Matthew Spence is a 2024 Kim Cameron Awardees. We were pleased to support his journey to Identiverse this year, and invite you to read more about his perspective on the event and the industry of identity below.
When you work in congress, you get invited to a lot of events. Everybody wants the chance to talk to you, understand you, and ideally influence you. Everybody has an ulterior motive, often but not always altruistic, that leads them to you to make their case. What’s worse, they all make excellent arguments! They are all, almost without exception, talented and passionate and so very articulate. Some of them (probably) are even right! Unfortunately, there’s usually no way to know who those are. It’s a political judgment based on unclear tradeoffs that are weighed based on principles few can agree on. For someone from the tech industry, where issues tend to be grounded in fairly objective engineering and efficiency tradeoffs, this can be frustrating. It’s also, however, inspiring, because (nearly) everyone is genuinely working to solve large problems that they truly believe in. My time as a senate staffer paralleled my experience at Identiverse surprisingly well, though in this case I was very glad to be just another face in the crowd.
I love the digital identity industry because it combines two principles I care deeply about: technical rigor and high minded idealism. Both were on clear display at Identiverse. From the opening keynote by Andre Durand about the future of digital identity, to technical sessions with Aaron Parecki about the latest work on OAuth, everybody was working to use technology to solve real problems that impact people all over the world. At its best, these combined to build a vision of the future where digital interactions are totally transformed, and identity systems empower people in new and exciting ways. For me, this was demonstrated best by Ian Glazer’s concept of Counselors, which stitched together disparate innovations ranging from AI to digital credentials into a (potentially) powerful tool for making the digital world both safer and more accessible. It’s that kind of vision that gets me excited to be a part of this industry.
To be clear, though, high minded idealism and technical rigor don’t always coexist peacefully, and that too was on full display. There is much disagreement about where the identity industry is heading, and even more about where it should head. Much like when I worked in congress, nearly everyone can make a compelling case for why their idea is the best one, or why other ideas simply aren’t workable. These disagreements are sometimes quite intense, and are colored by relationships that go back decades between a relatively small set of industry veterans, but they are always grounded with an eye towards solving problems. For someone as new to the industry as I am, it was a reminder that we are where we are because of the hard work and dedication of those that came before us. To be cliche about it, we really do stand on the shoulders of giants.
One of those giants left a particular impression, though sadly I will never get the chance to meet him. Vitorrio Bertocci was not a name I knew coming into this, but it’s not one I’ll forget after. It’s quite difficult to win this industry’s respect for both your vision and your technical acumen; people tend to be in one camp or the other. Those that can claim leadership in both, though, are titans. Vitorrio was a titan. My favorite session of the whole conference was inspired by his tragic passing: Dean Saxe’s panel on digital death, and what happens when our virtual personas inevitably outlast our physical ones. Even in death Vitorrio is still driving the industry forward, pushing us to solve problems that force us to maintain a high minded vision without forgetting that we owe it to ourselves and to the public to adhere to the highest standards of technical excellence. Doing anything less would disrespect those that came before us.