The Identiverse 2024 Call for Presentations

If you’ve considered submitting a proposal to the Identiverse Call for Presentations this year (and if you haven’t quite gotten around to it yet, consider this a reminder), then hopefully you’ve also taken a look at this year’s guidance document that introduces our focus for 2024: “The Identity Engine.”

This article seeks to explain three things — what the ‘Identity Engine’ topic is about, why it’s important, and how it might influence your talk proposal (or proposals — more than one is fine!).  As you read through it, I encourage you to consider our annual topic focus like a flavour that infuses all the constituent parts of the event, but doesn’t overpower any one of them; the more variety and breadth of thought we have, the better.

I hope that all of this will encourage you to put in a proposal!

Powered by the Identity Engine

Welcome to the power of the Identity Engine! But what is it, and why do we care?

For the past few Identiverse events, we’ve been subtly developing a recognition of identity as the engine that powers our organisations. In early planning discussions for the 2024 event, the advisory board concluded that the time was now ripe for us bring this message to the fore. We have an opportunity this year to start to deeply engage with the business side of identity.

Let me be clear: I don’t mean, by this, that we need to talk about the ‘monetisation of identity’. This has certainly been discussed before, and I’m sure it will be again (and again…!), but that’s not the point. Rather, the intent is to start to promote a better understanding of the fact that Identity is a—if not the—key enabler for most digital transformation projects today (and most user-facing application deployments, whether internally or externally facing, arguably fall into this category).

Why the Identity Engine Matters

Authentication is your front door. Authorisation is your gatekeeper. A poorly implemented user directory structure and user lifecycle process will have as much, if not more, impact on user experience as it will on compliance. That impact on user experience translates quite directly into an impact on key business performance indicators like customer satisfaction, supply-chain efficiency, employee retention, and more

Let’s be honest. If you’ve been in digital identity for more than 5 minutes, you already know this. You may know the best way to solve each specific problem, and although you may not be able to translate the impact of your work into ‘business-speak,’ I’ll bet that viscerally, you know that what you do directly influences or enables a critical business outcome. It’s also a fair bet that others in your organisation—and in particular the folks with the budget—don’t.

The good news is that we know that there are already some success stories out there. There is a growing body of data about the effect that passkey implementations have on user satisfaction, and happy customers are likely to be repeat customers. Imagine that: an identity and security project that directly correlates to improved customer retention! There are specific examples of well-implemented OAuth/OpenID Connect that correlate with user acquisition. Workforce SSO can have a demonstrable impact on workplace satisfaction and efficiency, which in turn can translate into improved workforce retention.

The 2024 Call for Presentations

But we need more. We need to hear about the successes, and we need to learn from the failures. We need to share what worked and what didn’t, not only at a technical level but also at a business level. We need to start encouraging our business counterparts to come along and listen and understand how we can help each other. Just like we did with Security; just like we did with Privacy.

And so to my request, which is twofold. First: if you don’t have a project or talk topic that has a direct, demonstrable business benefit—that’s great too: please submit it! Remember that our ‘topic focus’ is an infusion—it needs all the other flavors if it’s going to work. Second: if you do have a project or talk topic that speaks to the entire digital transformation initiative while enabling compliance initiatives and mitigating privacy and security risks, please consider sharing it.

Actually, I have a third plea, and it’s the same one I make every year. Whatever you do, please put in a proposal. I won’t lie—we are always oversubscribed, so not everyone will be successful; but I can promise that every proposal will be fully considered on its merit. And although I know that we’ll end up having to reject many proposals which are, in their own right, excellent… I also know that the only way to guarantee you won’t speak at Identiverse is not to submit a proposal.

So put one in. The content committee and I look forward to seeing it!

Deadline for Submissions: Friday, January 05, 2024

Acceptance Notification: no later than Friday, February 16, 2024

#identiverse #blog