You're listening to the identity of the center podcast.
This is a 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 gem a gem. Hey Jeff.
Sorry, I couldn't hear you over there.
What do you say? And over this James Brown.
Yeah, exactly. So for those who don't know, we
are live at the octane 22 conference in San Francisco.
We're also joined here by one of the superstars on the RSL of
July done. A team.
His name is Ben Dowd. Welcome Ben.
Thank you. Pleasure to be here.
Yeah so before we get you started, you know get started
here. I think what I things will get a
want to give a shout-out to Steven Strong and April Luhan.
And really the entire octave team for hooking us up with.
But I can say is our first sort of like official room where we
actually have our logo on the door and we have like this
temporary white-walled room in the middle of the show for.
So there's a lot of background noise.
Technically I think we're in the same area as all the gold
sponsors. Yeah so so so yeah kind of makes
this golden it's not as sweet. Sweet Jim I'm sorry but it's All
right. I like this better actually will
come up with a name for it. Yeah.
So we're going to be an octane all week plan is to bring up a
so it's pretty much every day for the next few days.
We've got a lot of good things lined up, but if we want to give
a shout-out to the octave teamed up, we want to give a shout-out
to the RSM team. They're the ones that are
funding our travel to be out here.
So thank you very much, the RSM side.
Why don't we get into sort of like recap a day one.
So it is Tuesday night. As we record this, the sounds
that you hear behind all of us, is the opening sort of get
Heather, what do you call it? Like social bash, the welcome
reception, welcome reception, thank you very much.
I was looking for, there's a DJ playing lots of people here and
yeah, good times. Yeah, I mean, it's really fun.
A couple of shout outs that I'd like to give people.
I met one was Paul petite and hopefully got it is the class
name on it. Yeah, I'm sorry 100% sure, but
Paul came up and introduced himself and He's a fan of the
show listens as he walks his dog, which I thought was really
cool and all the doctors and I'm already on among them.
I'm on board with that. I'm a fan of Paul, Paul's a fan
of the show, it's symbiotic. How did he recognize you here?
He did. You recognize me probably by my
crazy hair. Okay, God, I would say, all
right, I didn't want to say anything, but yeah, the other
person like to give a shout-out to is Tomas.
Yes, it's him. Moss is writing haikus for
whoever wants a haiku, but you have to give them a little bit
of information and it's what's on your mind.
And so what was on? My mind is killing the password.
As you could imagine Island, you woke up and shows violence.
Yes. I went right for the violence
and he took that violence and turned it into a call for
patriotism around killing the password.
So let me read my Haiku is from up on high.
The Herald's cry. Passwords are dead o, Let
Freedom Ring beautiful. That's how I mean that you could
put that into any historical sort of context or fantasy
context. I can see that as very much
being a Game of Thrones episode, it could be a Game of Thrones.
I was thinking of they can take our lives, but they can never
take our freedoms, but they can take our passwords.
Take our passwords. That was the third, the third.
Of that. That most people don't know.
They don't teach you that in history books, the support where
the video cuts off for most people.
So let's talk about the octave conference bent you and I spent
some time sort of beginning the day at the kind of the partner
side of things. There were a couple things that
they announced will get into that.
And what s I just realized this is your first time on the show,
it is. So we have to find out what your
your identity background is. Oh no, it is identity.
Something that you chose or did it Choose You?
Ah, a prepared question Yeah, so identity about five or six years
ago was something that I was told I would be assuming the
role in as I rolled off a program and took a the spot of
another person who had moved out.
So I was kind of put in charge of the identity rains for the
company with little to no experience before doing that.
And I really discovered both a skill at it and it was it was
actually something that I really enjoyed doing and so Really
excited to be on a identity. Eccentric team now and really
focusing on only identity for the most part.
So they're happy to be here. So it shows you for sure.
Then sort of you did make the conscious decision to say that
I'm going to be an idea. Now I know you have yes but when
I first got into it it was it was an assignment that I was
given. Got it.
All right, so let's talk I guess the the opening part for you and
I was the partner stuff, you know probably I'll be honest, a
little probably boring for most people who are listening and I
met seven areas, but really kind of talking about right?
How octal engages with Partners to really kind of help make sure
the product of Clements go, well, and they're getting the
maximum value of the product. There were a couple things that
were of notes. Interested, a, I don't want to
steal the Thunder want to give you all the honours.
Oh, so, what was I was taking notes?
Yeah, I'm sure you were. So I I think the the big one,
most visually represented is the new brand.
They've tightened up the word. OCTA, the font, put some, put
some meaning behind it around. I believe it was stability and
consistency, a little bit more trustworthy of a logo.
It seemed to be the play, they were making and then the, the
actual logo itself that they call the aura, the, the
traditional OCTA blue 0 is now more of a, it reminds me in
Jeff, you put a very well earlier of piano keys in a
concentric Circle. And they what they do in their
little animation, as they zoom in on, and actually comes out as
a little video, reels that tell the story of someone or multiple
people's identity. So it was a very nice Dynamic
visual. The I thought it looked like
piano keys. I'm no, I'm I'm one hundred and
forty seven percent positive that that's not the intention
the way they described it is facets.
I guess, you know, sort of like I guess to kind of talk about
the complexity of identity How to connect, you know, all come
together. But either.
Anyway, there is a beautiful people than me just like people.
Yeah, like there's little heads on the end of them, right?
Know you, I think from far away you could, you could think that
way, I believe they wanted it to be like the old-fashioned slide
inserts or something that are usually photos.
But in this case, they were little video reels.
But yeah. To the facets that show a person
and well we saw April in the hallway.
Yeah. After the announcement, Gave a
good night. Yeah, she was talking about is
like it for, you know, the the old heads out there like myself,
right? Member you have a, you have
like, the, the photo slides work, like, chunk chunk chunk
kind of around the circle, right?
That was sort of the thought that I had around it, as well as
the in April and each of those things, it's kind of hard to
describe on an audio podcast. You have to watch the video but
essentially each kind of floats up into some sort of, You Know,
video or picture, whatever it may be, I thought it was cool as
a really slick. You had to be there animation.
Yeah, I had to be there. So, that was kind of the partner
stuff. There was also one other thing
that they announced you want to talk about the demo platform.
Yeah, so the, the new demo dr.com has been released and I
think the coolest part about it is it is a it's a fully built
out demo platform, very similar to what they had in Octa prize
previous to this, but it is available to anyone and everyone
you can, you can log in, you can make an account, you can save,
you know, anything that you built in the demo platform but
that, that big differentiator from what Used to be to what it
is. Now, I think is, is the
availability along with, you can build, cic, or customer
identity, Cloud capabilities, formerly known as auth0.
And, and I think that entire demo platform being available to
anyone who wants to get in there and even just try it out or demo
it for for customers or anything like that.
I think is a really huge enabler and is very smart of them to do.
Oh, yeah. For sure, I think anytime you
can visualize how it works. And see it.
Yeah, that's worth so much more than just kind of talking about
it. So that was kind of cool
anything and I had to ditch out for a couple hours to take some
meetings but anything the afternoon it was interesting.
Let's see, is he Scrolls through his nose is as I go through my
notes, I think the afternoon was a lot more conversation panel
based there was, there was a couple of business success
stories. So it was much less
announcement, heavy and much more.
You know what are these? Individual people think about
this specific use case. So yeah not as not quite as much
announcements, I would say. What is the tagline for the
conference to something like identity is personal?
There's there's to it. Yeah, it's like your identity as
yours or something. Your idea, your identity belongs
to you. Yeah.
And the other one from the, from the partner Summit is better
together like peanut butter and jelly, or fish and chips.
Yeah, I mean, the better better together, we hear a lot, you
used a lot, the personal identity, peas reminded me of
self-serve, self, Sovereign identity.
The idea that you could have your identity, T.
You own it? It's not something that's issued
by an identity provider, baby, digital wallets.
And so makes me wonder if that's part of the Future Vision is,
you know, you've got, of course, Enterprise IDP, of course you've
got commercial IDP, what about identity act?
As a IDP another words creating these self Sovereign Knight And
he's, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, you know, that's what
made me think of, I think our ways out from there.
I think the idea is that, you know, actors, the neutral
identity partner. So if you're thinking about it
strategically from an authentication standpoint, you
know, the idea that OCTA is sort of like the glue that kind of
holds everything together, connect to any app, connect to
any service, They Don't Really Care versus maybe something is
more of a platform play where, you know, there are other
products that anything occasionally is like, okay,
we're very good in what they do and and sort of like their
ecosystem. Whereas, I think this is where
the position is, but I'm not going to try and sell octaves
product. They do it.
They do it just find themselves, but that's sort of the intention
is to think it'd be that sort of centralized.
IDP essentially that connects to everything.
I think there's been this idea for a long time about what will
be the ultimate identity provider, maybe government
Identity or entity and then you start to run into, well, not
everyone falls under that government, entities, Said that
excludes a lot of people that's not going to work.
And then you think of somewhere like a big social identity
provider, like Facebook and you know, that's where we were 10
years ago, we thought that might be it.
I think nobody thinks that these days that that's going to
happen. Somebody else.
Maybe who's one of the social identity Wars at this point is
it? I feel like I use Google for
everything. Just I would say by default,
it's going. Google Microsoft.
I I almost don't want to use Facebook right.
Every time I see it, I just I have no good reason.
I just I think I use my Google credentials like you're saying
much more I think I treat it more seriously.
Mmm, right. Yeah, Facebook is for well, he's
a my perspective, it's for the Facebook login, but also all
the, you know, the dumb apps that you can write your, the
game, which Game of Thrones character are you armed?
The, you know, what kind of potato would you be right?
So now we've transitioned to the evening time and it sounds like
it's going to love it. Quieter out there.
DJ must to stop for a little bit, but it is the official kind
of kick off for the real sort of octane conference that most
people are probably interested in it kicked off.
It's kind of a cool interview with Serena Williams.
Any thoughts from how that went down?
She did a good job. I thought she was very
authentic. There were there were portions
of the, the interview where I think she laughed at her own
response or or, you know, gave it gave a very personal response
to a lot of things. So it was, It was kind of cool
to see that live and being in the audience.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it wasn't.
Wasn't something that was staged and not wasn't like her
repeating. Some presentation that she's
done. 20 times is a an interview.
She was speaking from the heart, I really like her.
Hmm. Like I didn't know much about
her other than what you saw in like ESPN news shows and things
like that and I mean you know that you're never getting the
real sense of the person. I also thought that kind of a
during the interview was like, it's almost like there's the
opportunity for her to be a caricature, you know, like hey,
you're doing, you're so awesome. Like what's your next awesome
thing you're going to do or, you know, you should fit some kind
of preconception that exists for you.
But I think anybody who watch that interview said, whoa, she's
a little bit different than I expected her to be.
At least that was the thing. I came away with and she was
very thoughtful, you know, there's a whole dialogue around
her venture capital and it was like, you know, yeah, she is
like bigger goals but at the same time she's doing it because
she is an entrepreneur and wants to make money.
Yeah. And like that came through to me
is like, you know what? That's really genuine like she's
not trying to make it sound like she's, you know, the doing some
kind of like You know social justice or religious movement or
anything like that. It's like hey I'm in Venture
Capital because you know now there was the whole angle of
like what brought her into it which I think she did want to
just have a desire to have some change on society.
But she was very clear that like hey I want to I want to be
profitable. Yeah and that's a kind of build
on that. There was a point where the
interviewer had asked her Does she feel that she's an athlete
and Advocate or both? And I think she did a good job
of focusing in on that Advocate Part.
And she kind of detailed how she doesn't see herself as a as a
defined Advocate or like that she has to do these things
because it's a social justice thing.
She very much answered and said, no, I just think this is the
right way to behave and when I see something wrong I'm going to
say that it's wrong. And Maybe do something to change
it, but it was very much because her whole focus with the Venture
company is about getting more women and more women of color
into these. These fundings and these Venture
capitalism situations and it's purely because that's what she
wants to do. Not that she's she feels that
she needs to be an advocate and I think that's where the genuine
part comes in. I think that's the key word was
genuine. It was a real interview.
You, it was not anything staged, it was it covered.
A lot of grounds for ya, for 45 minutes, going to talk about a
whole bunch of different stuff, but I thought it was good.
It was a good. It was a good opening sort of
conversation ahead of like the identity talk, which is really
kind of tomorrow. So kind of going through that
and making sure that, you know, I think people kind of get off
on a little more. Casual footing is probably nice.
So so that was good Jim I don't know Ben if you saw this but Jim
you and I kind of sat through a talk that Matt blasted glossop
velocities church. I'm going to screw that up.
He's gonna be on the show tomorrow, I think it is.
We'll get a ripe banana tree by then but he's with jam and he
talked about some of the new authentication options that are
available for Mac OS, between OCTA and some other things that
have been worked on to make that, you know, smoother, which
I thought was pretty interesting.
I'm a Mac person myself and it seemed like it's gotten so much
better than, than the old days, but I thought was pretty
interesting. And I'm sure we'll get into that
with him tomorrow. Yeah, it was like his feet
presentation because there's so much going on with
authentication options within the Mac OS environment.
Look, one thing that I would say listen to that episode because
we've kind of come up with some questions and they're they're
not like snowball questions and it's questions like alright well
you know why would a CIA Want to run Mac notebooks our laptops
and the environment know why not just run Windows you know if
it's more secure so I think Matt's ready to take on the
sides of questions. I did have a chance to chat with
them and those are only questions, right?
I think the whole Mac versus Windows debate has been around
around for a while. I think famously IBM.
Switched over to Max as like their primary Enterprise
machine. And that crazy is crazy.
It was crazy because it was like five or six years ago when it
happened, maybe even longer at this point and, you know, their
study was that. Yeah, it was cheaper to run with
Max because they were more. They were less prone to errors
of different sorts whether it's Hardware or just software things
that were going on you and I have run into a lot of
organizations where both ones that we work for and ones that
we've worked, you know, as consultants for that do not
allow Mac. In their environment.
So I think it's a shame. It is I think so too.
I mean, I'm a huge Mac fan. But anyway, Matt will help us
articulate. How can be just as secure if it
can be. Yeah, let's see.
They've turned on the lights in here so I'm wondering if that is
something our might be knocking on the doors.
Yeah, exactly. So what are some other notes?
I know Ben, you had a run-in maybe with the claw machine.
The claw machine is not as easy as it appears to be.
Bi. I don't think I saw anyone walk
away from from the claw machine with a prize, and I had my eyes
on a nice OCTA branded yeti in there and the claw is flimsy.
In comparison to the claw was unkind.
Yes, the claw judged me unworthy.
So they had this thing that I saw was called octave for good
and they've done this. Now add a few different
conferences we've been at but basically it's a Plinko Style
game where you take a disk and drop it in the top and it kind
of bounces off different pegs and I was down into different
dollar amounts and instead of a prize, it's essentially a
donation that OCTA makes to some cause or charity.
That's listed. I saw someone get the max price
which was $100 donation and it's you know, there's only one slots
in the middle and I have to be walking by at the right time so
lucky I guess that worked. I, you know, we're here
recording this podcast. I did not win the Powerball.
I'm sad to tell you. So this podcast will continue.
Do we have a limited number of tries?
At the octave for good Plinko as I won for everyone.
I don't know. I think yeah.
I'm not sure how they're validating.
I'll bet you haven't already done it.
Yeah, I think that's probably money.
That they're happy to give away. There's also a photo booth.
There's a lot of cool stuff here.
There's the Haiku station. Yeah I think and Ben looks like
you guys seems I'm some I'm stepping away.
Drinkware. Yeah.
Well that's what send on that lighter note.
So what is the best? 18:22 vendor swag so far.
Oh yeah. Becky said immediately his eyes
like when whoa, he's already got like five or six things over
there. I see something that's cool.
That wasn't in your Loop piled. I'm gonna try and go get.
What's the best thing you've seen so far?
Been well so my wife and I are big fans of camping and
containers that we can use to hold water and so I got this
foldable, it reminds me of an accordion.
It's basically this black rubber bottle that will collapse down
and has a cap and Everything on it and collapsible our bottles
like a some sort of like rubbers comes from Arctic Wolf.
Yeah. So congrats Artic wolf.
That's a good. That's a good vendor swag item.
That's right. Jim, do you see anything out
there yet? I got a phone prop, you know.
Basically hold your phone in place.
Okay. From LexisNexis.
All right, and a beer koozie from Piper.
I haven't done anything yet. I think great like this.
It's good stuff but not I'll wait for you guys to like, find
the good stuff. So I'm going to, I'm going to go
to article off a water bottle. I'll check out the phone holder.
They don't have a lot of these. So yeah.
Well, we'll have to get there sooner.
So tomorrow is sort of like the official I guess.
Kind of opening day of all the different identity talks.
So we'll go ahead and wrap it up for this episode is kind of a
quick thing to get out there for folks, to listen to as they're
getting ready tomorrow morning. Perhaps, we'll have a whole
bunch of episodes. Again, coming up the next few
days. Again, shout out.
To the octave team for helping us out, shoutout to our SM, for
funding the travel here. And shout out to all you guys
who are listening to this stuff. So if you can take a moment, hit
pause alt-tab swipe up and swipe over whatever it is.
They need to do to give us a thumbs up or a rating or
whatever. That's all helpful and and helps
us out a lot or share it with sharing with other people.
So if you could take a second to do that that would be super
cool. And with that we'll go ahead and
leave it for this one and we'll talk with you all in the next
one. Now we're on the web, I didn't
center.com idac podcasts on Twitter and yeah, we'll see you
next time. Thanks for listening to the
identity at the center podcast. If you like what you heard,
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at the center.com.