Oh my God. The identity at center. Podcast is, is now the official podcast of ID Pro. I mean, there's some enthusiasm here because I'm extremely excited about this identity. At and we are too, so don't let my smooth, calm, collected voice, you know, be that.
But yes, it is super exciting. Yeah, Calm and collected is not so much my thing, but no, it it came about at a really good time because ID Pro had been doing the ID Pro show, which is was a series of videos we did about, I want to say about two dozen of them, where we would interview ID Pro members just to learn about how other people kind of like the first question you start with in the Identity of the Center podcast, starting with the well, how did you end up here?
You know what got you into identity? And just the range of information just coming out of that was brilliant. There wasn't a single one who said, no, no, this is exactly what I intended in my career debate. So, but that was coming to an end. As you both can attest, putting these together is time consuming and can be kind of expensive. And so we were, we were just wrapping it up. I have one more that I need to get posted. And as soon as I'm somewhere where I can actually download
and post that, I will. But as we're wrapping this up, Jim reached out to me and said, hey, what do you think of this idea of making Identity at the Centre the essential podcast of IT Pro? And I'm like, yes, yes, yes, this is great. And I said, sure, that sounds like a lovely idea. Thank you. This is identity at the centre if it has anything to do with IAM. This is the go to podcast now your host Jim McDonald and Jeff Stedman. Welcome to the Identity at the Center podcast.
I'm Jeff, and that's Jim. Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you? Oh, not so bad yourself. I'm good man, it's spring actually I had my lawn mowed today for the first time in like 6 months. I mean, it happened about an hour ago, so imagine that time and got lucky that it wasn't during the episode, because I'm sure you wouldn't be happy with all that noise in the background. But I've got to say, I'm not real happy with your camera. What the heck's going on?
Yeah, I'm not happy either. 45 minutes before Showtime, my normal Sony camera decided that it wouldn't want to stay on anymore and kept overheating. So I think there's probably a new camera in line. This is the second time that I've tried to fix this this week, but yeah, so I'm slumming it amongst the peasants on a webcam today, so we'll just have to kind of deal with it. I know we're usually used to crystal clear Jeff and we had AI Jeff for a while.
Now it's just normal Jeff. Peasant Jeff. That I'm I'm just Jeff, that's all I can do. You know, maybe I could do some things in post production to fix colors or do something. I don't know, but we'll see. Look, it's camera. Let's hope the content is better than the camera this week. Yeah. So I mean, it's spring. It's time for, you know, getting outside, enjoying the fresh air, not checking your retirement balance because that's probably not so good.
And it's just time to kind of get ready for summer. Yeah, yeah. Let's just leave it at that. Let's maybe talk conferences, identity beers, like where do you want to start, Jim? Yeah, well, that's where I was leaving things was, you know, summer to me. It's conference season. Sebastian Rohr posted on He sold me out on LinkedIn. He said, you know, you really the reason you're going to Europe is to hit as many identity beers as you possibly can.
There's a little more to it than that, you know, but there's nothing. Wrong with that. Come on. I mean, that's a totally legitimate reason. I I appreciate that, Jeff. I totally agree. I mean, you know, getting out there, meeting people, enjoying a beer, Why not? Yeah, I mean, we got a great community. Take advantage of it. I mean, the Identibier thing is pretty cool. I think we're going to try to hit one in Berlin, I think the day before EIC.
And we were talking in the Slack channel and our friend Espen sent me a link to Martin Sandrin's Identibier tracker on GitHub. So for people who are interested in that sort of thing, Martin's done a great job of kind of collecting that information. And then I'll put that in our show notes. But I know Espen's working on, I think there's actually a website. So I'm not sure if it's up and running yet or if it's been updated. But there, there is lots of events all over the world really.
And so it's a great community. Take advantage. Yeah, I think one of the things that has been so great about doing this podcast with you is that we've got to meet great people like Martin and like Espen who are really community builders in their own right. I mean, they're out there putting these events together, making sure people know about them and creating this welcoming environment. And that's what makes I think the identity community is so
special. I don't obviously know what all the other non identity communities are like, but I know this one is very welcoming. And you know, as evidenced by the episode today, we've got the president from the, I know I'm going against the grain here by talking about our our guests for today, but the ID Pro has been a great rally point as well for this community. Yeah, So yeah, we're going to
get to her in a second here. But yes, and not the president know she's going to correct it, but the executive director for ID Pro. But for, you know, people who aren't familiar, we're going to have a chat with Heather here in a couple minutes and really kind of get into that. We made some waves an announcement what I one of the most popular things that I've posted a long time on LinkedIn got a lot of traction. So we'll talk about that in a
second. But I'm looking forward to seeing her at a couple conferences that are you and I are both going to be at. We're going to be at EIC in a couple weeks, so by the time people listen this, hopefully they've got things booked and we'll see them there. But that's May 6th through the 9th. That's the European Identity and Cloud Conference. And if you use the code ID AC25 MKO, that'll get you 25% off. We'll have a link in our show notes so you don't have to
remember all that stuff. You can go ahead and click there. It's also on our homepage, idacpodcast.com. I always put our discounts right on the the homepage there. And then after that, Jim, we're going to be at Identiverse in Las Vegas. That is June 3rd through the 6th and if you use the code IDV 25-I D AC25, you get 25% off. Again, those codes will be in our show notes. She is a world traveller.
I already know what my first question is going to be when I introduce you here, but let's get Heather Flanagan, the executive director for ID Pro on the show. She's been with us before, but although it's been a while too long, in fact, episode 228 back in August of 2023. So I'm not going to ask her our traditional first question of how'd you get an identity because we she's already answered that. But welcome to the show, Heather. Hello, Jeff. Hello, Jim. It's good to see you both again.
Well, it's great to have you here, so let me ask the the most pertinent question top of mind for me. Where in the world is Heather Flanagan today? Well, physically I'm currently in Mountain View, CA attending the Internet Identity workshop. But that's like today. On Monday I was at MIT for a a private workshop with some incredibly smart people and that was an all day thing. And last week I was at the University of Reading facilitating an unconference for Academic Identity Federation
people. So bouncing around the world as one does. Well, as one does, you say that so nonchalantly, like everyone's flying coast to coast and all around the world all the time. A little bit of a outlier there, Heather, to be honest. All right, look, just because the the flight attendants tell me I'm travelling more than they do, you're you're suggesting that this is excessive? Hey, there's nothing wrong with it.
Travel's awesome. Everybody should be able to do it. I think maybe if you're on a first name basis with flight attendants, you know, maybe there's there's something to say about that. Maybe vary up your flight schedule a little bit. But I'm a fan of travel. Get out, see the world, see other, you know, countries, cultures, people, all that good stuff. So I think it's great that you get. Conference rooms in basements with no windows? Yes, yes, I see a lot of those.
All the terrible hotel Wi-Fi that you can try to connect to. So you know, all that stuff. So we made some waves recently, Heather. We made an announcement.
Yeah. So for those who haven't seen or heard or visited our web page in a little bit, Identity Center is now the official podcast for ID Pro, which is fantastic because Jim and I have been members for a long time and been very big supporters of it. I guess take us behind the scenes maybe of, you know, how did that kind of come together or you know, we have we obviously have our version of it was like, hey, it's probably not as complicated as people thought
it was, but but you know, I just want to get your thoughts on that announcement. So it's kind of funny how you said it. You said it in just a, a lovely, you know, flat tone. Yes. Identity at the Center is now the official podcast of IT Pro, which is not at all how I say it. How I say it when when it comes up is like, Oh my God. The identity at center. Podcast is is now the official
podcast of ID pro. I mean, there's some enthusiasm here because I'm extremely excited about this identity at and. We are too, so don't let my smooth, calm, collected voice, you know, be that.
But yes, it is super exciting. Yeah, Calm and collected is not so much my thing, but no, it it came about at a really good time because ID Pro had been doing the ID Pro show, which is was a series of videos we did about, I want to say about two dozen of them, where we would interview ID Pro members just to learn about how other people kind of like the first question you start with in the Identity of the Center podcast, starting with the well, how did you end up here?
You know what got you into identity? And just the range of information just coming out of that was brilliant. There wasn't a single one who said, no, no, this is exactly what I intended in my career today. So but that was coming to an end. As you both can attest, putting these together is time consuming and can be kind of expensive. And so we were, we were just wrapping it up.
I have one more that I need to get posted and as soon as I'm somewhere where I can actually download and post that, I will. But as we're wrapping this up, Jim reached out to me and said, hey, what do you think of this idea of making Identity at the Center, the essential podcast of ID Pro? And I'm like, yes, yes, yes, this is great. And I said, sure, that sounds like a lovely idea. Thank you. Excellent negotiator for sure.
Yeah, no, it's super cool. Like, you know, you guys had a great show and we're happy to support, you know, everything that ID Pro does. And I think it's a natural alignment for us because we try to be vendor neutral, especially on our sort of normal episodes. Yes, we do some sponsored stuff, but as you said, you know, running a podcast is expensive. So we try to defray some of those costs with it. And look, I we're such big fans of ID Pro, right?
I've been a member since I think the beginning 2017 or whatever it was. I think what was announced in at the Chicago conference. I think Jim followed pretty closely right after, I think, as he found out. And we've been, you know, somewhat active, I think in the Slack channel, and maybe we'll be more active now. I've tried to be more active over the last couple weeks with the announcement, but it's such a good community.
It's such a good resource for really everybody in the space, whether you're just starting out, if you're curious about what the heck this IAM thing is, or if you've been in the space for like decades or maybe for some people's centuries, you know, it could be, you know, a a great resource and there's so many different chat channels. It's not going to just talk
about identity. Like I think I see something in the Ideniverse conference channel talk about people going to see the John Wick experience at Area 15, which like I'm all in for that. Like that sounds awesome. Area 15 is very cool, by the way. If nobody's ever been there, definitely check it out. But there's such a good community. And, and, and I keep coming back to this word of community because it is that this is not secret sauce for a lot of
people. We're all in this typically, right, to protect our users, you know, reduce risk, make things easier for folks, right? All that kind of things. And yes, there's vendors and stuff like that who have products in that space. But generally speaking, most of us are like, yeah, that's a great idea. We should do that too. And you know, all these really smart people getting together and learning from each other is
just super awesome. So I couldn't be happier, even though maybe my tone is a little bit even and cool. There are about. So let me talk a little bit about the Slack instance because I think that's the the like the single, I don't know if I want to call it the single best thing that ID Pro offers, but it's certainly the single best member only benefit that ID Pro offers because it's, it is not a free Slack instance. It is a paid for Slack instance, which means we have got years of history.
So if you go into say the SAML channel, there's just so much material there that people can learn from. There are about at last check about 120 different channels. Obviously some are more active than others and they they do range from authorization, authentication, IGA, password, less human factor identity, pets very important. We've got to have a place to share our cat and dog photos. Pit boss if you're into smoking BBQ, there is there's like a
little crew that does that too. There is conference submissions is one of my favorite Slack channels because that's anecdotally speaking, my observation in going to all of these conferences that I do is that so many of the speakers are ID pro members. And I think part of that is because we have this conference submission channel where we give each other feedback as soon as a call for papers opens, it gets
announced there. And and you can say, hey, I've got this idea and you iterate on it with a community to say, is it good? Does it make sense? Is it compelling? Would you want to go to this? And the acceptance rate feels like it is fairly high. So it's great, great resource. It's a good idea, like peer review and say, yeah, is this good idea or not? Or am I just crazy? I mean, there's a lot of stuff that has come out of the identity space that's been like,
yeah, this is just an idea. You know, I think Ian Glaser was, you know, one of those things recently, this whole modern identity concept that he kind of put out there. And it's like, all right, here's this thing, have fun, Go play with it, right? Expand that.
Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. I mean, of course, we do have more resources that aren't member only and yet that membership helps support like the ID pro body of knowledge, which is, you know, my, my other favorite thing because before I was executive director, I was the I was and remain the principal editor for the body of college, which you know, that we've got close to three dozen articles there written by subject matter experts that I then get peer reviewed by not
necessarily ID pro members, but usually come in and say, is this right? Does this make sense? Is this useful to and is it, as we always say, vendor neutral, giving piece of people a place to start to just try and understand what, where, where do I even pull the thread to Start learning about what's critical in identity?
And I was, I'm glad you mentioned the body knowledge because that was the other thing I was going to bring up because really a lot of the knowledge that goes into that and it's a lot of just really good, well written, smart articles and blogs and explainers and pretty much everything you can help for really kind of feeds into the CID Pro certification.
So maybe kind of tell us a little bit about the CID Pro certification, because I know that was kind of a momentous event to get something out there. It was putting that together was a lot of fun. That's another concept that we wanted to have some kind of certification that people who have two years of experience in the identity space. That's actually a really
important point. The experience point would be able to take this exam, pass the exam, and be able to demonstrate a baseline of understanding more broadly. The questions were put together by subject matter experts going through, you know, in partnership with people who actually know how to write test questions, which proves to be a lot harder than you would think it should be, and then turn that out into the world. It's about time for it to be
refreshed. When we first, when we first put the exam together, one of the things that was interesting was of course, the body of knowledge isn't a complete resource. If you read everything in the body of knowledge, that wouldn't be really quite enough to give you everything to pass the exam. One, you do need operational experience. Two, we didn't have that many, you know, nearly as many
articles as we do today. So it's the core resource to support the CID Pro, but it's not the only resource. And if you go to the website, you can see the other the other things that we reference, some of which intimidate the heck out of people 'cause we're like, yeah, NIST 863 is a resource you should be familiar with. To which people have come to me saying, wait, wait, I have to, I have to know all the gory details of the entirety of this 863.
And I'm like, well, no, but you do need to know what it is kind of kind of like that. Or if it's something like, you know, recite the the first verse and passage of Samuel, something like that, right? I, I would love to see, and it's just me personally speaking, like there's a lot of, I would say less technical identity people, but how can we include
them as part of this? Because I think right or wrong, there is sort of AI don't know perception that if you're an identity person, you're a technical person. That is not always the case. So how do we help? Maybe some of those folks would be something maybe interesting to tackle. I've talked with Andy Handel about this sort of the business of I am is sort of the way I kind of put it because it's such an important part. Yes, the technology standards are great.
Yes, understanding, you know what the difference between SSO and MFA and two FA, right? And all this other stuff might be good knowledge, but it doesn't do any good if you can't actually get your organization to do anything about it. So I think ideas right on, on maybe ways to you know get the business side of I am up and running. I think that's an area that might be interesting to explore for the future. Just an idea.
I think it's a good idea when people do ask me about the, you know, well, I, I don't, I'm, I'm not technical. How do I, how do I engage? And like, well, I'm a librarian with a history degree. You know, as it turns out, it takes all kinds. You know, the, the things that I do in the world today involve helping engineers and developers and architects stay organized, right? Because as it turns out, they're usually not very good at that,
bless them, but they need that. There's this, there's this gap of if everybody was technical in the same way, then you would fail. You wouldn't have all of the resources that you need. You wouldn't have the people that actually know how to communicate really well. You wouldn't have people that actually can project manage, which is a which is its own skill set. You wouldn't have necessarily the the business strategic thinkers as you point out, right.
It does take all kinds and those folks that step away going, yeah, but I can't read a spec and understand it. Therefore I couldn't possibly I can't read a spec and understand it. So it's not. That's not the bars that you should be aiming for. I totally agree with that. Yeah. I mean, there's just, you know, you mentioned it kind of early on when you first joined in and we were talking about the the ID Pro show and all the varied backgrounds, right? We start with our show, right as well.
It's like, OK, so how'd you get into space? The vast majority of people did not choose identity. That's just a working theory I've had for years. And it seems to have proved itself out, at least in our our data that we've collected. There is so much room for all kinds of sorts. I feel like if you've got the attitude and the desire, there is a spot for you, right? And there's places to learn and stuff like that. It may take a little bit to maybe get where you want to go,
right? Depending on sort of, you know, how long you've been in the space and connections and stuff like that. But I'm totally a fan of it. One thing that I think is really interesting that I want to pivot a little bit here is to talk about the identity Salon. It's something I wanted to ask Andy about last time he was on the show. Didn't get a chance to do it. Tell me about the Identity Salon and are you an identity stylist?
Here, let me toss my hair. So the identity salon came out of an interesting observation in the, in the, in the same way that unconferences came out of the observation that so much of the useful conversation happens in the hallways. So why don't you just have a meeting of hallway conversations? This came out of the out of the observation that a lot of the we'll, we'll pick on identifiers, which I'm chief of staff for that conference again
this year, right? So, but, but it's obviously one of my favorite events, but I'm going to pick on it for a minute because it's aiming to have, you know, anywhere between 3 and 5000 people attend and it needs to find the common denominator for what would be of most value to the most people attending. OK, that's, that's reasonable. But what about the other people, right? What about the people who have been the enterprise architects for 15 or 20 years?
Or you know, the the people who are very, very senior, they're not going to get out anything out of identity one O 1. They're just, they're just not. They might go to to support people, but that's not really what the conversation they want to have. On top of that, you get an interesting challenge of when you bring in the enterprise architects from big companies. Well, you know, like big automotive companies or something like that.
They can't necessarily talk about what they're doing in a public venue. So here's where the identity salon comes in. It is what we're trying to do is put together a space for the the senior level people to come in and talk about the challenges that they're seeing as you know, 10 year horizon problems, not the how can I deploy pass keys, which is certainly an important conversation to have, but maybe it's the OK, assuming pass keys have been deployed, what's the
next thing? What's the problem we haven't come close to solving yet that we're going to have to figure out how to do in our environments? On top of that, it's held under the Chatham House Rule, which you really should have asked Andy about that because it comes across so much better when when a British person sets that out. But suffice to say, Chatham House Rule means that while you can use the information that you received from an event, you cannot attribute that information.
And so you don't say, hey, Andy said, and Andy is affiliated with Hindle Consulting. I can totally pick on him for this because everybody knows he's involved. That offers an interesting level of freedom to the enterprise architects because they can do a lot more conversation about what's happening in their world, knowing that that information will be held in reasonable confidence.
So we had our very first like proto event asked just before authenticated last year we had our second full day in person event in March and we we try intervening have virtual events. We keep these events small because the important part is having conversations. We have a newsletter that that comes out after the events that talks a little bit about what we have. We have reports that come out of these events that goes into a lot more detail.
And someone asked me, can you write a report under the Chatham House rule? Yes. And I happen to be very good at that actually, because I never remember anybody's name. So I just type away. But like all this documentation, which then becomes useful and then they can take back in. If people are interested in getting their name like on the list as we're looking to mix up who's going to be in the the next conversation, go to theidentitysalon.com and you can see more information.
It's right now it is it's entirely supported by essentially by sponsors, but the sponsors don't get the list of who attended, for example, right there is there are limits. They do get their logo in front of people depending on the level they come in. They do get like thought leadership white papers that can be added to the report, but we might be moving into a a more of a subscription model going forward. But we haven't decided that. It's still pretty darn new for us.
So we're exploring opportunities. I think it's such a cool idea and I think you kind of addressed my, my natural follow up question is how does one get involved? Is this invite only? Is this, you know, you submit an application and sort of get reviewed to see if that makes sense? Like if I said, OK, I'd like to be in a discussion like this or I think I have something to share, like what's my step to
try and get involved in here? Your step is to go to that website and at the bottom of the page there is a a link to For more information sign up here. And that gets you on the list that Andy, Ian and I see. And from there that, like I said, as we as we think about the next in person event will be again, be before authenticate and we'll be thinking of what does the agenda for that need to be? And therefore, who, who, what would be the best mix of people
in the room? And if you don't make it in the room, you know, but you're on the list, you may you may end up getting the report anyway. So and the virtual events are not quite as as strict, though they are also held under the Chatham House rule. I love the Chatham House rule. This podcast is under the Chatham House rule too. So you can quote Jim McDonald without saying Jim McDonald's name. Just kidding. We put our ideas out there all the time and they may be right
or they may be wrong. So I guess maybe it is Chatham House rule. I like that. As far as what you mentioned about the Identity Salon, we'll put the link in the show notes. I also wanted to comment, you brought up the NIST 800-63 and you mentioned that is kind of a starting point for people. I sometimes refer to that as like the Bible of identity and access management and whether or
not you agree with that. There's another I heard Jim McDonald say, but I, I've said that before that I kind of see it that way. I've been aware of it since 2014. It just gives a framework for thinking about placing the proper identity controls based on the context of the situation, the risk presented by the access. We've had Ryan Galuzzo, he's, you know, the person kind of writing the revision right now or leading the writing of the revision of 863.
So I'd say go back and check out some of those episodes for people who are interested in learning more. I'd also say a lot of content out there on YouTube as kind of a starting point. But I think, you know, as you get more, hopefully get more interested in the topic, it's something that you can actually read the paper from end to end. There's three parts, AB and C. So I think that that that's
great advice. In terms of one of the great references in terms of how to think about applying identity controls. What I wanted to talk to you a little bit about, I'll give you a softball question. The Identity of the Center podcast is definitely internationally focused. So about a third of our listeners are based in the US. The rest are throughout the world, from using the Slack channel for ID Pro, from just kind of seeing the membership list and knowing who these folks
are. They're global. Is ID Pro a global organization? Absolutely, absolutely. We regularly have people participating from Australia, from Japan, of course from Europe. We don't have quite the, the African representation that I really wish we had, but it is the, the, I think the barrier to entry in terms of people feeling.
There's two things that are preventing people from feeling necessarily comfortable in participating in something like ID Pro, one of which is whether they feel comfortable with English as the primary language that that is something that people often struggle with. And the other thing is the culture of openness is not universal. And so, you know, the fact I, I am perfectly happy to post and say I don't know something help. That's not a universally
comfortable concept. And so there are a lot of cultures where you know they'll come in, they'll lurk, but they won't necessarily participate because you just don't want to be seen as stupid. Great, though. Oh, that's a great point. Now in terms of the manifestation of that, that global presence, I mean, I, Jeff and I are attending EIC for the first time. It's our first international identity conference. I see that there's a lot of presence from ID pro people in
terms of the speaker list. Talk to me about identity pros, you know presence there at DIC. We are one of their partners and we are expanding that partnership actually with Kepner Cole to be even more than just the EIC conference. But I'll, I'll have a separate announcement about that in the future. Suffice to say that's that's happening. We have a, we for the past several years we've had a workshop on Tuesday before the formal start of the conference and this year is no different.
We have a workshop where one of the things, what we're presenting for the audience's consideration is job descriptions. It's an interesting thing, right? How, how do you actually describe an identity related job? And what do you tell your HR department when you say, OK, I'm, I'm want to hire an architect. What are the requirements? What are we looking for? I want to hire a junior person. What are the requirements?
What are we looking for? So Elizabeth Garber, who had been working with ID Pro for, for quite a while to help put together in like the initial library of of templates for job descriptions in the identity space that companies could then use definitely adapt to their more specific needs. Because we tried to keep it vendor neutral, but you may put in there as a requirement. No, you, you must have experience with Entra or something like that, right.
But but that's the that's the thing we want to put in there to again, make it just a little bit easier to describe what does an identity professional do and to make and to later sort of see that through an organization such that you can hand this to your HR department even and say this is what an identity professional does and this is what we need. So that's what that's going to be Tuesday morning of EIC.
That's a really cool concept. I mean, I'm, I'm sure it's something that everyone is going, has either faced or is going to face in terms of trying to identify identity talent. I mean, I'd love to get your perspective when it comes to the upcoming crop of identity talent. I mean, we hear about all the time that there's a real shortage of talent. And at the same time, a lot of the lot of folks reach out to me and they're looking for that entry level role. It's like everything requires
experience. I mean, I'm sure you see that as well. And what are your thoughts or what kind of tips would you give people? One of the questions you you guys asked me in the the first time I was on the show is like, how did I get started in this, right? How did I get started in identity? And I didn't, I never thought that identity wasn't part of everything I did, right? I as a, as a Galacticon bulletin board system operator in 1995.
What was my job? My job was figuring out who had, you know, what accounts were needed, who had them and what they had access to. That's the core of identity management right there. You shift that up to OK, send OS413 for the win, Who has access? What are the groups involved? How do you manage that? You're back to identity, right? Identity is in pretty much every aspect of online services. So if you want to get involved in identity and you don't have experience, you you can find it.
If you get a job at an organization and you're dealing with online services, then you will have more space to learn about identity than you think you will. Yeah, I think that's a great point of view. I think you're getting something that is related where you're doing some identity work, you start to build that experience and then it's a jump maybe full time into the industry. I was thinking about something else about the Slack channel.
I constantly see people posting about the Identibiers and I'm excited. I've never been to an Identibier. I don't know if you have and I always wondered how did identibiers start? Do you know how the concept came about? And is there any kind of linkage between ID Pro and Identibier or is it just like a natural Organism that just happens to happen? It's a mutual admiration society and I believe, I believe Sam Evans started it several years
ago. There's no official relationship between the two other than, you know, I don't, you know, ID Pro members go to identifiers and, and if you're at an identifier, you're going to talk about ID Pro And we, we all love each other very much because, you know, it is awesome. I have been to an identifier and sometimes it gets a little too loud for me because it is such an enthusiastic group, but they
are ever so much fun. So I, if I remember one thing about you from our, our last podcast is that you're a Scotch person. Is that OK? Do you have to go? You have to like beer when you go to identity beer. I'm going to sound like an alcoholic at this point, right? I, I like interesting flavors and therefore, yes, I like Scotch and I like the breadth of flavors in Scotch and it's fun to just deep dive and explore on that. But I also like beer, though not
all beers, right? I'm into multi beers. Therefore I like the Belgian beers, the English ales, you know, Amber's if I have to. I do not understand the concept of an IPA. Why you want to drink a beer that makes your mouth pucker Completely beyond me. And I cannot drink leap beers because I don't. Like wheat beer? Either. So I used to like them, but I can't drink them anymore. Not not, not since college, actually. So yes, I also drink wine. Thank you.
And I don't have a preference between red and white. I have a preference between good and not good, right? I want good wine. Maybe I shouldn't have brought up that whole whole lot of discussion. No, absolutely. You know, so the international angle's well in place, but you guys have, you know, the roots in the starting in the United States and have a bitty pretty big presence when it comes to one of the biggest conferences
in the US, ideniverse. Talk to us about ID Pros role at Ideniverse and what you have coming up for 2025. South, as with the IC, we are. We are considered one of the sort of industry partners to Ideniverse. We do have a booth which we are constantly looking for volunteers to come in and hang out and and let people come and say, wait, what is ID Pro? What is this thing? Why? Why should I care? Though most often they want to know about the the CID Pro exam.
We with my ID Pro hat on. I'm one of the two people that does the newcomers session to just introduce people. What does it mean to be at Ideniverse? What is it like? What can you expect? You know, that moment of being able to look at this crowd of 200 people and say, welcome all of you introverts to the
Identiverse conference. Glance, you know, surreptitiously off from one side to the next because you were surrounded by fellow introverts, and you should be able to say hi to them even though you kind of don't want. To yeah, One thing that that I I've never been aware of is like, OK, linking the two conversations we had, is there an identity that usually happens at Identiverse? There's usually an ID pro social like Wednesday after whatever the the conference social is going to be.
So it's usually like around 6:30 or so. We still need to get that organized. I have to do that as soon as I get home, but that's usually a thing. It isn't usually an identity or though Co branding. That would be totally fine with me. I haven't talked to Sam about it yet though. I should do that. Yeah, I kind of get the sense, you know, Identity or ID Pro Identity Center podcast. We have one thing in common,
which is vendor neutrality. It's not that we're against a new vendor, but it's we don't want to stand for promoting 1 vendor versus another. And, you know, that's one thing that I've learned about an identity beer because I even offered to sponsor the one that we're doing in Oslo, which will be in a couple of weeks. And I was told, well, that's not really the culture. Like I said, I've never been to
1 before. But the idea is that hey, everybody, you know, nobody pays anybody else's way at the Identity Bureau. So I thought that was pretty cool. That is cool. And it's AI like it I, you know, one of the reasons I really like the whole vendor neutrality concept is because it, it pushes people to think about why maybe why the product they're using does what it does the way it does.
Because if you can learn those underlying principles, it will then serve you really well as to OK, well, if this behaves this way, it behaves this way for a reason. The next product, yeah, the bells, the whistles, the dashboards, they may look all different, but the underlying concepts about identity verification, about group management, about access controls, you know, pick your favorite role based or policy based or whatever based, those principles will apply across the board.
And as soon as you enforce vendor neutrality, it makes you think about that. So I like that. Yeah, I at least my understanding I'm taking the CID Pro exam, but that the exam is based on kind of vendor neutral type questions. It's what is the best practice or leading practice for this identity problem, right? Yep, Yep, that's exactly. So, you know, I'm going to add 1 point about the CID Pro exam. This the single hardest thing about the exam. This is, this is like now the
inside story. What it, what makes that exam really, really difficult? What is the one thing that people come back to me and say, wow, this was hard? Yeah, it's the proctoring. It's not the questions, it's the actual proctoring experience because since it's, since it's an online, it's a, it's a, it's an official certification. It's not just a random set of multiple questions.
You're actually going through a service where there's someone on the other side staring at you to make sure that you don't, I'm sorry if you're one of those people that just starts looking off into the distance as you're thinking, Oh no, they don't like that because you might have something written over there. You know, you're not allowed to have a phone anywhere nearby, any other computers nearby. You're not allowed to have water
nearby, right? If they hear sounds, they will ask you to pick up your camera and move it around so that they can inspect your room. And they'll only give you like so many opportunities for that before they just cut you off. So they are strict and that's not anything that IT pro controls. Right. And so people coming in thinking, hey, this is a friendly community and therefore this is going to be a friendly exam experience. It's not a friendly exam
experience. It's a it's it's a hardcore exam experience. You already hear first, folks. Yeah. So that's great. Jeff, what do you think? We close out this episode. Well, I feel like we all travel so much. And you know, Heather, you've been fortunate to be a whole bunch of different places. I'm curious, what do you do? I guess what are you going to do with your off time from traveling? Like do you have plans?
Because I think we're all going to hit conferences in Europe and US especially over the next month or so. But what are you going to do with your time? Well, fascinating question. Some of that time will be spent at home rocking back and forth, just trying to recover from all the amount of time that I've been out on the road because. That's a given. We all do that. We all do that, but I have to do it really fast because I get to go home on Saturday and I'll be home for four days.
And then I have to get to Redmond, which is basically two hours from my house for the B Side's Seattle conference. And I'll be there through the weekend. And then I get to come home for five days and then I have to go down to San Francisco because RSA is coming. I won't be at the RSA conference, but I'll be at a pre event that I need to do and then I get to go home for five days and then I have to fly out to Berlin for EIC.
For EIC, I don't get to go home. I have to go to New York City for Auth Con, which is a new conference being put on by Fusion Auth. Great. So I'll be there for a week, then I get to come over two whole weeks. It's like the biggest break that I actually have in the foreseeable future. And then it's Ideniverse. After Ideniverse, I don't get to go home. I have to go to something called
TNC. It used to stand for the Terrain and Networking Conference and it's a global conference for National Research and Education Networks and Academic Identity Federation. So that will be in Brighton in the UK, and then I get to come home for about 10 days and then I have to go to Geneva for a global collaboration summit about standards development and the geopolitical landscape that is making things a character building experience.
The week after that is still in Geneva, where I'm trying to go to the ITUT standards meeting because I'm addicted to standards development. And I think it's fascinating and I want to see what the ITU is like in their standards process. But you have to become accredited and I have submitted my application to attend. We'll see how that goes. Then I have a week off. I'm not bothering coming home
because why? And then it's the ITF meeting which will be in Madrid. My sweetheart and I had a conversation about this July 2nd and I'm like, honey, I don't, I don't know what to do. I can't, I don't think I can come home. He's like, no, don't come home. But but if you're going to be away for that one week, you have a break. You have to take vacation it I'm requiring that you take vacation. And I was like, wow, how do you do that?
OK, what do I do? Well, then it was a all right, I'm going to be in Europe. I you. Didn't like sit down and then like write A blog on this. OK, I need to define what vacation is and get some standards and some parameters around this and and so. Forth, yes, yes, that's exactly kind of what I did actually. And I and I chose a place though I chose a place by how relaxing will it be and how, how unlikely is it that there will ever be a
conference there? And so I probably won't ever get to it. And so I'm going to spend a week in Malta. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. And just, and just take in the sights and sounds. Or are you like the kind of person who like has activities throughout the day or you just like, I'm going to get there and I'm just going to kind of splay out and just kind of see where the currents take me?
So I am a person that would like to become a, you know, basically bed rotting for the wind and just not move. But then I had this bad habit of them not eating because it's like, OK, get up and eat or just continue to lay here. So I, I really do have to get out at least once a day. But that's OK. I've got this covered. I'm going to, I've got a tour of some wineries. I've got several art tours scheduled. All of this is being planned in advance because I'm a planner.
That's what I do. Jim, what would you do with I guess a week off in between? I mean, I know we're going to EIC and you spent a week before that, but like what's a a recharge cycle for you look like? That is recharge cycle for me for this year. First off, I just wanted to say is something that was occurring to me is we've been having this whole podcast, which is all that Heather does for the Sandras community.
So thank you. I'm going to say thank you on behalf of all of us for doing what you do. And, and I mean, you know, bouncing around the world sounds glamorous, especially for folks who don't do it for a living. You go to all these places that's a little bit hard on the body, right? That's hard on the body.
And it's hard to have any kind of meaningful relationships with people that were like family and stuff because you don't, you can't just say, Hey, I'll be over for dinner every Sunday night for, for family dinner or whatever, right? So it's, you're putting in a lot of your life force energy into this. So thank you. I, I will point out my, my sweetheart is probably the most introverted human I have ever met in my life.
And that's with all of the standards people I hang out with when we're at home, when we live in a very small house, it's 100 square meter house, We still text each other. We're sitting in the same room, we're looking at each other, We're still texting each other, right. And he does not travel with me because that would involve dealing with humans and no, just just no So and. It would be expensive. It would be annoying for him, which is actually the bore important point.
He would. He would you. Can't put a price on. I mean, that's just. You can't put a price on the level of irritation he would experience. So that part's not too bad. The the physical exhaustion. You're absolutely right. When when we when COVID happened, it was so relaxing it but it took me 18 months to recover from from all the travel that I do. Yeah, it takes a while.
It does take a while. So I was thinking about the whole thing that Jeff asked you, like, are you like a hyper planner for your vacation as well? So I'm going to Oslo and then to Denmark before EIC, never been to either one. And I've been watching so many Youtubes that I feel like I'm going to get there. There's going to be nothing to see because I've already seen it all on YouTube at least three or four times.
Because I'm I'm trying to make sure that not only do I see all the things that I want to see and do all the things that I want to do, but that I have them mapped out so that I'm not just traveling zigzag all over the city so that I'm hitting them in the right order. So let me let me point something
out. You've probably experienced the difference between talking to someone on the podcast and so you have them in a nice little box and you can have a great conversation and then seeing them in person and actually getting a hug and the whole body experience of communication. It's different that for me, that's why I travel because I cannot have the relationship building that I need to throw a little box on my screen. Going to Oslo, going to Denmark, going anywhere, any kind of travel.
You can see everything in the little box on your screen in YouTube and it is nothing compared to that visceral reaction of actually being able to see the thing, as expensive as it may be. Well put. Yeah, I know exactly, exactly what I'm looking forward to. And, you know, but I still am probably over planning this thing to the point where it's like, I know how many miles each thing is from my hotel. But part of it is like, I don't want to be traveling the whole time.
I want to, you know, have the hotel and then four days to go and do all these things and, you know, have the hot dog at the street food vendor that I saw in a YouTube video or something like that. And I think that would, I don't know. I usually don't do that. I'm usually much less planned out. But I feel like we have limited time and to get all these things in it's going to require a little bit of pre thought.
And I also don't want to have regret later that oh, we didn't see all those great things because we didn't do enough research. If I'm not aware of something in Oslo or Copenhagen by now, after all the videos I've watched, it's not from a lack of trying. It's as long as you leave, leave in flexibility, right? But planning to the extent you know to from from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM is fine as long as you're still comfortable with you know what, I'm tired today.
I don't I don't really feel like that 10 mile walk to get to this thing. So there's going to be other times probably I will. I won't do that. As long as you you build in that level of comfort in yourself of being able to say no, not today, you'll be fine. Absolutely. What are you? How are you approaching your trip, Jeff? 100% the opposite of you Jim. Right now I have a flight to Berlin and then I have a flight out of Amsterdam 2 weeks later.
So that's about as far planning as my wife and I've gotten. She's going to join me in Berlin towards the end of the week. And then the plan right now is to go from Berlin to Amsterdam, probably by train. We haven't figured that part out. I still don't have a hotel for Amsterdam. And then we're going to figure out like a day trip somewhere using sort of Amsterdam and sort of like the base from there and then fly home from there, you know, a week, a week after EI CS over.
So I'm I'm I haven't figured it out yet. So I honestly don't know how to answer the other than I know I have a way into Germany and a way out of Amsterdam. How I get between the two is still up to be, you know, decided. But I'm kind of a little bit
more relaxed on vacation. I'm like, all right, let's just go there and then let's just kind of hang out and see where the wind takes us. And we did this for London last year, where the whole point of the trip was to go see the Cubs play the Cardinals baseball game. Jim, I'm sure you'd appreciate that. And we spent a week, I think there the game was on Saturday. We came in early and we basically just picked a
direction. It was the first time either of us had actually been in London proper. And we picked a direction and just walked. And when we got tired of walking, we'd stop into a pub or something and get drinks or food or whatever maybe. And then when we were kind of done for the day, we would take an Uber from however far we got out back to the hotel. And then we would just kind of, you know, play it easy at the hotel and then do the same the next day.
So we just picked different directions. I imagine this is probably going to be kind of similar. I feel like it's the first trip out to these places. So, you know, there's that desire. I totally get you. And I was like, I want to see everything. It's just not reasonable. I've I've already kind of put it in my head as I go, like, we're not going to see everything. Like let's just pick the things that are most important and then we'll adapt on the fly as
needed. My wife's great to go at that and she's, you know, on board, that kind of thing. So, and if it's super cool, we can always try to go back, right? Maybe it's EIC next year or two years from now or something else, right? Or maybe, you know, whatever happens, right, we end up somewhere else for, for work or something like that, right. So I'm a little more, I guess, the short version, Jim, I'm opposite. I think there, I think it's
great that you're opposite. And by the way, it's not like I'm doing this planning because I feel like I have to. I'm doing this planning because I'm really enjoying it. Like watching these videos gets me excited about going and oh, here's all the things that I can do. And coming up with that map that I did wasn't because like, Oh no, I have to sit down and create this map. That's because I wanted to see where all these different things
were in relation to each other. So it's that's the reason I'm doing it. I like. I do the map thing only if I'm going someplace that I'm not familiar with. And I love things like Google Street View. It's like, OK, let me get familiar with the surroundings. OK, here's what to expect, here's where this is going to be AT and so forth. But I don't, I don't go into like the logistics and planning of like the most optimal path of all the different things around it. So that's, that's it.
All right. Why don't we wrap it up for this week? Heather, it's a pleasure to see you virtually. We will see you in real life in the next couple of weeks over at EIC and then get an Identiverse. Thank you again for working with us on the whole partnership thing. Looking forward to see, you know
where this goes. We have lots of ID Pro members, guests, all kinds of stuff and I'm sure ideas are cranking in our heads of what are the things that we can be doing together over there the next several weeks, months. You know, however, on this, this goes. So I'll have links in our show notes for people to check out Heather. So your LinkedIn, the ID pro.org website. So definitely want to check that out. I'll have a link to the identity salon, which sounds super cool and interesting.
I want to talk to you about that after the fact. And then yeah, for us, we're on the web, IDC, podcast.com, we have our YouTube channel, which we're still trying to grow. So feel free to give us a like and subscribe there. Definitely helps and definitely seen a lot of viewers come on board in the last couple of months. So I'm trying to do more, more shorts and things like that. And maybe that's working, maybe it's not, I don't know. But give us a like and subscribe anyway.
And with that, we'll go ahead and leave it for this week. Thanks for watching and or listening and we'll talk with you all in the next one. Bye bye. You've been listening to Identity at the Center. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review, and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the website at identity@thecenter.com. See you next time on Identity at the Center.