Cameron [00:00:02] Welcome everyone to state of identity, I’m your host, Cameron Ambrosi, joining me this week we have a quadruple threat. A full house of digital identity experts should be a fantastic conversation. I’ll go around the horn and introduce everyone and then it would be great to jump in and have each of my guests introduce themselves. Starting in no particular order, we have Daniel Goldschneider, founder and CEO of Yes. Dot Com. Don Thibeau, executive director at OpenID Foundation. And Multiple Times State of Identity guest Carl Hossner, CTO at BankID, and Anil Mahalaha head of solutions Akoya. Gentlemen welcome to state of identity, the government.

Daniel [00:00:46] Thank you.

Cameron [00:00:46] So to kick things off, you know, I love to hear folks, you know, as I almost describe them on ramps into the digital identity space. So maybe it would be instructive if we could go around the horn. Daniel, we can start with you and have you share just a little bit about your career journey, your background, how you found yourself in your current position within the digital identity space?

Daniel [00:01:08] Well, I started out with an internet development company in Austria where I was born, so I was always fascinated by information technology. I had a brief stint in private equity and recognized that for me, I enjoy riding horses more than betting on them. And here in Europe, we had two important legislations. One is called PSG to the Payment Service Directive two, which essentially declares that the data a bank has is not owned by that bank, but by the customer of that bank and us, which is opening up a level playing field for trust services. And the underlying thought was that together, those two provide an incredible opportunity for financial institutions and then other companies that could benefit from that.

Cameron [00:02:04] Fantastic. Don, let’s go to you next. Maybe long time state of identity heads will, will recognize you and understand your role, but you know, for the newbies. Walk us through, you know, your career journey to becoming executive director at OpenID.

Don [00:02:21] Thanks, Cameron, for a long time. Helped lead a company called LexisNexis in the United States and left that to do some entrepreneurial work. Well at that. And really became fascinated by the world of identity standards. And so for the last 10 years, I was able to lead the OpenID Foundation, which really focuses on the technology tools that we call open standards in the identity ecosystem. At the same time, I founded an organization called the Open Identity Exchange, which really focuses on governance and the ruleset of how these systems at large can be governed for the benefit of all the stakeholders. So the rules and tools of technology have been a passion of mine and of late. I’ve been able to work with a needle that FDA seeks to see the growth of that organization and the realization that the time is right to begin to think about identity from an international interoperability point of view. And that’s really what animates me today and is the basis of my admiration for some of the colleagues that are on this call.

Cameron [00:03:34] Excellent. Moving down the line, Carl CTO at BankID How did you find yourself in this? You know what I would call white hot digital identity space.

Carl [00:03:45] Yeah, thank you, can. Well, I have a background in software engineering and secure software development, development and I.T. security, so I basically started my career at RSA. And after that, I had a short adventure during the dot net. Remember, we tried to start a company providing PKU basically as a service. It didn’t pan out. I think we were a bit early on that, but from there I went onto the IP security department at one of the Swedish banks, and that’s how I got in contact with my career and my career at that time. It started as a project with participants from from a number of different Swedish banks. And so I was part of that project from the bank that I was seeing. And so from 2002, the company was started. They basically created the cooperation around that project, and I later joined Banquette in 2006. You know, it’s been part of from the prosecutor point in the 80s and the whole management of identities. Digital identities have been part of my life. Basically, the whole time, though, doesn’t mean this is what it is right now, I think.

Cameron [00:04:55] And Anil will come to you for the hammer. How did you find yourself as head of solutions at Acquire

Anil [00:05:03] Head of Solutions? I can. I can explain, but my involvement in identity is by default. So I’ve been in the financial sector for about 35 years in different roles, mostly on the event in the United States, defined benefit, defined contributions, brokerage accounts and stuff like that. Acquia was actually spun out of Fidelity Investments that I was for about 20 years and acquired was created to, and I’m Cole founding employee actually funerals for off a career. And it was created to to provide financial data to related parties. And given that our position in the United States and connected to all these banks, the ID identity in a space of false by default rate and if the banks are willing to provide identity information, then could go to a career and there would be a service provider in this case and the ruling party would connect to acquire. So that’s how, you know, I found myself in the identity space. As far as solutions is concerned, I’ve had multiple roles in a class as a founding employee, head of product, part of the product, head of solutions, out of development. So I just do whatever as a client and a career.

Cameron [00:06:16] Fantastic. Well, you know, there’s so many threads we could unpack here. I mean, I think right off the bat, the body we have represented, I think a global perspective on the approaches we’ve seen markets taking to open banking, you know, from a more PSD2 oriented kind of regulatory structure in the EU, as well as the U.S. approach of kind of the free market taking a stab at it. But you know, what is bringing us here today in particular, is the global ushered identity network or Gain initiative. Don, would you mind maybe setting the table in terms of what the game project is, how it came together at a high level? And you know what the OpenID Foundation’s role is in launching this initiative?

Don [00:07:02] Well, it wasn’t so much the OpenID Foundation’s role as it was a coalition of willing and capable folks that were in this space for a while. People like Kim Cameron rest his soul, but more importantly, Daniel and I and others began to talk informally about this really burning business problem identity from a globally interoperable point of view. And the challenge was, can’t we find a solution now that the standards have evolved to state of maturity now that the business problems are hot in terms of fraud prevention? Now that the opportunity seems to be that teams of rivals like the ones that my colleagues have led are beginning to coalesce and beginning to understand that this global identity ecosystem might be at a point where we could begin to build a system that exists in other areas. And Daniel, pick up the story from there. You know, this is State of Identity podcast, so I assume most of the people on this podcast understand the importance of identity, but I think to most people, identity is a little bit like air. You rarely think about air and the importance of air, except when you run out of it. And I think identity is very much like that. We don’t think about it, but it is incredibly crucial. If you want to have a functioning society, if you want to allow people to open bank accounts or to vote to make themselves heard. Digital identity is the very essence of that. If you are dreaming of an API economy where people can allow third parties access to APIs, which in turn grant those parties access to their data. Digital identity is a very hard thing. There are a lot of people around the world who believe that digital identity is not just nice to have, but really a crucial building block for any well-functioning digital society. What’s interesting is that the air. It’s very different around the world, the way Bank I.D. works in Sweden is different to the way Bank I.D. works in Norway, and those are neighboring countries, and those approaches are very different to security. For instance, the basic idea of Gain was not to create a better bank ID or a better secure key, but to see if we can work together to design a couple of ground rules that would enable the providers in this space to function together as a virtual provider in technical terms, but also in legal terms. Allowing developers to make one integration and access data from many providers around the world directly and to eventually sign one contract and have a contractual relationship with those providers around the world.

Cameron [00:10:30] I like that and want to open it up to the rest of the group to jump in here. But there’s a couple of things that I bumped on right away in how you were kind of framing this opportunity. The first one is I love that analogy of air, and I think it’s apt in the sense of, you know, if you think about right, this oxygen, we need to breathe. When you analogize that to digital identity, I think where some critics of the progress that platforms are making towards digital identity and interoperability, they say, Oh, you know, there’s all these risks we’re creating. And you know, what about these problems? And they almost try and set it up as, OK, the alternatives are these digital identity frameworks that are being put out or we don’t adopt digital identity. And that’s not the case. Like, we have digital identities now, they’re just bad. They’re broken, they’re inefficient, they’re high risk. So it’s not a question of, you know, do we breathe air or do we not breathe air? It’s like, do we breathe clean air? Or do we breathe really polluted toxic air that makes everybody sick? And I think that framing is is really critical because setting this up as a choice between, well, we don’t need digital identity or we have these new opportunities. I think there’s a false dichotomy and needs to be framed as such, but wanted to open it up, you know, to the rest of the panel as well to chime in with some opening thoughts around, you know, Gain and the opportunity here and how this came about.

Carl [00:11:50] Yeah, I can start. I think that this is also if you want to look at it, you know, from a more non-intrusive way, this is I see it as a normal way of expansion. The market has been it has been maturing over the last years, and I think it has come to a place where, you know, we can all recognize that even though it might be a well-functioning services or providers in different countries, we’ll come to a point where we need to collaborate in order to make this for our own or all our benefits work on a global scale that says, you know, everything else that we’re talking about electricity and air and water, whatever, what have you. This is a natural expansion and natural development of the area and of the market. So I think it’s it’s it’s basically a choice if you want to be a part of it and be able to to take a leading role in defining it or if you want to, you know, try to break it and and and then have to take a back seat position in

Don [00:12:52] what was extraordinary about the white paper was that not only the number of coauthors but the free-flowing discussion that occurred when everybody agreed to leave their organizational affiliation at the door. So the white paper had no sponsors that had no logos. It was all pro bono and it was all open. And that really made it two things. One, really exciting. But there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen. So it was remarkable that we were able to come out with a paper that has been so well-received and has created so much follow-up in its wake. We’ll talk more about that follow-up. But I think all of us, as coauthors, really found the experience quite different than the normal course of business when we’ve got two organizational constraints that dictate how we collaborate with others, both individually and organizationally.

Anil [00:13:54] Yeah, and I would say, you know, it was a pleasure to work with all the coauthors and to note that Europe is definitely ahead in the identity-providing space as far as the United States is concerned. And there are challenges in the U.S. and the U.S. banks have a lot of reservation. And if you use the oxygen analogy, they are afraid to provide it, you know, and if you choke on it and you know, there still is going to be their fault. So, so so it’s a lot of education that needs to happen in the U.S. before it’s completely embraced, like Europe, parts of Europe.

Cameron [00:14:34] So a few more pointed questions that I think will be really helpful for our audience that maybe understands the goals and what is at stake, but maybe wants to better understand, you know, the unique differences of Gain as maybe compared to some other initiatives that are out there from a commercial perspective. You know, what is the economic structure? How is this going to function? Will there be money-changing hands if you are an organization that wants to take part in the network? How do you do so? And you know, what does it cost to be blunt?

Don [00:15:08] Let me maybe start with your last question what does it cost? There is no external cost. So anyone and everyone who is either interested to provide data or to receive data is a welcome party at the game. See the proof of concept. You don’t have to become member of an organization, and you certainly don’t have to pay money to Gain. One of the reasons is that there is no gain organization. We thought about this quite a bit and there are a lot of nonprofit organizations already. There is, of course, the OpenID Foundation, the Internet Engineering Task Force. There is the Cloud Signature Consortium, the open identity exchange. There is trust over IP. There are so many organizations that the last thing the world needs, in our opinion, is yet another organization that is trying as a nonprofit to extort money or big large companies for money in exchange for a board seat that would then start competing with the organizations that exist today. The aim, really is that gain is the embodied conviction of some of the organizations that I mentioned, that cooperation makes sense, that interoperability is key, that the different standards that exist both in terms of identity or in terms of authentication standards or standards for electronic signatures should work hand in glove in order to enable the creation of a global assured identity network.

Cameron [00:16:55] So stepping back, you know, Neal, I think you made a great point around in the United States in particular, I think what has been a key pain point for developing interoperability among financial institutions is this notion of risk, like if we provide this service and someone chokes on this bad air for lack of a better word, who is responsible? Is it this issuing party? Is it a relying party? How do we hash all this out? How does the game network, you know, take the approach to handling these issues of risk and trust when it comes to, you know, the creation of an identity and the sharing of that information out and what relying parties can do to mitigate those concerns around liability.

Anil [00:17:44] Yeah, I think one of the things that the green paper identified is establishing a trust framework. And I think that is critical, you know, to establish the trust framework and then get buy in from the banks in the United States, financial institutions, I should say into that trust framework. There is always that reservation about if you provide the identity and you know, either it is misused are, you know, there is some liability around it and then who you know, you know, is liable. And I think those questions need to be talked to in the U.S. like, you know, I believe in Germany. And when you have started, you know, there were all these same questions that are coming up. This was like five years ago and the U.S. is still struggling with those same questions. So I think education, like I said, trust framework and then and partners jumping in service providers like a co-op may be championing it. I think all of that would be required to kickstart this in the U.S.

Don [00:18:42] and I think the game the game whitepaper is served as a catalyst for two important things. Due diligence on its central hypothesis. One place is in technical interoperability. So the OpenID Foundation has plans for a proof of concept that’s already underway, where different parties, financial institutions, mobile network operators, relying parties can begin to test the interoperability at a code level using OpenID Connect for identity assurance and how that connects with the trust frameworks that are Neal mentioned. Concurrent with that, the Open Identity Exchange has a workgroup which is really diving deep into the issues that are Aneel raised, which is how is liability addressed in apportioned between the members of the scheme or the trust framework? There’s no doubt that both are complex task, but I think they’re solvable. We do have a robust set of open identity standards today to build on top of. And we also have the example of the credit card industry and more recently, the mobile network operators, so that we can use our credit card or a phone anywhere in the world and know that there’s a roaming agreement that provides for the apportionment of liability. The settlement of bills and the general kind of value proposition that can be offered in this kind of system. So it really is remarkable to me that we are beginning to make real traction both on the rules and tools of this globally assured international and interoperable network. But I think and Neal probably has the hardest task, which is the culture of the financial institution itself, the bank itself. And can they move out of a really risk-averse posture? Can they trust the KYC systems that they have in place in the data that they hold as stewards on behalf of their customers to share that for the benefit of their customers and, as they say, culture eats strategy for breakfast? And I think that’s where the real challenge remains through the course of 2022. No system is perfect. You know, when you look at the global credit card system that Don mentioned or you look at online banking, there is fraud, right? It is part of. Every financial institutions, reality, wherever that if I might be. Now you can conclude that this means that we should not offer online payment solutions and we should not offer online banking because some people are going to abuse this. You can also conclude that because mobile networks are not perfect, we should get rid of mobile phones because there are still, after so many years, dead spots where the technology is not working. I think it is absolutely crucial that we don’t let our desire for perfect solutions be the enemy of solutions that are better than what we have today. And I think collectively, we have an opportunity to create something that is going to reduce fraud, that is going to enable people to prove their identity more easily and with a higher level of assurance than what we can do today. Is it going to be perfect? No, but it’s a step in the right direction, and it’s also crucially an opportunity to get better as we embark on the mission to create this global network, we can learn from each other. We can adopt best practices from around the world to create solutions that will become better over time and even more useful than what we can bring to the table in the PSC that we’re working on today.

Anil [00:23:05] Yeah, I would. I would add to that. I agree with Danielle. I think we would have to temper our expectations a little bit because, you know, Sweden, you know, Norway, there are so Germany. They’re so far ahead that in the U.S., it’ll have to be a slow ramp up. I think there’ll be some, you know, progressive financial institutions that would going to participate. And then eventually, you know, more and more will see. I remember when I joined Fidelity Investment back in 2000, all you’re doing is putting brochures online, right? And what Danielle was referring to like eventually of your account, opening online and online transactions and brokerage, and you can then trade online and that took time to develop. So I think I would assume I would imagine that identity would follow the same path that you would have a few champions. And then eventually you’ll get to the level of Europe that it’s, you know, it’s pervasive.

Carl [00:23:56] They took and I agree, and I think that if one can be so naive to actually hope that the Gain initiative also has an added value in the openness it stands for and the willingness to share. And you know what, what experiences we have might enable countries that, you know, have this drug was that America may have in order to not go into the same pitfalls that we have had in Sweden before so that we can also not share only the technology and a common framework for trust that also an openness to share our experiences from our different solutions in different countries.

Cameron [00:24:37] So in thinking about this opportunity and how as gain you can recruit, I think, you know, some of these organizations, for example, in markets like the U.S. that I think stand the most to gain, but I’m from participating in this framework. What is the sales pitch? What is the strategy? I think, you know, where we have seen a lot of challenges in the space is there’s great technology, great innovations and kind of having the rubber meets the road and getting organizations recruited to kind of carry the standard into battle has been the challenging part. You know, how do we hope to achieve some critical mass in more challenging markets?

Anil [00:25:20] I can start, I think the one key and the paper identifies that up front in the first, I think, two or three pages of disenfranchisement off the backs right in the United States. I think that is critical and I think that would probably drive a lot of behavior. You know, and they are already concerned. The financial institutions are already concerned that, you know, all of these five to 7000 fintechs in the U.S., you know, are getting traction and have, you know, customers going to them and not the financial institutions. So I think that that fear probably will drive a lot of this. And then eventually, you know, like we see the benefits like 150 of us on the benefit in this, you know, they would eventually see the benefit of this.

Don [00:26:05] Yeah. Tony McLaughlin from Citi made a case publicly about it, saying that there that for banks, particularly that if they don’t begin to fill this void in identity assurance, Big Tech and fintechs will, whether that’s Big Tech from Silicon Valley or from China. So there is, as Anil points out, some really new dynamics in the marketplace that are adding to the fear and greed that are driving the changes that we think gained can be responsive to.

Anil [00:26:41] And I think it was very smooth with the identity politics, with the financial institutions to provide identity. I know there’s a few other, you know, in the U.S., at least organizations that are in the identity business that provide identity, but to establish that identity is very tough. I tried doing that. The Internal Revenue Service wants you to go to one of them to establish an identity, you know, or in summer of 2022, they will disconnect you from their portal so you can log in and check, you know, you know, whether you paid the money, get there or not. I think the Bank I.D. or the game network can make it very easy. Read It’s already the KYC has already been done. You know, accounts have already been established, background has already been checked, you know, and then the end-user doesn’t have to actually do anything other than log into their account.

Don [00:27:31] I think there are a couple of developments that might turn out to be advantageous, you know, for why game might have a better shot at becoming a reality today than some of the earlier initiatives, one of which is the standardization that Don mentioned at the beginning. When you look at identity and you compare that, for instance, to open banking account information in account information, there are competing standards even within Europe, and there are a lot of competing standards on a global basis when it comes to identity. We have a standard that is incredibly pervasive everywhere around the world with OpenID Connect, and we believe that OpenID Connect for identity assurance is a great open addition that is going to enable a global system because providers are able to not just offer data but also inform about the trust level that corresponds to that data. Hopefully, there is going to be a second global standard for self-sovereign identity. So our hope very much is that gain is going to become a bilingual effort with one API standard and one standard that takes advantage of the unique characteristics of a self-sovereign. The future. And the fact that we have this open standard, hopefully, is going to provide a common core. And then and obviously this is something that most of the listeners to this podcast might, might be familiar with. We feel that identity is not just a service, but it’s also a critical foundation for other services. So getting the identity layer right, getting the authentication layer right means that you enable a host of other opportunities in the account information space, the payment initiation space, the buy now, pay later space, the effects space. We believe that creating such a network will create, at the same time, an opportunity for a lot of services that benefit from a strong identity system at their core. And let me quickly add a host of new services, but a host of new services available to people at all demographic parts of our community. I think if we get this right, this becomes an enabler for financial inclusion in a new way of looking at it, privacy and security. So I think the benefits that Daniel said are manifest from a commercial point of view for a Nephi. But I think it also begins to open up adjacent markets and new services, particularly in developing countries. So Game is trying to be as inclusive as possible, both in terms of new business and service creation, but also in its exclusivity, inclusivity and more diverse populations as well. Maybe one addition, because we were talking so much about fintechs and about banks. Click inside information on the process of how Dean was created. Originally, we had called it the Global Bank Identity Scheme debit, and we changed that term to gain one because we felt that gains sounded a little better than bits, but crucially also because we saw interest from non-banks as well. We have authors, for instance, from its Me in Belgium, which is a consortium of banks and telcos, not just a bank centric company, then participated. We believe that the opportunity here is huge for financial institutions, but it is not limited to financial institutions. There are opportunities to be a provider of authentication, services of identity services and opportunity to provide services to that, take advantage of those identity services to relying parties, and they are really not excluding any company or any industry at all.

Anil [00:32:07] Oh, go back to something, Don said really quickly, if I may. I think that is a really good point in terms of at least in the US, too. To get traction on identity is to be able to service the undersells population in the United States and make it easy for them to identify themselves for different programs that are out there so that they can benefit from it as opposed to struggle to identify themselves.

Cameron [00:32:37] Fantastic. Well, to bring things to a close here, I did want to give you an opportunity. You know, you have a tremendous amount of organizations participating in the Game Posse right now wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of plug those organizations and maybe make a call to action for the other types of organizations that you would love to get more involved in the process.

Don [00:33:03] We really have been able to engage a really diverse set of identity providers and service providers, but we want to call out specifically to relying parties. Earlier, Daniel mentioned DocuSign and others. But if you begin to say, look at Twitter, for example, here’s a company a global company is relying party that could benefit tremendously by the ability to, you know, trusted way, verify the identities of participants in that global network. I think it’s a real-life example of the enabling notion that we’ve talked about in general and providing better or pure air to a large global ecosystem that Daniel began with. So we do have two venues where this due diligence is taking place for a start. The technical posse, which is hosted by the OpenID Foundation again, is really exercising the connectivity that a number of players have using off using OpenID Connect for identity assurance. And that includes our colleagues at the Global Legal Identity Identifier Foundation, where we want to take the center of excellence in terms of standards for personal identity with the Center of Excellence in terms of organizational together and bring those two networks together. That also includes, importantly, the Cloud Signature Consortium and others. Others, like the group that my colleagues on this call represent, certainly we want to bring our colleagues in the U.S. and Canada along with us as well because we think this open system, this technology agnostic system, really provides benefits and accelerates the kind of interoperability that we’ve been talking about. Additionally, at the open identity exchange, we’re digging deep into how a set of scheme rules. A trust framework can articulate how really thorny issues of liability levels of assurance can be normalized so that this kind of system really is extensible on a global basis. I think the game you see is a nice combination in that it’s an open invitation to anyone who’s interested in operability and interoperability to join a safe space. And on the one hand, learn from each other and take very small steps in a non-commercial environment, but also very concrete steps. It is not just, you know, the idea to talk together and say, wouldn’t identity, wouldn’t digital identity be great if we had that on a global basis? It’s much more concrete. It is something where companies can join either as providers of digital identity or as recipients of digital identity with concrete implementations. But it also happens at this point in a sandbox. It happens without personal data. It happens in a very safe environment, and we believe it’s an opportunity to come together, learn from each other and start working towards. A goal that we all believe would benefit not just the companies involved, but all the people on the planet to have eventually a global system where every child, every woman, every man on the planet have the ability to prove their identity wherever they are in a way that is consistent and interoperable around the globe.

Cameron [00:37:07] Fantastic. Well, one last question for you all, something I always like to throw out to my guests. Before we close, which is take out your crystal ball, make some predictions for the future of digital identity. Always a spicy question. I like to keep it open-ended and see where folks take it. Glad to open it up to the broader call here to see what you think, because I love to hear it.

Carl [00:37:34] I can go first. So I’m an optimist, I think that and I want to build on what Dom said earlier, if we can, you know, show the if you talk to the identity providers, it’s nothing against being a relying party in this ecosystem because it’s so diverse. So if you can get more relying parties, you know, realizing the benefits of this initiative, I’m hopeful and I’m optimistic that I think that this is the best chance of the best up so far in creating a, well, basically global assured network that instead, what?

Anil [00:38:10] Yeah, from my point of view, I think the Crystal Ball does, you know, say that identity would be adopted in the U.S., but it’ll probably take some time. Education and proving out before it is adopted, but it really.

Don [00:38:28] Go ahead, Daniel. I’m still working on my last words. Well, I would feel reasonably certain that when my kids reach my age, their primary identity, even for a short use cases, is going to be digital. I have no doubt about that. To me, the question is not if digital identity is going to be crucial and both crucial and the norm, but how we are going to get there. And my hope is that digital identity is not a silo, but the foundational core of a lot of other services that work seamlessly together and that companies around the world are cooperating to create a fabric of APIs. And that we live in a world that is not just an oligopoly of a few companies, but rather a thriving ecosystems of lots of providers coming together. The first part is conviction, I really believe that digital identity is going to be the norm. The second part is more hope than any any crystal ball conviction. I guess in a in a short last word, I I can’t help but think about my friend and mentor Kim Cameron. And what made Kim so special was that he was unafraid of talking about technologist to lawyers and policymakers and equally unafraid of talking about policy to technologists, to coders and engineers. And I think the success of my colleagues on this call and the value of this podcast, Cameron, that that you’ve led so ably throughout these years is that if we can increase that conversation and go beyond these self-imposed borders, we can be more creative and it’s more fun and it’s more profitable. And I think that’s the crystal ball that I have is that the acceleration that COVID has caused really increased to our benefit in the areas of technology and policy that we’ve talked about today. So I think that increased momentum is going to going to begin to be more and more evident in the next year. And I’m all in favor of that and looking forward to it. And most people who listen to this will know that Kim tragically passed away way too soon. And maybe this is a good opportunity to mention that Dean would very likely not exist without Kim. Kim was the very first person that I discussed Jane with. Kim decided to join the game paper and the game project when it was really just an idea. And the fact that she did, I think, attracted a lot of people in the early days who felt, well, if Kim is part of this, it can’t be half bad and they join. So we’re all mourning the loss of Kim Cameron. And I really believe that game would not exist and certainly not exist in the form it exists today without him.

Cameron [00:42:07] Yeah, very well said. And you know, I suppose I feel a direct kinship with him in the sense that, you know, I’ve really staked the entirety of my career on digital identity and owe him a debt of gratitude for really being one of the founding fathers of the entire space. You know, so rest in peace. And you know, I think the exciting thing is that it’s very clear that the legacy that he has forged for himself is going to continue to live on. And I think that’s really, really special that we’re going to continue to see the impact that he’s had on this space play out, I think for decades, if not centuries to come. As you know, the world only becomes increasingly more digital. And these digital identity frameworks that he really pioneered become an even more critical part of the fabric of our everyday lives.

Don [00:42:56] You’re here.

Anil [00:42:57] Yeah, I think we can dedicate this podcast to him.

Cameron [00:43:00] Yeah, fantastic. Well, on that note, thank you all so much for joining me. Carl and Don Daniel, for folks who are listening and want to get involved in gain, one quick chance for a shameless plug. What’s the best place for them to go? Who should they reach out to and how do they join the party?

Don [00:43:22] Well, I’m happy to put myself in this position. I’m Don Don at IDF dot org. I’d be glad to be the traffic cop in this regard, but feel free to contact the OpenID Foundation. The Open Identity Exchange That Cloud Signature Consortium, the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation. They’re just a few of the organizations that have really been putting their shoulder to this wheel. And of course, hats off to my other colleagues on this call, and good luck to to to them for managing these teams of rivals that we all work with on a daily basis.

Anil [00:44:05] And you can also find us on LinkedIn.

Cameron [00:44:07] Fantastic. Thank you all for your time. Really, really appreciate it. Please be well, stay safe out there and we will talk to you again soon.

Don [00:44:33] Yeah. Thank very much.