the same time, accomplish the same result
so fingerprints voice. Us match or not using a
biometric using possession but not using a biometric.
I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
Yeah I know I think that's that's great a great way to look
at it because there is a really mean there's a lot of
conversation around facial scan and and Biometrics in general.
And there is a right way, there's a wrong way.
That's all of course objective in my the the Biometrics that we
have and and possess are just factors I would much rather use
something that is you know that's tied to me as a as a
proof than a password or or something I know but again
that's book, you know, put that in the right context if it's me
providing that biometric in a zero knowledge way that is
basically just going to check some you know check some box and
say, okay, yep, that looks like Mike And then pass along the
fact that yes, that's Mike, I'm okay with that.
If it's passing that whole my a biometric then, you know,
there's there's issues there and I think that a lot of that is
the biggest challenge. We're going to have is, is that
we're, you know, our challenge or our goal is to make this
technology easy for the masses and we can't explain.
We just have to know that it's trusted, we can't explain what's
happening. We just have to develop in a way
that the consumer is comfortable.
With with what's going on. I think it's absolutely
essential that we do some, some type of biometric factor in a
much better way than we do today, right.
I use Biometrics to log into my bank account today, but if I
scan my face and hand you my phone, you can do anything you
want to do, right? That should that be the case?
I would feel personally, I would feel much better.
If, my bank said, okay, during this session we're going to
scan, you know, once every 5 seconds or three, S or
continual. We're going to continue to scan
if I turn that phone away it locks, right?
That's how application should be designed.
And and that's the use in my opinion or where, you know
facial scanning technology and biometric Factor type
Technologies should be used. So I think there's a I think
there's a huge role in Biometrics and the in the in our
future especially in the future of digital identity, there's no
question. We have a great way today to
derive an identity. We can Terry identities through
credentials you know and cryptographic connections but we
absolutely need those biometric factors in order to secure our
applications and provide that you know that last mile of
defense and things, get much easier.
Once we do that, right? We reduce fraud, we reduce we
certainly elimination of passwords.
We keep having that conversation but they should go away in favor
of who I am, you know, we shouldn't have a Persona at all.
All that I create I should just use me so.
So I think that's going to there's a huge role there and
that technology is evolving. I think we've seen, you know,
the market explode with biometric service providers.
I know we've certainly seen our share biometric service
providers coming in and saying, hey, you know, we really need a
better carrier to carry Biometrics into the identity
market. So, you know, we've had some
interesting conversations there and and I just think there's a
huge a huge future You're as Biometrics really are
assimilated into our, that's a probably not the right way to
say it, but as our Biometrics are integrated into applications
and and the development of applications and authentication
systems. Here's a, here's a question for
you because I think Biometrics interesting, obviously that's an
area that a lot of I think people are hanging their hats on
right whether it's voiceprint face print fingerprints at some
point in the future. Future, maybe in this is kind of
already happened, you know, there's this concept around
inserting an RFID chip right into your wrist, your hand, your
finger, whatever it may be. Here's my question though.
Is that biometric authentication, if it's a
physical device that's inserted into you would you consider that
biometric authentication? Know, it's it's another Factor
now, depending on the scope of the integration of that device,
if that device when removed can detect that it's been Moved.
Then you can make an argument for biometric, right?
If it says, oh hey, I'm no longer in Mike.
I'm now in Jeff but then then absolutely there's a biometric
component to that, but if not, then it's just another factor,
it's no more, it's of no more value to convenience features
what it is. It's a no more value for me,
from an identification perspective than pulling out my
physical driver's license from from that, you know, from that
perspective. So I think when we talk about
things like that, it's for convenience.
Right. It's almost like the the pet
chipping there's a great analogy.
Mike just Associated. RFID tags for people's pets.
Will make a headline somewhere but it really is a convenience
thing, right? It's not about identification at
that point. It's about reducing the friction
from me and my day-to-day processes.
And I mentioned this, a lot to my team.
When we're trying to explain what I want the user experience
to be, I'm going to date myself. You remember the old, you know,
get smart when you know Max Mart was be busy.
He was, he was walking, you know, he was walking down the
hallway and all the doors, just open and just got out of his
way. That's how my identity Journey
needs to be right. I want a hundred different doors
that are protecting the whatever I'm trying to get to, but I
don't want to have to interact with any of them.
I just want him to get out of my way and that's where I think
Biometrics provide something that we can't do even in, you
know, today when we say password removal, you know what id rap.
Oh gosh, we can remove your passwords.
We ask you to form a connection, maybe scan a QR You are code,
who wants? I mean it's still a lot of
friction, right? And and is it better than typing
in a password or having to go and look it up on a notepad
stuck to my monitor? Absolutely, it's better than
that, but that's not where we need to get to write,
eventually. We're going to get to.
I'm just me and I'm interacting with the things everything in my
way, knows how to look for me and figure out who I am and just
get out of my way. So that's, that's my Holy Grail.
I hope to see it in my lifetime. We got to get going, fair
enough. I think.
Feel the same way. I think it's a way around,
right? Something like that.
So, you know, like this has been a fantastic conversation.
I want to be kind of cognitive the time that we have with you
and this has been pretty pretty heavy conversation to around
public identity and a lot of the concerns and challenges that
kind of goes along with it. So what I want to do is start to
pull us up to the surface and and I'm a little bit of a
lighter note here with you, so we're going to go something
non-identity related. And what I have for you is how
many places have you lived? And what was your favorite one?
I am so boring. I've lived in a total of three
places. And you know my favorite even
though it was the shortest and that's probably why it's my
favorite was Tucson. Arizona and I love Tucson
because I could drive up to Mount Lemmon and snow ski and I
could drive down and play golf in the same afternoon.
And at that stage of my life, I didn't have a lot else to do but
Ski and Golf and it was great. It was absolutely awesome.
I love Tucson, I was only there for a couple of years and I
lived in Omaha for a number of years.
Did my Start up out there in the mid to late 90s and what a great
Community, you know, just just unbelievable.
People will businesses thriving, Tech Community, loved it but you
know, home is Iowa. And this is where I started and
probably we're all finished. I love to get out of Iowa as
everyone in Iowa does, right? We love to go.
We love to go south when it's cold and North when it's hot but
it's where I've been. So I am I'm pretty boring.
Only been three, Well, two sides that bad right?
I think any, I don't know any way to who would argue with, you
know, skiing during the day or, you know, and then going
golfing. That's that's things like a
pretty full life. I would be happy with that.
I'm pretty boring too. I'm doing the math in my head
and I only go up to four different places and I've been
in the Chicago area for the vast majority of my life.
That's so we know I think when we want to caveat the the one
place we're limiting it, I think to a kind of a geographical City
kind of area. Certainly moved around the
Chicago area quite a bit. I don't know if I can really
kind of call it my favorite because it's really my only
adult really kind of memory around it.
I've been here since I was like six years old so I don't get to
see the mountains. We just don't have them here.
It's all flat, it's all traffic. It's all construction.
People are really nice. The food is really good but man,
I love when I get to travel and see different types of
geography. So I love going to Monterrey.
Mexico. For example, we We've had some
clients, we've made some friends down there and every time I'm
down there, I just kind of like sit and stare at the giant
mountains and, you know, that just the way that it looks is so
fantastic. I love going to California as
well for the same reason, but also for the ocean I'm not much
of an East Coast guy. I'm not a heat and humidity guy.
So for me, I think temperature is very important as well and
low humidity. But you know I meant you know
I'm boring to in that four places, mostly Chicago.
And you know, maybe at some point in the future I will
spread my wings and fly all bit more but like you I love to
travel and see other areas Jim. What about yourself?
So I've moved around quite a bit, I count nine distinct
places that I've lived, many more addresses than just 9, but
9, distinct places my favorite place to live and I think this
is, if anybody's looking for a place to move to in the United
States gives Charlotte North Carolina, a consideration.
It's like a small City with all the big city stuff.
It's a home airport for what, what is now American Airlines?
Whether you use it was us, are it, you know, that they're
putting in like, Light Rail and things like that.
But you can really afford to live there.
So I definitely would recommend that to anybody who's thinking
about trying to find their City. But I want to just mention one
because I think it's a funny story was that I lived in
Middletown. Pennsylvania.
Do you guys have any idea of what's in Middletown?
Pennsylvania. That special, it's a Three Mile
Island. Three Mile Island is the one
location the United States where he had a major meltdown of a
nuclear power plant. And so when that took place,
there was a release of toxic nuclear gas from from the tower
and you know, obviously cause problems that made people want
to not live there. So one of the things that the
electric company did was they were giving electricity away for
like 20 years after the accident.
Well, I had moved to that town right before that, that ended.
So I was able to get free electricity for a few months
while I was there. And then even when they start
charging for electricity was extremely cheap, so kind of a
cool story. I'm glad you established a
timeline there because I thought maybe you were going to say you
had something to do with the Three Mile Island accident.
And I was gonna start to ask you some questions and maybe
validate some things for us. But I like how you saved it at
the end and said, oh, I was there towards the end of the 20
years of free electricity so you kind of skated away on that one.
Yeah, right, well I have no problem dating myself but I'm
not quite old enough to have actually played a part in that.
You know, it's funny. You mention Charlotte because my
wife and I are actually thinking A about moving to that area.
We've been looking at Asheville quite a bit, which is a little
bit West of Charlotte. I have a friend who lives north
of the city of Charlotte and, you know, there's mountains,
it's the blue. I think it's the Blue Ridge
Mountains or in that area. And the weather is a lot
different in the Asheville area start at the base of the
mountains. So it's not quite as hot and
humid, but I'm not going to say anything bad about Asheville,
but if we ever get back to being Road Warriors at the level that
we were at, you'd be better off your Charlotte because you've
got International Airport there. Otherwise you can fly from
Asheville to Charlotte or drive the two hours to get there, each
time, and there's a Nationals more expensive than Charlotte at
least when I was there, you know, eight years ago.
It was, it was a lot more expensive than Charlotte.
Yeah. For sure, I think that's the one
thing I would miss about moving out of Chicago is over here for
all its faults and quirks as I can get anywhere.
On one flight pretty much. I very rarely have to take a
connection unless I'm going somewhere super International.
I Even Paris London Frankfurt. All those are spots, I can get
two and one flight, which is pretty nice.
So, I would certainly miss that. I can get to Chicago.
That's a Chicago or Denver. It's not the only places like
places, like a good too, but I agree Charlotte's a beautiful
area. Now, you may be brought to you
by the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.
It's a great area because it's so accessible.
Like you said, these are lines. You can get right in, but it
doesn't feel like you're in a big big city I like, yeah.
So we turn this in a commercial for Charles.
Nice job. Jim exactly.
Go Charlotte. All right, well why don't we
start to wrap things up here? Mike you've been great with your
time and we certainly appreciate spending it with us before we
go. Any kind of final thoughts or
words of wisdom. That folks can kind of take away
from this conversation, as they're thinking about, you
know, Sovereign Identity or public Identity or really
anything. We've kind of covered here.
That people should be thinking about.
Yeah, don't overthink it just go right Technologies.
There, there are plenty of people.
That can help you start the journey get where you want to
go. I see too many people that are
that have been sitting on the fence for for way too long,
trying to figure out trying to wait for the right man.
It's got to be perfect. I'm going to wait for this.
This next thing, you know, this next thing that comes out that's
going to get us where we need to go.
Trust me on this. I've been doing this my entire
professional career. There is no Holy Grail.
We're not going to get to this perfect Utopia it.
We got Oh, and you have to start moving the needle, so move the
needle and you know, will come back next year and we'll move it
a little bit further, but technology is solid and we're
ready to help people take that Journey, all of us collectively
as an industry, ready to help people take that Journey.
So let's get going. And let's start, let's start
changing changing our identity futures for the better.
That sounds like a great Battle Cry here.
I'm ready to go, go into battle with you Mike Like let's do it.
Jim how about yourself? Well, Jeff, I keep getting more
and more one over on identity management with blockchain
decentralized, identity. I'm not sure.
I'm still at that point where it's like, I can fully
articulate, the use cases, but it's, it doesn't seem to be
going away, and it seems to be kind of showing up as like, hey,
you know, here are some real world examples of how it can be
useful. I think, you know, Ingrid of the
password. Biometrics wallets.
It's just it's starting to connect and even in this old
brain of mind that the pathways are starting to the diodes are
starting to connect with one another and I don't know, I'm
starting to get one over. I've imagined, I was a lot of
loose wires and stuff going on out there, but we'll leave that
for another conversation. So I think that's a good spot
that we can leave it for this week.
I'm going to have some some way. It's in the show notes for you
be able to connect with, Mike on LinkedIn, you can learn more
about ID rap as well. They're a tidy ramp our am p.com
and also put a link to Ontario's digital identity.
They have a great website that kind of really is, probably one
of the more transparent ones that I've seen, as to how
they've approached us. They've got a whole section
really on their timeline of how they've explained how they're
going about doing it. So I think would be interesting
in some point, maybe if we can pull some strings and maybe get
someone from that team over here to You know what, how they've
done? It kind of bought gone about
doing this, so definitely check them out.
We'll have that link in the show notes as well as links for Jim
and myself on LinkedIn. We're always happy to connect
the folks who are listening. Send to show ideas, concerns
comments, tell us we're stupid. Tell us, were great, doesn't
matter either one works for us. So with that, we'll go ahead and
leave it. You can also find us on the web
and its identity at the center.com and on Twitter at
idac podcast. Mike, thanks so much for your
time. Jim thanks so much for your
time. And we'll talk with everyone in
the next one. Thanks guys.
Thanks for listening to the identity at the center podcast.
If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe and
visit us on the web and identity at the center.com.