[00:00:00] Katherine Druckman: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Reality. 2.0, I am Katherine Druckman. I am talking to Doc Searls and we are joined by Mike Vesey who is the CEO of ID ramp.

And we're going to talk about. I real-world identity solutions. We're going to talk about decentralization and verifiable credentials, and we're gonna get into some really, really, really good stuff. So this conversation comes right after we had another very important conversation about ID me and and a national ID system.

So I think this ties in really well with the podcast we did a couple of weeks ago. So I'm going to link to that in our description. I encourage you to listen to both. And, uh, with that, Mike, why don't you tell us a little bit more about ID ramp and what you do and where your interests lie. 

[00:00:52] Mike Vesey: Awesome.

Sure. Thanks. Thanks for having me on the show. First of all, um, ID ramp was really founded out of the, the, the Federation challenges major enterprise. So we've been around and kind of doing this. I've personally been fixing solutions and creating, creating other problems. I'm sure, uh, for many, many, many years, and, uh, of got started with, with Microsoft back in the day when they were launching their live meeting service really needed Federation.

You know, the message was just go out here and create usernames and passwords. And obviously that wasn't really flying in the enterprise space. So, you know, we, we did some stuff, built some, some tools and, uh, and that's really where we got our start. And from, from there, you know, we, we learned all of the things not to do.

And when I was pretty confident, I had a handle on what I needed to do. Uh, we started ID rep and ID ramp was the, um, you know, the, the culmination of all that learning and trying to do things the right way. And, um, you know, for example, and this is, this is, this should be, you know, on our mission statement somewhere, but.

I even have the hardest decision we ever had to make when starting ID map is not to be an identity provider. And that sounds you really have to kind of chew on that a little bit, but it would have been so much easier, so much easier if we would have just said, all right, we're going to store this identity.

We think we know who this person is, and we're going to enable that for, you know, and just become another identity, uh, silo. We, we probably not probably, we definitely would have had a much easier time building the tool services and integrations. Um, but we didn't do that, right. I mean, we, we keep this open platform and we're trying to enable next generation tools by speaking current generation language.

Right? So we go into the enterprise and we're talking about things. They understand Sam Aloha, IDC, you know, API APIs and typical things. But the product of that integration are these beautiful little things called verifiable credentials. You know, so if we go into an organization and that organization. We need to remove passwords.

We get with been way too long. Uh, we gotta get rid of them tomorrow. So our solution has never, well, you know, DIDs and, and we don't go in with that type of technology or terminology. We basically come in and just say, great, we're going to remove your passwords. But instead of creating a massive database of all these stored passwords and injecting them are needed and all that stuff, we do that by hooking into their existing identity solutions, um, and creating a wallet for them, right.

They don't know any of this. They don't see any of this code free platform. Um, but we're putting them into the area of verifiable credentials. And the output is they just get a credential that says, Hey, your user in this, uh, active directory or G suite or whatever, and they can use that. And they go, man, my passwords are gone.

And so we're, we're trying to, to evolve the conversation by using and leveraging a lot of things that the real world is using today, you know, and that's, and that I think is an important piece. And that's, that's really. All we focus on whether it's new onboarding, you know, new hire onboarding, or user identification, identification solutions.

The ID route platform is a massive mixing board for traditional identity systems for biometric service providers for, uh, application services for API interfaces. So just it's this giant thing. And you bring in. Pick all your tools that you want to do and you create those flows and you create an authentication path or a flow for, for user process.

So that's a really long-winded way of explaining what ID does, but that summarizes our, our goals, uh, pretty good sized. 

[00:04:31] Doc Searls: So let me ask, um, because I'm, my, my knowledge base comes from the emergence of SSI self-sovereign identity and verifiable credentials as a new way of looking at identity. And, um, and so, and correct me if I have this wrong, because I, I think I want to make it as easy as we can for the listeners of the show.

Um, a verifiably credential is, for example, we there's the, the IRS, right? The IRS, which made news with this ID ID dot. Fiasco basically. Um, um, basically they, they hired a company to do identity for them and it was in an old fashioned way. Hey, you give an identity as it were to somebody, it happens to include their face.

That's what made it controversial. And that's what we thought about identity a and we used to call this an ID provider and then a relying party. So the ID provider in this case is like id.me, helps the IRS given identifier to give an ID to a citizen and they can take that somewhere else. So of course the IRS only wants you to take it to them.

But the old way we thought about identities is that you carry a portfolio of official. Things in your wallet, but they have to actually carry more information than you want to necessarily share. Like your driver's license has your height and your weight and your eye color and your hair, and a bunch of other, and your address.

You may not want to say anything other than I'm over 18, where I live in this state. Right. So, but verify that credential is that. And with, with the IRS, for example, this is a citizen we need to know more than that. Okay. Then there's a verifiable credentials for that. Or I've given you a verifiable credential that may only be useful to the IRS and not to anybody else, which I think is probably the way to go with them.

Whereas for driver's license, the state may give you a collection of her verifiable credentials that may include your address and your hair color and the rest. But, but you have a wallet for keeping these, I'm looking at it from the personal side. You've got a wallet that while it is. Ideally substitutable, like the one you have in your pocket.

Uh, you know, but it carries all a portfolio of verifiable credentials that adhere to, um, Kim Cameron, seven laws of identity, which, you know, minimum disclosure for constrained use justifiable parties. Um, you know, in other words, I want to constrain as much as I can, how little I reveal to other parties about myself and that's a verifiable credentials do, 

[00:07:03] Mike Vesey: is that clear?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so many good points in there and the IDW thing is a great, it's a great lesson, right? I mean, some will say, oh man, mistake, or a lost opportunity, depending on what, you know, how you fall on that. I just see it as a great, it's a great learning, you know, it's a great lesson that we can move forward from.

And the problem I had with that whole deal was not, was not the fact that the government said we need help. Great. But it's the trust. It's the relationship? My relationship with the IRS is just that it's a re it's a trust relationship between me and the IRS. So they need to own the responsibility to manage that process.

W you know, government created identity and whatever. I mean, you know, that that's a conversation that gets incredibly complex, incredibly fast, but my problem fundamentally was I don't have a trust relationship with id.me or any other vendor that I will trust to represent. On my behalf with the, with the internal revenue service that I don't distrust implicitly, you know, pushing out to other, to other sources and IDW, they, they do that right with, I don't want to bash on them, there's others, but I'm just saying that, that that's, they're providing that service, you know, and that's, and that's fine.

They're making money and paying their stockholders and, and that's, um, you know, it's what makes the world go round, but that's fundamentally at odds with a trust relationship that I need to have with my government or with my, you know, my tax service. So, so that's my problem, you know, and that's the way I see the relationship is more, you know, kind of my overview of it.

Ramps obviously probably explains my perspective on this, but the way I see that relationship is if, if the government needs help. You can use a tool like ID ramp or others. I mean, there's others out there to say, I need to hook into these types of servers, if it's biometrics great. If it's whatever it is, right.

Just, you know, you pick it, but they need to own, they have the responsibility to own the process. And I think that's where the failure really came up. If it would've been, you know, the IRS is launching this great biometric service bubble or whatever, they've not, I still take some heat and some backlash, but at least they're owning the responsibility to manage the, the relationship, the trust between their them and their consumer.

So I that's my biggest problem with that, with that whole thing. Um, and you made some other really, really good points. Where does that start? Right? Self-sovereign identity is we talk about it all the time. It's a very difficult thing. So. My belief is we empower as many people as we can to use the right technology and try to make the, the, the use and the adoption of that technology.

The thing that's viral, you know, the rest of the world will catch up. If we can do simple things, like making it easier for you to interface with your services applications or, uh, or your government, right. I mean, that would be the killer application. If it's easier for me to, to do things with the DMV or social services, um, it's, you know, that would be, that would cause a very, very rapid adoption.

And so that's kind of where, you know, it's kind of where I'm adding, right. Everything I see. Fundamentally, I see these little processes, whether they're inside a big organization or a small, uh, small, medium business or, or public sector. There's opportunities to take little slices and say, okay, we're going to take this process.

And we're going to replace that with a verifiable credential. Don't tell them we're using a firewall credential, right? Explain that a selective, selective disclosure, you know, all the stuff that you said, and they go, yeah, that's great. And by doing that with the right technology of the time, right, we can all agree.

Technology evolves quickly. So, um, what we're using today, uh, verifiable credentials with selective disclosure in my opinion, is the best tool we have in the toolkit today, will that evolve certainly, you know, will it, and it's going to change, but, uh, being able to form the trust relationships and the, um, and, you know, have the tools for preventing the correlation of that data is really, really important.

And I think if we can solve as many of those little processes as possible using the right tools, we'll find that we're slowly changing the world. 

[00:11:21] Katherine Druckman: So, how do we get there? So you mentioned going viral going, you know, there are other people will, will take it and spread, you know, the right way of doing things once it's, it takes off.

And I have to admit, the reaction to the ID me news was encouraging because it consumer demand did in fact work, I think. So how do you, how do we get, the consumer demand to make these changes in a substantial and really measurable way for the end user? 

[00:11:54] Mike Vesey: Yeah, that's um, that's the great question, right?

I mean, that's, that's, that's where we're, that's what we're really searching for here. And I think it has to be, um, uh, it has to be, we're talking about tools that are, that come very easily to. A certain demographic, a more difficult to other demographics, right? This is the idea of using the sun. So I think we'd have, we'd be silly to not say we have to target that demographic.

We're going after the younger generation, that's really familiar with these tools. The problem is an interesting one for me, but the problem is that those, that younger generation is so free with their data. They've just, you know, that it's, it's at odds with privacy. The people that are really concerned about the privacy are the people that don't really want to use tools.

So it's a, it's a really, really challenging issue, but Hey, the world's changing, right? I mean, we've got all this stuff. Um, you know, we're talking about, uh, you know, uh, crypto is, is, is something that everybody's using it now as a term, you know, and people know what it is. And, and metaverse, I mean, God help me.

I don't, I don't know if I can survive it. Right. But you know, all this stuff is coming at us, whether we want it or not. And. And it will, there are absolute requirements for these types of personal identity tools. And I think somewhere in that evolution, we'll find the adoption of these tools and, and hopefully, you know, we wrestle it away from the big, from the big centralized, um, providers who are also, by the way, you know, trying to develop these tools.

And, and they're just not as privacy preserving as others that follow, you know, and in different circles. And that's, that's a really challenging thing as well because we have to make it easy. And, um, historically, you know, the, the big companies that know how to make consumers happy with easy solutions, um, can't are the ones that were really trying to wrestle control away from here to, uh, to make things a little more decentralized.

So, so there's some really, I don't know. I know there wasn't an answer in there, but a lot of really great questions. I think that we just have to keep, you know, we just got to get up every morning and pull our boots on and, and go to work. And that's, that's just pretty much how we have to solve. 

That's why we're here.

[00:14:09] Katherine Druckman: That's why we have these conversations. I don't know that we ever come up with really concrete answers, but as long as we keep the conversation going, it feels like we're, we're making progress. Right. You brought up the metaverse, which is, well, that's a whole other conversation, but I think it ties in nicely here because I feel like, and I wonder if you agree that in a few years, that the concept of identity will.

Well, fundamentally shift a bit because you know who you are online and digitally will really change into a, this potentially this VR, a little avatar where we might be having, we might have this, this, this call, in the metaverse where my little lizard person is talking to your superhero and, and doc is, well, I don't know whatever you want to be doc, in our NRO future, a podcast recording in the metaverse.

And I just wonder how you see that evolving in terms of this conversation about identity and privacy. 

[00:15:04] Mike Vesey: Well, I think we have an opportunity, um, an opportunity to, to invoke some change here, right? And this, this is really, really a key time because you're, you hit on something that I also think is very important.

Everybody talks about self-sovereign identity. Well, what is it? It's a collection of metadata. Right? That's all it is. It's just a collection of stuff about me. My identity is not my passport. My identity is not my driver's license or my utility bill or my it's everything. Right. And so this is why it's so complicated to, to get your head around.

It's like, well, yeah, that sounds really good. Where do I get one? Well, you don't get one, you get a thousand or 10,000, you know, from the time you're born. And that shift is going to be, that's a long walk, right? That's a long walk and we're going to have to, we're going to have to get there again. You know, my personal philosophy is let's change what we can change slowly.

And, and you know, if I can, if I can put a piece of metadata. In your possession that allows you to log into zoom without a password. You know, then, then it's, it's a small victory. It's a small victory. If I can, you know, we worked on a really cool project last year with a state of North Dakota. Uh, we're issuing digital credentials, right?

For all of the graduating seniors. That's really cool. That's changing. You know, now, now we have verifiable credentials for all of these graduating seniors. They don't, they just look at it as a transcript. They got on their phone. They don't, they don't know what's going on to the technology behind it, but we can start going out now and building around the perimeter, other places.

Well, Hey, I know that these students coming out of North Dakota are going to have this transcript. So you, Mister college admissions, how would you like to chop, you know, two days off of the process of trying to vet all of those courses and, and act scores and all that. You know, we're starting to, we're starting to chip away now, and there's a lot of that movement going on in education.

And, um, and you, you can see the opportunity to pull in private sector there as well. Hey, you want to hire this person? Great. Here's how you can immediately verify, you know, this stock it'll tell you exactly what you need to know. Nothing else because of the disclosure is coming from the applicant, the student, the graduate, whatever.

And so, you know, it's a much better solution. I think we can. I think we can get there. The introduction of metaverse is, is just another application. It's just another thing that is going to play a part in making sure. Your persona, you know who you are. And so if we, if we have the opportunity to introduce, and certainly there's going to be, you know, uh, payments and all this, we just have a great opportunity right now to say, this is the way we can do digital identification better.

Um, and, and, you know, start stimulating that on the commercial side, on the enterprise side, as opposed to just kind of sitting back and waiting for governments to do what they're going to do. And public sector is it's just really hard because public sector plays by a different rule book. They have to, you know, they, they have to be more, um, uh, conservative and inclusive and, and all this stuff, you know, by nature to try and make sure that everybody can.

And the enterprise and commercial sector has an opportunity to just turn burn, right? If they find a way, um, to, to make it easier, to make it cheaper, to make it whatever they can, they can start implementing these little pieces of data. And we can start taking that out into the real world. Hey, how would you like to use your employer's ID to get 30% off on an oil change?

Whatever, you know, I mean, you can, you can take those credentials because of the way that they work, um, and very easily extend to those ecosystems and broaden those ecosystems. Uh, it's just really hard work right now, but I think once we get the ball rolling, it starts picking up speed. Um, it it'll change it very quickly.

[00:19:02] Doc Searls: I'm wondering if, what, I mean an interesting thing to me in a very encouraging thing is that, um, uh, as you know, we, we we've been organizing the, uh, internet identity workshop. For it's going to have is 35th. They think the next 1 34 to 35th was two years since 2005. And a lots of things that come out of this.

But the last several years, probably SSI, DIDs, verifiable credentials have been the big thing. And the difference now I think is that there's just so much development going on. Uh, you're in it, but a lot of other companies are in it. Some big companies, too. IBM, Microsoft, um, are all, uh, are, are involved in various ways.

And, uh, some of it's smoke blowing, some of it's real, um, uh, but at some point something breaks through. Um, what do you think? I mean, this is different than the viral question a little bit. Cause we think, I think at some point. It will, but, um, what's it going to take? I mean, what, is there a vertical, maybe a vertical is a way to think of it.

I think the IRS is probably not a great example, but there, the zoom might be a good example and maybe the there's a kind of horizontal, it might be a vertical, which is everybody hates passwords and the logins, right. Everybody does. So that's the giant pain point it's been around. I mean, my gosh, if you told me in 1995, we'd still be using.

Logins and passwords in 2022, I'd want to kill myself. I mean, it's like, are we that uncreative? But I think the only way we could deal with this is from the user side you can't, because everybody else is gonna, if you, if a zillion different enterprises, all solving the same problem in their own ways, you can only have logins and passwords.

So I'm wondering if there's, if you're sort of imagining what that's going to be, what what's going to break 

[00:20:59] Mike Vesey: through. Yep. That's a, it's a great question. I think, uh, I'm with you on passwords by the way. But I think that goes to, um, you know, it goes to a point that Catherine made earlier, people, people do care and they care that passwords, you know, suck, they care, but they don't care enough.

I mean to, to invest a lot of effort into solving the problem. And so therein lies the issue for us as people trying to make this process better. We have to make it completely frictionless. If we say we're going to revert, but you know, you got to use your smartphone and do this. Ah, it sounds like a lot of work.

I'm just going to call it. I'm just going to go with 1, 2, 3, 4 new right. Or whatever. And so, so it's, it's really challenging, but I'll tell you what, that, that market will have an effect. There will be an effect. Uh, th the problem is that no one yet has created a, uh, a big enough, a big enough opportunity where I, as a consumer can say, okay, I'm going to use your thing because it pretty much takes care of all of my problems.

Now the password masking industry has done a great job of that, but it's not so great technology, right? I mean, you're just replacing 10,000 silos with one master silo, you know, and that's even worse because now you're, you're Bridgepoint, you know, is your threat surface on that one is, is, is massive. So if we can use, if we can use this technology, if we can use verifiable credentials and we can break that apart, uh, then, then we've got some opportunities.

So I think there's a massive opportunity for, um, to come out with a password manager, replacement type service, using verifiable credentials that are interoperable in, in many different other, um, walks of life, rather than just, you know, logging into zoom. Um, and I also think, I also think education and just the whole public sector.

I know public sector is, is difficult. I know that, um, you know, we're struggling at, at a government level to find the right place, but it doesn't have to start. All the way at the top, obviously be great. Good. But we're seeing a lot of individual states doing projects, whether it's an education or, or, um, you know, we did a pilot for a state here in the U S where they had, I got 140 different social service sites, you know, different sites, unemployment, uh, uh, everything clear down to the public library.

You know, they had 140 different logins, usernames and passwords. They were all separate identity silos, no common foundational thing. And we've whipped out this little pilot that said, look, let's just find out who this person is. Right. However you choose to do that. If you want to manually vet them or using some tools.

And let's generate a payload of credentials for their, uh, street address for their, whatever it is. And we put three or four different credentials into a wallet that the consumer can manage. And then the user experience for logging into all of those services changes to one interaction is one thing, right?

It's the same. If I'm going to unemployment, it's the same presentation of, of, uh, the same process, not the presentation of data, the same process, whether I'm logging into jobs and unemployment or, um, uh, you know, or, uh, are the public library. And I do the same thing as a consumer, same exact thing. And the information that transmits passively are passed through the, uh, the assertion is much different, of course, right?

I'm going to a court hearing. It's going to be a different payload of data than if I'm going to the library, but the we've made it easy for the consumer in that case. And that's something consumer. Right because it's taking, it's saving them time. It's saving them, uh, uh, uh, you know, frustration from having to go out and reset or generate a remember or go to the, you know, go to the spiral notebook, have all their passwords written down, whatever it is to, to find that information.

So processes like that will, if we can get, you know, a few key players to come in and start, um, start processes like that, hopefully using, you know, um, again, the, the right technologies. It's, it's kind of important, right? If we're, if we're out there spinning our own, uh, proprietary solutions, that's not following standards and not interoperable, then we're just part of the problem.

But, um, if we can create some, some solutions like that, I really think you're going to see public sector education. And then of course the password elimination market is still, um, alive and strong in 2020. 

[00:25:31] Katherine Druckman: So I think I have a question for both of you really, and that's, so you use the phrase need to know, right.

And, and I'm wondering, you know, once you have the ability to easily verify certain credentials, like you mentioned education transcript, what have you, your credit score, your, um, you know, background check your, how do you, how do you protect that from, because humans love to collect information on each other.

We love businesses, governments. We love to collect as much as we can, and we're not necessarily responsible with it. So once you have this very easily easy ability to, to click a button and share, you know, any verifiable piece of data about yourself, what, how do we prevent things from getting to the point where, um, Whatever entity, it may be demands too much.

And you know, how do we, how does it, how do we prevent it from becoming, you know, an easily verifiable social score or something like that? 

[00:26:31] Mike Vesey: Yeah. I mean, this is where we get back to the philosophy, right? This is really hard because, because how do you, how do you know, I mean, you know, we can develop this tool and like I said, you can, you know, you can build a service, I can build a service and say, log into this court hearing.

Here are the five pieces of information I need to know. I can ask for those five pieces of information and guess what's going to happen when the consumer, when that citizen goes to, to log into that court hearing, they're gonna, they're gonna interact somehow. They're going to scan it, or they're going to receive a notification, thanks to the brilliance of good calm or whatever.

They're going to receive just a notification on their phone. And, and they can just say, uh, so it's going to pop up and it's going to say, Hey, this court hearing is asking for these five pieces of. Now how many, how many people are going to look at all five of those attributes and go, yeah, I guess that's okay.

Or not. I don't want to send this one, you know, cause you're right. I mean, it's so easy. People just want things to go away. And if there's a green button and a red button, they're just going to push the green button and I'm not throwing arrows here. I'm just saying it's human nature. We all do it. And so it's, it's a, it's a very difficult thing because we're now we're creating a powerful tool.

The good news there though. I mean, the takeaway for me is if I do. I'm doing it right. Somebody else isn't doing it on my behalf. That's the thing that burns me. That's the thing that really gets me. Is it, you know, I'm the one that's doing that. If I take the responsibility and this comes through education and evolution, I mean, we'll, we'll get to there where we, where we are a little more, um, uh, critical of some of those processes to date.

It's always been just, I mean, think about the cookie thing. When's the last time you read one of those, you know, I mean, I look for a while. I look for a way to just dismiss them or make them go away because I hate accepting them, but you know, they're everywhere and nobody reads them. You just impossibly click on it.

It goes away, you know? And you don't know what you 

[00:28:24] Doc Searls: just, he notices 

[00:28:27] Mike Vesey: the cookie notices. Yeah. So, so you know, that that's a perfect, a perfect example of kind of how, how human beings interact with technology. It's just get out of my way because I'm trying to do something and you're in my way. So we have to find a way to, um, um, to solve that problem.

And that, that's a, that's a really tough one, Katherine. I mean, we talk about that all the time. Is there going to be a whole new industry of, of organizations, uh, you know, that are doing that are doing those types of consumer protection services now that want to mediate somehow? Well, now we're defeating the purpose, you know, so it's, it's really hard to imagine how that is going to, uh, is going to be solved, but.

We can do it. You know, his application engineers, we can build that into the, we can say, you're sending this, this, this side's looking for this, is it really necessary? And we can build algorithms that evaluate the type of information being presented with the w I mean, the type of, uh, of cider service we're interacting with, with the, you know, with the types of attributes that are being sent, it's not easy, but you know, the right thing never is.

So we just have to, uh, we just have to do it, you know, and, and try to solve that problem. Um, uh, as it comes up. 

[00:29:39] Katherine Druckman: And like you say, at least if, if you put the power back into the hands of the user, you know, if I accidentally share my blood type of Facebook or something, and then it's on me, 

[00:29:46] Mike Vesey: it's, I'm telling you.

Yeah. And I'm okay with that. I mean, I, I I'm okay with that. And if you're going to do that, I'm okay with you doing that. Uh, you should be compensated for it, or you should be, you know, that should be your cause. Be 

[00:29:58] Katherine Druckman: educated about the consequences or something, but 

[00:30:01] Mike Vesey: right. As long as we all get to make that decision for ourselves and not 

[00:30:06] Doc Searls: everybody.

Yeah. I, I think, uh, just to answer my side of that, I think were th there are always risks and, and we're disclosing things all the time in the physical world. Um, uh, it, isn't just in digital one where we're vulnerable, we're vulnerable everywhere in various ways. I think with the verifiable credential approach to contrast it with the old living, calling it identity 1.0 approach, you know, where you have an ID as a work, there's a bunch of stuff in it.

Um, it's much more scattered, you know, you're, you're, you're you are doing again, minimum disclosure, you're doing a frequent strain uses. You're doing it with justifiable parties. Um, There are, there are going to be rules about how people can use data, but they're not going to be collecting it in quite the same way.

Obviously, you know, the bad guys are going to be monitoring channels and trying to assemble versions of you and all that. But what I think the upside of that goes away to some degree, I mean, there will always be criminal activity. Um, but I also think that the advertising world is, which is behind an awful lot of, and probably most of the surveillance issues that we've had is, is gradually in it.

There's a house of cards there that's collapsing and we've had, uh, Augusta and Fu on this show several times now who has done a fabulous job of showing how much you're dead or you're scattering in the world, but also how much fraud is out there and how much advertising is actually not very effective.

Um, you know, this in addition to the illegalities involved, but I think. Get farther downstream with the actual utility of just, uh, of, of, uh, a verifiable credentials. A lot of the other issues kind of fall to the wayside and we have new issues that we're going to be dealing with, whatever those are, you know, and, and there will be big companies that step in and want to dominate everything.

And I know Microsoft is there and they're trying really hard to not act like the big foot, but they can't help it because they have a big foot, you 

[00:32:11] Mike Vesey: know? Yep. You're right. And, and that's, it's interesting that a couple of points you made there that, that resonated with me. It's like we, you know, think about paper credentials.

We started with paper credentials. So when we overexposed information, I'm trying to go into a bar or something. I'm overexposing, you know, information. I'm overexposing as a one person. Right. And so that one person what's he going to do with it. So maybe, you know, so, and then we got to, then we got, and that was, that was where we were at with web 1.0, right.

We were exposing that information to lots of little data silos where they expose you. Absolutely. Then we aggregate them all into these massive data silos. So the threat surface got enormous, right. So it's much easier to go and attack Equifax than it is to try and attack these 10 other sites. And so, um, and now we're now we're, you know, getting to where I think we're, we can, we can fracture this.

I mean, we can really blow apart these data silos. And the really cool thing is when we do that. So when we develop these, um, when we develop this technology, we really promote this technology where we take all these bits and pieces of information. We put them back into your control. Think about what that does on the application side of things.

If. You know, and even in healthcare, which is another place that we could see some, you know, some traction with verifiable credentials, but it's pretty locked down. There aren't many organizations that get to play in there. You know, it's, it's centrally controlled. So it's going to be awhile before we get some, some movement there, I think.

But think about what happens if, if I need to find you to go to the physician and all of the information that they need is stuff that I'm carrying around with me. Why do they need this? That's a really bad example, but you know anything though, if I'm a, if I'm a, uh, online provider think about, uh, you know, I know there's people that are working on social network stuff, but why have all that information massively stored centrally?

Why not just ask for it every time I'd come through the door because you're going to get it. It's going to be the same every time you're not asking me to type in your first name, I'm going to provide you my first name. You know, if I choose, cause it's my decision out of my wallet. So when you log into a service, um, we did this for ICW last, last year, uh, for Kiko chat.

Remember we had a, we had an actual verifiable credential. We went out to. Um, a bunch of different people in the industry, all with interoperable wallets, you know, you can generate a credential of your, of yourself or IDW and you can go in and they just ask every time they didn't need to keep a profile of you because they could just get that in the assertion.

And so they could say, hello, Mike, you know, welcome back. They don't need to store that information. They don't, they don't need a store address, you know? And so the application design is going to change so that when they need a piece of information, oh, you bought something. I need to ship it to you. It's just going to pop up on my phone.

Would you like to send me your shipping address so I can send you these, these cookies you bought? Yes, I would. Right. So I mean, that's the type of relationship and interactions we need. Once they shipped me my box of cookies, they discard my address and they don't keep it. And therefore it's not exposed or accessible for, you know, for bad things.

That's the world we're marching toward that we need to get to. And verifiable credentials and decentralization in general is, you know, we're, we're early days, but I like where we're going. And, and I liked the energy in the field for sure. 

[00:35:33] Doc Searls: Well, it might be analogous to, I mean, the experience might be analogous to when you're.

You know, when you're at a, a conference and you wear a badge or, um, or some kind of a readable tag, you know, you've got a RFID tag or something like that. That's not telling you much about you. It's just like this, this person is okay here and that's really, and then when you leave, you throw it in the trash, you don't need it anymore.

Right. You just throw the thing away. Um, and that's, you know, that then on burdens the, you know, all of the operations of the need to like, know everything about this person at all times. Um, but that's part of the experience I think that we'll have is that, is that, that particular real-world model. 

[00:36:20] Mike Vesey: Yeah. So we build, you know, by starting these, these one little simple blocks, we build the better world by making it easier for the application programmer.

You know, it's easier because it's easier to just make a call and say, go get me. Go give me the address. Then it is to try and build and maintain massive databases. Now, the reason we build maintain massive databases today, of course, is because you mentioned advertising, right? And that's going, it necessarily will die a horrible death.

I can't come fast enough, but you know, it has to go away. And because it's, I mean, it's, it's bad. There's just, no, it's a whole nother soapbox for another day, but, um, we're, we're really not doing ourselves any favors as a, as a society, through all of the, um, uh, the social, uh, you know, and, and the advertising and the, the surveillance capitalism stuff that's going on right now.

So, um, it's very destructive and I think it is your way, and these are just the foundations of that building block. And once people start building smarter applications, because they know they can. Um, we're at, that makes the world a safer place and it makes it easier, cheaper for developer to develop an application.

So, um, you know, I, I, I think we're on the right path. 

[00:37:38] Katherine Druckman: So I'm curious about, about your, uh, your company. What can you tell us about some interesting kind of success stories or case studies or, you know, some real world applications it'll get people kind of excited. 

[00:37:50] Mike Vesey: Sure. Yeah, we we've, um, we've had some really good success with some of our enterprise partners and, um, you know, we have a project that we, uh, developed for PricewaterhouseCoopers that does a lot of webcasting and that webcast system has the ability to use, um, digital credentials.

We're the we're benefiting there because we also, you know, we develop not only are we ID ramp and where the infrastructure that ties together, all of the webcast vendors and secures that environment. So, uh, you know, all the different, uh, even even zoom or WebEx tools like that are, uh, are, are secured using any type of technology that the firm may want.

We can use their internal identity management system or a verifiable credential, uh, or, you know, whatever else that ID map can orchestrate. And as I, as I mentioned, it's a really, you know, open platform, so it can do anything. Um, but we also built this webcast portal system. So we put in the very triggers.

I was just talking about, um, to be able to say, if we're securing an event that needs to be secured by a. Group of people. Um, we just make a call out, you know, using an established, did calm connection that the application has with, um, the, the wallet, you know, for the, for this particular application, we just make that call out and say, Hey, do you want to send, um, you want to send your partner status?

Do you want to send you or whatever? And so that's a huge success and it's still in the process of kind of really gaining a lot of traction, but I mean, pretty good size organization. That's, that's using verifiable credentials and some pretty exciting stuff going on. Um, we've done a number of pilots and things for, for other organizations.

Um, um, I, we've got a couple of exciting announcements come out in March that were some partnerships with other, uh, other vendors. So, uh, really cool stuff, but again, we're, we're taking, you know, uh, we're taking traditional identity management and we're just. You know, replacing, uh, or, or augmenting that traditional identity footprint with a verifiable credential and then enabling applications on the backside or other interactions on the backside of that.

And it's pretty well received. So of course we're so growing, looking for, you know, even more, um, uh, uh, huge wins, uh, commercially, but, um, we're, we're, we're seeing good things in the market leading us to believe that people are, are ready to kind of, um, uh, build the next generation of their identity stack.

You know, there's a huge, huge problem right now with these, these massive organizations trying to just keep up because they're consumers, you know, whether it's their employees or whatever, keep coming to them saying, Hey, you know, we want to use this next great thing. And the next great thing could be verifiable credentials.

It could be biometrics. It could be, uh, two factor authentication. It could be, I mean, you name it. There's all these things that are coming at them. And then. Federation providers, you know, their web two dot O providers are saying, well, gosh, we don't don't want to support that yet. Or we can't use that where, so there's, there's all this friction between the, um, the demand that the industry has and these consumers have, and the velocity at which their identity providers can keep up.

Verifiable credentials is, is, is, is the perfect solution for that because it can be scaled out grown extremely fast. So we're seeing some opportunities just going into organizations that already have their massive. I am stack that want to add new and innovative features around yet. So by inserting our product in the middle, um, we can orchestrate all of those things.

Maybe they want an onboarding process that feeds into a Workday process or something like that. We can, we can do all of that. Still deferring to their identity management system when needed. Um, but, uh, um, but acting as authoritative for the issuance of those credentials, um, on their behalf, of course, uh, to, you know, to transform some of those processes.

[00:42:03] Doc Searls: So I, I, I have a question around COVID credentials, but I want to visit first what an IAM is, because I think a lot of people, um, 

[00:42:12] Mike Vesey: identity and access management systems. So these. Yeah, so, yeah, sorry. Um, the big organizations have their own G suite and Azure active directory. I mean, they build them for, there's some really, really great companies in space or drunk and, and others, you know, that, um, uh, that build these massive identity management systems.

And, and so, uh, you know, the enterprise pretty much carries those wherever they go right now because it's, they, they have to, you know, the users onboarded, but live in that identity management system until they are, um, uh, terminated or, or leave the firm. And then, um, and then all that stuff has to reset. So, so w we're just extending that and really providing, uh, credentialing based on the fact that you have an account in there.

And then we can allow you to build those services around, around the credentials that you generate from that. So literally within an organization using ID round today, weekends. Do you want to log in to zoom with a verifiable credential and that's a 10 minute exercise, right? So it's just a couple of radio buttons and done.

And, um, you know, it's, uh, it's, uh, we're making it really, really easy. Or we can say login with a username and password or log in with the verifiable credentials, you know, and just trying to give all the options available to, to an organization. 

[00:43:29] Doc Searls: Actually, I thought I am at first was cat food. Um, so

I think that's, I AMS, I don't, I don't have any pets, but I see that at the grocery store when I'm in the wrong aisle. Um, so I want to go to COVID because I think what we, we need the verifiable credentials there, which is, it's a simple thing and they're fairly constrained. I mean, they're, you know, I have a positive test.

I have a negative test. I was tested last week. I went here, um, you know, that. I mean, we complicated by say you need a passport, you know, I think that's much more, much more heavy sounding than what we're talking about here. I think what you need, basically, a something that said that gives the other party confidence that you're okay.

Or you're not okay. And you're excluded. Right. You know? So, um, have you, has that been part of your spectrum 

[00:44:23] Mike Vesey: of concerns there? Yeah, we've been involved. Um, I mean, we, you know, we go to a lot of different, uh, uh, work groups of our following everything. We were part of the good health, good health path, easy for me to say, uh, initiative that came out of the trust over IP foundation.

Um, the cardia project we're, we're on the, um, uh, steering committee for that project as well. Just trying to watch in any evolve, how try to educate the parties, you know, as, as best we can about those types of solutions. I haven't seen a real good. Implementation yet. Um, because it hasn't been pushed from, from a high enough authority.

You mean, it's, we're talking about portability, right? It's easy to, in fact, we, we did a project called back to life and we just opened it. It was just an open project for any anybody in the world. So any organization can go out to this website and say, I want to, uh, test or, I mean, I want to ask everyone coming through my door for a, um, uh, you know, uh, proof of vaccination.

Yes. Or a self attested, you know, have you, do you feel okay and what's your fever, all this, we just put it out there so that, you know, we're thinking of schools, we're thinking of event venues. Um, and remember, early days, right? Early days in the pandemic, we, we didn't have past, uh, vaccination cards. We didn't have it.

We were just asking people, Hey, you got a fever and around anybody in the last, and that was that's good enough. And. You know, we, we look at it and my God, that's horrible, but the reality is it's good enough. We got things we need to do, and you're not going to stop people. Right. Even a pandemic, isn't going to stop people.

They're still going to go and do their thing. So, you know, so we start making lemonade and that was. Solution. So if, uh, a school or a theater or a college having a game wants to just say, okay, well, we really like to know, um, you know, if these people are okay, great, let's do that, but let's not do it in a way that captures and, and, you know, captures a bunch of information or early days in the pandemic go into a couple of different, um, basketball games.

And we were fortunate here in the Midwest that we weren't locked down as tightly as, as the coasts. Um, but they were still asking me, you know, here, go to this website and put in all this information and put your name on it, put your email address. And, and, and that will pass through to us. And, you know, there was not one of those actually got my.

Right. Did I fill it out maybe, but they didn't get what I mean. Cause it's just, there's a horrible solution. And uh, so we developed that and, and, you know, privacy preserving way. So you can go in there and you can put in all that information and it'll issue you. It'll just send you an email and say, here's your, you know, your credential and you can take that.

And then the venue just sets up an iPad and scans it and then it's all discarded, of course, as it should be. But, um, you know, we worked on that project and kind of opened it up for, uh, really not knowing what was coming and, and it turns out we, you know, we didn't have, I guess the need, at least maybe we just didn't see it here.

Uh, where organizations and, and, you know, restaurants and schools, we're getting that, we're getting that, uh, concern about, you know, doing those actual privacy. I mean, those, uh, um, vaccination tests scans, but who knows? I mean, we're, it feels like we're kind of pulling out of this, out of this nosedive, but I don't know that anybody really knew.

[00:47:53] Katherine Druckman: Nobody knows it's a big mystery. Oh, I shouldn't laugh. Sounds terrible. And at this point it's like you laugh or you correct?

Well, 

I think, um, got it. So have we, have we missed anything? Was there anything that you wanted to cover that we haven't gone gotten to? 

[00:48:15] Mike Vesey: I, I, well, I think it's been, it's been great conversation. I hope people find value in and listening, but I've had a lot of fun talking about it. So, um, yeah. I don't think, I don't think we've, I don't think we've missed anything.

I mean, it's always, like I said, it's a moving target every, every day we wake up there's new challenges and new opportunities and I think that's what makes this. So fun. I just, there is no, you know, the, the origin story, right. When we were here, we were in this traditional identity and we had all these ideals and visions for things that we wanted to do.

And I, and I don't know how I heard about the internet identity workshop. I'm not sure how I heard about it, but I ended up on a call with, um, with Phil Windley one day and, and, um, he was giving me kind of the mission of, and, um, That's me, that's my gut. That's what we're doing. And I thought I was alone and all of a sudden I find out I've got hundreds of friends, you know, I just didn't, I just never met him.

And so, uh, and so now I'm just so encouraged about the space, the energy, some of the smartest people. Oh my gosh. There's so many incredibly gifted and smart people working on these solutions. That it's only a matter of time before that thing happens. Right. There will be one, there'll be a moment and we go, wow, this is it.

And, uh, the snowball's rolling and getting bigger and, uh, and then it'll be, you know, uh, really good times. Uh, and it's, I don't even mean just economically. I mean, yeah, sure. We, we might do some good and sell some stuff, but this is, this is fundamental to our future. Right. We have to fix this and I just want to see us fail.

Oh, by the time I check out, that's kinda my fans really like to know that, that the world's a better place. Uh, but at the time I, by the time I check out, 

[00:50:11] Doc Searls: um, I, a couple of things. One is, are you going to be at the next IIW? 

[00:50:16] Mike Vesey: I am. I can't wait to get back. I, the virtual ones were, I love the virtual ones. And like I said, you know, lemonade, we've been at a constants that eliminate for the last three years.

It seems like, but I can't wait to get back out there. There's so much energy. And man, if there's anybody to listen to this, hasn't been there. It's, it's a must. I mean, you got to do it and don't worry that you're not technical. Don't worry that, I mean, all that is it's changing. Right. It's changing. I've seen more, uh, really good business conversations and good, you know, because it takes all of us to, to fix the problem.

And so yeah, you can get, you can roll up your sleeves and you can get really technical, but, um, you know, it's just a great place to interact, meet good friends and, and there's always good food and, and stuff going on. I target up a lot and 

[00:51:02] Doc Searls: we should do it. Uh it's um, the short link is III workshop.org. Um, but if you look up, I entered it identity workshop, you'll find it.

Um, it's at the computer history museum in mountain view. Uh it's on every spring and fall. This next one is going to be in late April. Um, and when after that it'll be in November. Uh, but I, I, I suggest people look at it. I workshop we'll stick it in the, in the, um, in the, in the show notes to, um, oh, there was one other thing I was thinking of, but I, oh, yeah.

So you said here in the Midwest, where are you in. 

[00:51:36] Mike Vesey: Duane Iowa. Excellent tech hub of the U S. Now it's a big insurance town, but it's actually great for us. I was in LA. I started my career in Omaha, uh, grew up in the Des Moines area and, um, went out to Omaha for awhile and I traveled all around. And then, you know, when the, when the kids were ready to go to school, we came back to the home area and I just, I loved the community and it was just really good energy.

That's a good vibe. And, uh, and you know, really no rush hour. 

[00:52:07] Doc Searls: Chris Parillo used to have a, um, a thing called Noam decks because he called himself techno. I think something, no, uh, in Des Moines I've been there, uh, for that it's been a while. Um, I have a son in Fairfield, Iowa, and I'm in a, I'm going to be back in, in, uh, in Bloomington, Indiana, which is two states away, but it's flat to mostly, 

[00:52:33] Mike Vesey: that's an easy drive.

It's an easy drive. It's only a day.

[00:52:39] Doc Searls: Yeah. Well, it's been great having you on this is great. And I look forward to seeing you at, uh, at IDW and it is the most leveraged conference I know by far there's nothing close. I mean, it just, stuff happens. Stuff comes out 

[00:52:55] Mike Vesey: and you know, you get to interact. That's the cool thing is you don't, you're not sitting listening to people, drone on there are 

[00:53:00] Doc Searls: no panels.

No, no, uh, no keynotes, great 

[00:53:05] Mike Vesey: food. And there's never a wrong answer. Right. I mean, there's never a wrong answer. We're just all figured it out. So yeah, it's really cool stuff. Can't wait to get back out there.

[00:53:24] Katherine Druckman: cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Um, it's been, it's been really good. I think, I think this has been really interesting and I think people who was in there getting a lot out of it.

Yeah, me too. And before we go, I wanted to point out our next episode will be our 100th episode, which seems kind of, how did we get here? We talk a lot. 

[00:53:49] Mike Vesey: Yeah. You're number 99, I 

[00:53:52] Katherine Druckman: think so. No. Yeah. Your 99. Yeah. Perfect. Um, yeah, this is really exciting. So, um, so as always, you know, to our listeners, please reach out to us with any feedback that you might have or, or things you want us to talk about, but, you know, for this next episode, it would be really great if you dropped us a line and, and told us what you thought of our first 99 episodes.

So thanks, thanks for joining us. And until next time. 

[00:54:22] Mike Vesey: Thanks guys. We'll see you.