La Teacher — To love is to teach
This has been my mantra since I become a parent 7 years ago, but it’s something I’ve believed all my life. The ultimate gift of love is to dedicate your valuable time to the betterment of someone else. Part of my identity is seeking knowledge and passing on what I learn.
It’s with that in mind that I begin to share my journey with you; in the hope that my experiences can provide insight, provoke thought or be a catalyst for change. You see, my story is one of experiences, of change and provocative thought. It’s a story of Identity, of connection and of growth as our world evolves, as the systems fail and begin anew and of how the digital transformation is changing the way we live our lives.
What does identity mean to you?
That has been my favourite question for quite some time. The variance in responses astounds me. Identity can mean many things to many people depending on their background, line of work and exposure to technology, but at one point they all converge — “it’s how I represent myself, it’s me”.
Identity to most people is who they are, it’s how they represent themselves in any given situation and the information they share verbally, visually or in written form. Their identity is what they wear, their music or coffee preferences, it could be their gender identity, political allegiance or ethnicity.
Identity is experience
Identity is culture, its religion and its community as well as the interplay of our identity and that of the people we associate with. Our identity is shaped by every previous experience, the labels we assign and the social constructs we live within. So, Identity is also fluid, it changes as we experience more in life i.e. as we grow up, transition through schooling, develop relationships, perhaps have children. It shifts between contexts as we put on different masks or personas for different situations e.g. At home, work, with different groups of friends. Identity becomes our way of shaping each experience through the information we share and how we present ourselves.
Identity is connection
Identity is personal and intimate yet is public and the thing that connects us to people like us. It can also separate us from the people not like us through exclusion of ethnic backgrounds or certain demographics. We are even starting to see trends like social sorting beginning to shape our residential communities.
Corporate branding is an identity — it’s the impression the organisation is trying to project through imagery and marketing. Corporate identity is the way the organisation wants to be perceived by customers and their industry. Millions of dollars each year are spent on brand marketing across different industries, all in the name of building a brand identity.
As entrepreneurs, corporate executives or self-employed business people you are guided to know your personal brand or identity. Customers gravitate to brands they know and trust that will connect them with the products, services or experience they need.
In technology, identity is a form of security authentication and access management, known as Identity and Assess Management; I’ve long been drawn to the acronym IAM — ‘I am’.
IAM or Customer IAM (CIAM) is about connecting the right people to the right things (devices, products or services) at the right time.
Identity is security
Digital identity is the way the digital world knows who you are and what authority you have to access certain things. IAM is what organisations rely on for threat management, fraud prevention and detection (anti-money laundering & counter terrorism financing- AML/CTF) and as a way of providing customer experience through recognition. For example: your user name and password for your Medium account help ensure only you have access to your account, or the fingerprint biometrics you used to log into your phone to ensure only you can access the phone contents. User names, passwords and biometrics are all forms of Identity.
What identity is to me
Identity is fundamentally human; Identity is a way we understand ourselves and everything around us. We are born into a world that we attempt to understand by assigning labels and creating social constructs. These are human constructs that are defined by historical lessons and social trends of the time.
Digital identity is an opportunity to connect people to the experiences, people, products and services they need. The connection generates valuable information enabling organisations to better support their customers and derive new business opportunities.
Through studying the psychology of identity, and bringing humans, business and technology together, we can create lasting human centric social and economic growth through connection. Basing our long term digital identity solutions on human behaviours and distributed P2P business models is the only way to create lasting and economically viable solutions.
Identity is the experience; Information is the value.
