Speaking
The talk usually comes first. The essay is what survived the questions afterwards.
9 on the calendar. 20 given, 4 of them keynotes.
My preferred shape is longform: a narrative arc carrying the technical content, so the audience arrives at the argument from an angle they did not expect. Naval warfare of the 1800s, orbital debris, epidemiology, Sting. Each one calibrates to the room.
Current as of October 2026.
Upcoming
Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit
Caesars Forum, Las Vegas
IETF 128
Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre
Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit
InterContinental London – The O2
Internet Identity Workshop
Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California
Spring dates are not announced yet. IIW runs three days, Tuesday to Thursday, usually in April — these are provisional and will be corrected when the real ones appear.
European Identity Conference
bcc Berlin Congress Center, Berlin
Identiverse
Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas
Dates are from a listing rather than from Identiverse itself, and are worth re-checking nearer the time.
IETF 129
InterContinental Berlin
Internet Identity Workshop
Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California
Dates are from a listing rather than from IIW itself, though they fall on the Tuesday to Thursday the workshop always uses.
IETF 130
Hyatt Regency Vancouver
The ones I was asked to open with. Longer, and usually the argument at full stretch.
Keynotes
Recovering Boléro and the Death of Authenticity
Authenticate.
Also given at the European Identity Conference earlier in 2024, as a session rather than a keynote. The resources and standards that went out with it are kept current.
Urban Planning and Identity with Slime Mold, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learn from the Blob
European Identity Conference.
Identity is the New Blue
European Identity Conference.
The recording is self-hosted at irisar.com rather than on a conference platform.
Trust in Numbers: An Ethical (and Practical) Standard for Identity-Driven Algorithms
Various events.
Where the tools were first shown. Kept open because it is what most people come looking for.
Black Hat, DEF CON and RSAC
Breaking the Pattern: Open-source Approaches to Quantifying Bias in GenAI
RSA Conference.
The successor to It’s Not Fair, moved on from classifiers to generative models. The reference list from the slides is kept here, numbered as it was on them.
It's Not Fair: Detecting Algorithmic Bias with Open Source Tools
RSA Conference.
New Face, Who Dis? Protecting Privacy in a World of Surveillance
Black Hat USA. Las Vegas
Arsenal, and the talk that introduced Ruse. Shown the same year at DEF CON Demo Labs and at the RSA Conference, which is the delivery that was recorded. Given again at the European Identity Conference in 2022 as Privacy vs Authentication in a World of Surveillance, and at BSidesSF in 2023.
The Past Is Not the Future: Practical Ethics for Algorithms
RSA Conference.
An algorithm that uses the past to predict the future will reproduce the past. The argument for a practical standard by which two of them can be compared.
I am Spartacus! Ensuring Privacy through Obfuscation
DEF CON 27. Las Vegas
Demo Labs, Planet Hollywood. Given the same summer at Black Hat USA Arsenal as Spartacus as a Service (SaaS): Privacy via Obfuscation, and at the DEF CON Crypto & Privacy Village. A later RSA Conference outing ran as Spartacus as a Service: Privacy, Obfuscation, and the Right to Be Forgotten.
Folded by venue. Open one and it stays open; nothing here needs JavaScript to read.
Elsewhere
2024–20267 talks European Identity Conference
Bridging the Gap: Verified Trust for All Identities
AI, Do You Know Me? Identity in the Age of Intelligent Systems
Death & The Digital Estate: One Year Later
Given again at Identiverse on 5 June 2025. The original went out a year earlier as Thoughts on Final Footprints.
Extending the Horizon: Enabling Real-time Identity with Event-Based SCIM
Future Forward: Shaping Identity with Diversity & Expertise
A pre-conference session rather than part of the main agenda.
Real-World Success with Identity Architecture Programs
Thoughts on Final Footprints
The first outing for the digital estate argument, revisited the following year as Death & The Digital Estate: One Year Later.
20251 talk Identiverse
Bringing It All Together: Harnessing the CAEPabilities With Event-Driven IAM
If you would like me to speak at your event, get in touch.