Taking the Checkered Flag: A Full Lap Recap of Identiverse 2025

View from the Floor

Identiverse 2025 is in the books! 

Lots of prep from our team this year to get ready for the conference. I hope everyone had a chance to visit and maybe take a turn around the track on our simulator. We had a lot of fun. 

I’m back home now and reflecting on the past week. Lots has happened, and while I spent essentially the entire time on the floor showing people some cool new tech from the Big Brain Boov’s (*Home reference – go Rihanna!) at READI, I talked to a lot of people and I “Have Some Thoughts” as my son would say. 

AI Everywhere

Everybody got the memo: you’re either doing something with AI, or you’re saying you are. Was there a single booth that didn’t say AI somewhere on it? I’d need photo evidence to believe it. AI is here to stay. 

However, you can say AI, and you can do AI, but are you getting value from AI? One gentleman summed it up this way: there’s a lot of AI, but there’s not a lot of interesting AI. I have to agree with him. AI takes a lot of processing power, which is another way of saying it’s expensive, and a lot of the results are unimpressive when you think of what it’s costing you. I’d be looking carefully at what is being done with AI and what impact it’s going to have on your business before you dive in. We certainly did before building ours, but I’m not convinced all AI has been created equally.

Identity Virgins

Wow were there a lot of new vendors at Identiverse this year. It’s clear that there’s a hunger for some new solutions. 

Identity has been at the front of a lot of minds for a long time, and the big players have carved out their positions. There have always been gaps in-between though, and there are emerging players out there taking big swings at the in-between spaces. But there were also a number of new competitors going for it against the established players – I saw multiple new vendors in the PAM space, the IGA space, and the SSO space just to name a couple of spots that have each traditionally been dominated by a couple of big vendors. I’ve never seen this much growth in the space year over year at Identiverse, and I’m excited to be part of this new wave of companies trying to make Identity better for all of us. It’s definitely time to keep an eye on the Identity space. 

Speaking of First Timers

One of the things I love about Identiverse is running into old friends and colleagues, and there was plenty of that. Great to see all y’all, lots of hugs went around. 

However, there were also a bunch of new people in the space. I talked to a lot of people who were attending Identiverse for the first time, and I love it. We need more businesses focused on making identity better, and new people coming to Identiverse is a sign that, at least for some, they’re paying attention. 

The Bay

We had a new venue this year, moving down the strip to the Manadalay Bay after being at the Aria last year. I give them a solid B-.  

On the downside, they’re off the main strip. I took a walk to the Bellagio figuring I’d see the sights. It was 40 degrees Celsius out and while it’s definitely a memorable experience, not good-memorable if you know what I mean. Nothing the Bay can do to improve that one though. On the other hand, the food and drink on the floor was decent. The location of the show floor was good, the restaurants were tasty, the rooms were easy to find, very little to get into a fight about. 

One thing that I found odd was the relatively low attendance at the tech discussions on the floor. Each time I walked past the booth, there was low attendance. Several times it was folks who I’ve heard speak before talking about cool things to very small audiences. Could have been timing, could have been location, could have been the sound volume, I don’t know, but here is one thing they can definitely work on for next year. The content was worth it. Make sure the people can hear it. 

Finish

And with that, Identiverse comes to a close. Had a great time, had to get out a bit early to see my daughter graduate from high school (Go Sarah B!), looking forward to next year already. Hope to see all y’all there.