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.