kerry-ok

Kerry is a marketer that loves to partner with the sales organization. As our SVP for Marketing, she is focused on sharing the Auth0 narrative across the globe. Before Auth0, Kerry spent many years working in B2B Tech at Skytap and F5 Networks. She spends her spare time with her family, dog, working in the yard, and enjoying fantasy football.

Chief Marketing Officer

Kerry Ok


The function of product management has changed greatly over the last decade. Product management is one of the fastest-growing roles and is moving to the center of business strategy (and not just for technology companies). 

As we enter a new year, we wondered:

* How will the product management function continue to adapt in 2021? 
* What will companies face as they look to hire product management talent? 
* What challenges will they face? 
* What will emerging technologies be impactful?  

We were fortunate to have Dave Wilner, Auth0 CRO, discuss (over Zoom, of course) these questions with five product management leaders from various sectors to get their predictions for 2021. Their answers gave us an inside look into the trends that will impact product management in the coming year.

## The Product Management Leaders

### David Flinton, Chief Innovation, Technology and Product Management Officer, [Xylem](https://www.xylem.com/)
In this role, David is responsible for leading the company's global technology and innovation activities as well as managing the entire life cycle of our offerings. His organization plays a critical role in ensuring Xylem develops advanced technologies and disruptive innovations that will create value for customers and commercialize them rapidly and effectively.

### Gene Farrell, CPO, [Smartsheet](https://www.smartsheet.com)
Gene Farrell is the Chief Product Officer at Smartsheet, responsible for driving product vision and technology strategy across the company's product management, product marketing, and experience design functions.

### Shiven Ramji, CPO, [Auth0](http://Auth0.com)
As Chief Product Officer, Shiven "Shiv" Ramji guides Auth0's product vision, innovation, design, and strategy, and brings more than 15 years of experience in B2B and B2C product management, engineering, operations, and business development.

### Thomas (Tido) Carriero, Chief Product Development Officer, [Twilio Segment](https://segment.com/)
Tido Carriero is the Chief Product Development Officer for Twilio Segment. He leads engineering, product, and design teams. Prior to his current role, he led the Product Engineering team at Dropbox and was an early member of the Facebook ads team before that.

### Ziad Ismail, Chief Product Officer, [Convoy](https://convoy.com/)
At Convoy, Ziad is responsible for data science, design, product management and program management. Before Convoy, Ziad was the Chief Product Officer of Marchex, Chief Executive Officer of CitiKey, and served in other leadership roles at Microsoft. 

## The 2021 Product Management Predictions 

**Dave Wilner**: _A recent blog post from [productboard](https://www.productboard.com/blog/golden-age-of-product-management-trends/) revealed that product management is one of the hottest and fastest-growing roles in business right now. In just two years, the number of product management roles in the US has grown by an astounding 32%, outpacing the increase in demand for overall roles by 5x. Do you think this trend will continue into 2021?_

**Tido Carriero**:  Great question. So I think about the product role, maybe going back to the beginning of my career a little over a decade ago, and I just feel like the role has advanced, so, so, so much over the last decade or so. I think the appreciation of the craft itself, for instance, the expectations on both qualitative research, quantitative research, informed by numbers, just before you actually decide to start actually building something, the level of rigor to me just feels like it's gone through the roof.

I started my career in the late-stage startup days on Facebook. Honestly, we were "building stuff." We had an idea, slap it together in a hackathon, then spend another month or two getting it out. I was a product engineer at the time, but it just felt like that was the way the product was built a decade ago. Fast-forward to today, and it just wouldn't be acceptable for an engineering team to say, "Hey, we slapped together a hackathon with no qual or quant research, and we're going to ship this thing in two months." It just feels like the expectations have changed, which I think is great.

**David Flinton**: Yeah, and for a couple of reasons. One, we have a kind of renewed emphasis on the product management role. If you think about all of the companies that are offering a set of "products" in some form or fashion -- whether that's services, hardware, etc. -- then the ability to manage that really effectively is just as important for customers, meeting customer demands, and the business's success. And I don't see that changing. I think there's just an increased recognition across what those incentives are.

The second thing I would say is, if you think about the nature of a product management role, it's generally one of those roles that doesn't have a whole lot of folks reporting to them, in most organizations, but it requires them to move mountains when it comes to the product portfolio. That requires a lot of really strong leadership skills, influence, general management type of skills. And so, again, we look at this role as a potential feeder role for future general management roles. So, just in terms of succession planning, it becomes really important as well. I think there's a growing recognition of that.

**Ziad Ismail**: Yeah, I think that in general, there's obviously a lot of companies that are transforming themselves from traditional companies into technology companies. That, along with a couple of other factors, I think is going to drive substantial growth of the product management discipline. What I see happening is that in particular for senior principal-level talent, there will probably be more people that are going after that talent and focusing on it.

The reason is that, if you think about product management, it really is a discipline that is a 10X factor in the productivity of your organization. And it can be a 10X factor in a positive way or a 10X factor in a negative way. A typical product manager will work with maybe 10 people directly within a product engineering data science-type organization. If they do a great job, you immediately see tremendous leverage in how that team is operating and functioning. And if things aren't going well, then the whole thing, the whole enterprise is essentially struggling.

**Dave Wilner**: _How has the fact that product management is such an in-demand role impacted your organization?_

**Shiven Ramji**: Yeah, I think on our side, we've made a big investment in adding product managers to our team. So I remember when I joined, this is just going back over the last year, we had a relatively small product managing organization that has now increased at least 3X since I got here. So there's a sort of focus on investing in driving value for our customers. So that's the good stuff. 

I think the hard part is that there is still a need for this talent—it's very hard to hire product managers. And I think the other thing is, increasingly, the product managing role is getting fairly technical. So I think finding the right people continues to be a challenge for us. And I'd imagine similar companies like ours probably have the same or similar challenges.

**Ziad Ismail**: Every company is different. From Convoy's perspective, the things that make our experience in product management and technology hiring somewhat unique is that, first of all, we're a Seattle-based company. And so Seattle, if you think about it, it has two of the five largest technology companies in the world, with Amazon and Microsoft both headquartered here. But relative to the number of startups in Seattle, there really is a strange imbalance. If you think about the Bay Area having three of the five largest tech companies in the world, there are orders of magnitude more startups in the Bay Area than there are in Seattle.

I think that creates a very, very attractive opportunity to build startups in the Seattle area that I think exists nowhere else in the world. That certainly favors Convoy being one of the fastest-growing startups in Seattle, along with our peers, which generally are starting to thrive in this market.

**Dave Wilner**: _For many organizations, the real impact of product management was often misunderstood, and PM teams were not given the resources needed to carry out their best work. Today, they now own the product strategy and vision and play an active role in the future of organizations. Do you foresee any changes in 2021 around the strategic role that product management plays within a company?_

**Gene Farrell**: Yeah, absolutely. I think the way you articulated that was really spot-on. If you go back five, six, maybe even ten years, what has evolved into product manager roles was really program management. And program management, I think for a lot of companies, was more about keeping the trains running if you will, or coordinating and making sure that all the different functions involved in delivering a product or service to the market were working in harmony (or at least somewhat efficiently together). I think where product management has really broken out is this realization that it's not just about coordination; it's actually quarterbacking, right? It's actually leading and calling the plays and making the decisions, and applying business judgment. 

Before Smartsheet, I spent five years at AWS, and I think Amazon, in particular, was a bit of a pioneer in this space. We used to hire, and then they still hire, freshly minted MBAs out of some of the best schools in the world to come in as entry-level.

That was like the first product management role that you would take at Amazon. And they were really looking for the best and brightest, ambitious, strategic, innovative, driven folks that want to go build businesses. And they're competing with investment banks and all these other folks. So it's a very different profile. And I think that's why you've seen this evolution in the types of folks that pursue product management. And also, I think you're getting a lot more value out of the role when you have folks that are really thinking like owners and driving overall strategy for the business.

**Shiven Ramji**: Yeah, I think I still believe the product role can be different at a lot of companies and will probably continue to be that way. I think it's hard to say that there is just one type of product manager or product managing organization. Certainly, if you look at if you're building a software product versus a hardware product, there are different considerations.

But I do think the strategic value or importance of the product management organization is certainly appreciated more. So I think that product organizations are getting more attention and probably more funding. If you look at also just the recent trend of companies that have been successful again, using the stock market or financial performance as a metric, you see a lot of companies talk about cloud products leading growth and companies being successful because of that. And so I think there is more recognition now that product can be very impactful in an organization. And so supporting the growth and investing in an organization is being recognized for it. And I suspect it will continue next year.

**Dave Wilner**: _[SiriusDecisions' 2020 Pulse Survey](https://www.siriusdecisions.com/research-articles/t/thepulseresultsfromthesiriusdecisions2020brandandcommunicationssurvey) on Product Management Leadership Priorities cited "Improving the overall product innovation and life cycle management framework/process" as the number-one challenge facing PM organizations. What do you think is the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for 2021?_

**David Flinton**: I think prioritization is our biggest challenge. As I mentioned, we've got a decent framework for managing our portfolio. The challenge comes in actually prioritizing the things that we should be working on and focusing on. I guess it's a really high-class problem. No shortage of really good things to work on, but with finite resources, management time, etc., you really have to get good at prioritizing. And we haven't cracked that one yet. It's something that we work on a lot.

It's gotten a little bit easier during the pandemic because it's really just completely crystallized what are our customers' most important pain points. And that has helped guide us to prioritizing everything in those funnels. So it's been a little bit easier because of the pandemic, but I think that's just a challenge that everybody wrestles with, and which we certainly wrestle with in our company.

**Gene Farrell**: Yeah, I think so, but it's a fairly nuanced answer. This product life cycle management, I think people would probably define that in very different ways. I framed the problem a little bit differently, particularly when you're bringing all of these really smart, talented people into product management roles, and they're all very ambitious. What I have found, both at Smartsheet and in prior roles, is that when you have great product leaders, you have no shortage of amazing ideas to go build. And the challenge is always where do you place your bets, and how do you actually innovate and build fast enough? Because it's much easier to come up with the idea than it is to actually go build it and then get it to market and then iterate based on the feedback and the signal you get from customers.

And so I think, in my experience, great product leaders live in this constant state of discontent because they have these big visions, and they spend a lot of time thinking two years out or, in some cases, three or four years out. And they're always anxious to see that vision come to fruition. And at the same time, I think many companies struggle from trying to do too much. So you have both impatience plus this inability to make hard trade-offs. I think those two things combined can make it really challenging. And so it's not surprising to me that product leaders would say, "We need to do a better job of life cycle management." I think what they're really saying is, "We need to figure out what's most important and most impactful to the business and execute better and faster while, at the same time, removing the distractions and stop putting resources and investment behind areas that are unlikely to pay dividends in the short term. Or just stop doing things that are no longer relevant."

**Dave Wilner**: _What are some emerging technologies that you think will impact product management in 2021?_

**Tido Carriero**: I feel like the keyword I've heard probably three times a week for the last two months at least is ML/AI (machine learning/artificial intelligence). I think, certainly, with Segment being a really large kind of hub of data, that feels like that is the technology that everyone's trying to emulate. Obviously, you have the famous Facebooks, Amazons, and Netflixes of the world, that have these incredible ranking and content recommendation systems. I do think every company in the world right now is looking to see how they can build that. To date, the Segment has spent more time getting data cleaned up and into an ML/AI-ready state. But one of the things we're most excited about with the Twilio acquisition is that Twilio has a bunch of ML/AI team. So by taking the clean data that is ML/AI-ready and helping produce offerings that I think will really solve and help mimic some of these capabilities that the Facebooks and Amazons, and Netflixes of the world have, we can democratize that kind of data for everyone.

I think there will be a lot of great products built in the next couple of years that really start to bring the promise of ML/AI. We've been talking about it for a very long time as an industry, but I think people are finally starting to get the data infrastructure set up. And then do all of that data collection and data cleaning work that will set us up for real success in ways that I think only a couple of companies to date have really, really leveraged.

**Dave Wilner**: _Is there any important product management trend for next year that we have not discussed today?_

**David Flinton**: Yeah, I think in general, more and more of our customers are concerned about the impact of their products on the environment. And some of that may be the nature of the industry that we work in. It's a little bit closer to home for us, working in the water industry, but I think that's a trend generally. And so product sustainability and product stewardship, I think, is something that is really important that we're starting to put some real emphasis on.

Not just understanding how many tons of CO2 my products emit or something over the course of the life cycle, but really looking at it from a more holistic kind of product life cycle approach to product sustainability. We should be leading the way in terms of take-back programs and things like that. But there's a lot of potential business model opportunities around that as well. It's not so much just a feel-good thing. There's a lot of potential business model opportunities around making the product sustainable. And I think we've got to take a more holistic approach to product sustainability, not just reporting the impact of our products, but really looking at it throughout the whole life cycle.

**Shiven Ramji**: I do think certain fundamentals of product management will get a lot of attention from an academic perspective, meaning product management will be taught more readily, and there will be some sort of certification that will come through. And I suspect even analyst firms will sort of jump on this trend of offering help, whether it's something that they've built or they utilized.

I do expect that both the teaching of and getting some certification around product management will become an emerging trend that is now being talked about. But I do see some leading organizations that are starting to invest in this idea that you can teach a lot more people to be product managers and hence accelerate their impact in all organizations.

To hear from the product management leaders directly, watch the video interviews. 

<include src="Vidyard" id="J8VSmEwTavfZKydUGmz3fp" />
<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Product Management Predictions for 2021

scott-mathson-profile-photo

Scott is a Maker. An SEO, Web Designer & Developer, Marketer, Remote Worker, & Entrepreneur. He has been creating, marketing, and growing brands and their products and sites for quite a few years. He's worked on large-scale software products, with eCommerce brands, and small and local businesses, alike.

SEO Manager - Web Dev

Scott Mathson

SEO Manager Scott Mathson discusses content marketing, website optimizations, link building, and more in this interview with Kevin Indig.


Auth0's SEO Manager, [_Scott Mathson_](https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmathson/), works across our websites and other channels to organically grow and optimize our web presence. He recently shared a LinkedIn update about the tremendous backlink (_sites linking back to Auth0's domain_) growth that auth0.com has seen and VP of SEO & Content at G2, [_Kevin Indig_](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinindig), reached out and interviewed Scott.

_**From 200K to 4.4M backlinks in 2 years** - this interview with Scott originally appeared in Kevin's [Tech Bound marketing newsletter](https://us3.campaign-archive.com/?u=bef9184a01d1b7f05e7155972&id=786addabe7) on July 24th, 2019._

![Screenshot of Auth0's homepage of website](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/ORemChvmuf1XcprQoCHzB/2bd56d37ef8fccaadf146d188924d5ad/auth0-website-homepage-screenshot)

Scott here, hey thanks for checking this interview out. In this, I dive into some of the strategies for organic growth that I've been focusing on at Auth0. This interview covers content marketing, SEO, and web development/optimization in general, alongside other information about link building, experimentation, globalization/translation of our site, and more.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Auth0 has more than 4.4 million backlinks, 4.4M votes of confidence. 4.4M writing about, referencing and recommending our work and product."/>

_Here is the interview transcript from Kevin's newsletter:_

---

## From 200K to 4.4M backlinks in 2 years

For this episode, I interviewed Scott Mathson, SEO Manager @ Auth0 about link building at scale, microsites, content strategies, and SEO in general. Scott and I have been in touch for a while and when he posted a screenshot on LinkedIn about going from 200k to 4.4m backlinks in 2 years, I couldn't resist but get him on as a guest.

Scott has been very generous with his time and effort. I'm more than excited to present you this chunk of an article!

It's loaded with goodies. Make sure to [follow Scott on Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/follow?region=follow_link&screen_name=scottmathson) and [read his blog](https://scottmathson.com/?ref=auth0)!

So, let me present to you, Scott Mathson from Auth0:

**Kevin: Scott, thanks for coming on! You recently posted a pretty neat looking [graph about auth0.com's backlink growth on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6550143773949730816/).**

**For reference, ahrefs validates your link growth.**

![ahrefs auth0.com domain backlinks](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2XTSv1c2VpTzujhRpEsqqN/2e08b9c188cca55296ff83338aac2898/ahrefs-auth0-domain-backlinks-growth.png "ahrefs auth0.com domain backlinks")

**_What did you do to accomplish this?_**

**Scott**: Link building is a key piece of our SEO strategy at [Auth0](https://auth0.com/). As originally shared, backlinks are one of the better votes of confidence on the web. Auth0 now (June 2019) has more than 4.4 million backlinks, 4.4M votes of confidence. 4.4M writing about, referencing and recommending our work and product.

The team at Auth0 comes up with, collaborates on, and shares work that we all care about. It's no coincidence that what we're sharing often resonates with many others, as well. What we produce and publish is starting discussions and/or adding extra value and further context to previously-started discussions. We know the value that our product adds and we aim to continually communicate and show Auth0's value, getting our product into the hands of more developers and companies.

Going from 200K to 4.4M backlinks (2100% increase) in 2 year's time has involved a series of strategies including content syndication (both manual and automated), accompanying content feed optimizations, strategic partnerships, and continued global press growth. As well, having an entire team on board with requesting a backlink from high authority websites, whenever they appear on them as podcast guests, write and publish guest posts, etc. - this all has immensely helped links to our site scale. We're championing our domain whenever possible.

We partner with content-focused marketing professionals like Animalz. And I highly recommend considering to do so, if/when it may make sense. Always take your time interviewing and vetting potential third-parties and contractors. Choose wisely. When done right, these types of partnerships can connect you with like-minded publications, helping take your own digital publications to the next level, and will be worth the investment.

As well, I am by no means afraid of manual, cold outreach as a link building strategy. Be mindful in writing email copy, figure out why certain cold emails fail to convince or intrigue you personally. Stay curious, asking why you sent a particular email to trash. Always research, personalize, and write/send emails that you personally wouldn't just delete.

Most importantly, don't be slimy. Earn authority through an authentic and honest strategy. Have patience, be strategic, and remember that awareness and authority cannot be bought.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Earn authority through an authentic and honest strategy. Have patience, be strategic, and remember that awareness and authority cannot be bought."/>

Work hard to publish and share work that you and your entire team believe in, work that people begin writing about and referencing on their publications and channels. Keep in mind that backlinks and strategies and approaches herein take time. It takes a thought-out approach, a curious mind, and experimentation along the way. Have patience and have fun!

**Kevin: Auth0 has a pretty good reputation among developers from what I hear. _What’s your overall approach to SEO?_**

**Scott**: You’re absolutely right that developers love Auth0. Developers know that in using Auth0, which now handles 2.5 billion logins per month (securing hundreds of thousands of applications), that they can focus more time and resources on development and functionality of their own products.

Again this is no coincidence here as we spend a lot of time creating great resources for developers, and not just for Auth0-specific APIs or SDKs, but for [authentication, identity, and security topics](https://auth0.com/blog/identity-and-security/) as a whole. It's been about 6 years since Auth0's founding and our site now has thousands of articles, technical quick-starts, and how-to guides. Our blog alone is read by more than 700,000 developers each month.

Again, we are heavily focused on content marketing and publishing great work, articles that answer specific questions, articles that add value and start discussions, landing pages, docs, and articles that we spend a lot of time discussing, designing, revising, and optimizing internally. And we keep up with our content, often refreshing and updating it to include more relevant up-to-date information.

There has also been a focus on the globalization of Auth0, as we are expanding into new countries, new regions. This is a really exciting initiative. In the way of our website, this brings in technical, international SEO work as I ensure we’re marking-up our translated webpages _[see [auth0.com/jp/](https://auth0.com/jp/) or [auth0.com/de/](https://auth0.com/de/)]_ and content _[see [auth0.com/blog/jp/](https://auth0.com/blog/jp/)]_ correctly, alongside sitemap optimizations, and sending signals to search engines in various ways and within their provided webmaster tools.

My background and experience in web development, alongside my desire to continue learning new programming languages, comes into play on a daily basis and I’m in text editors/terminals writing, reviewing, pushing, and deploying code every day.

Google’s Discover (previously Feed) has also been an effective channel. I focus on experimentation and A/B testing of titles, descriptions, and more on a regular basis with the goal of increasing click-through rates (CTR) on our content, and in every channel from search to social. Currently, I’ve gotten us to a fairly high _~8% consistent monthly average CTR_ within Discover. It’s no secret that as search engines evolve, getting folks to actually visit your site is becoming more and more challenging.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="It’s no secret that as search engines evolve, getting folks to actually visit your site is becoming more and more challenging."/>

Popular amongst developers specifically is the [technical documentation section](https://auth0.com/docs/) of our site. Docs recently underwent a large navigation and information re-architecture and I consulted with those teammates, guiding steps of that process. The [Blog](https://auth0.com/blog/) also recently underwent a similar redesign. As well, the [Community forum](https://community.auth0.com/) portion of our site serves as a wonderful place for developers to troubleshoot, connect, and discuss our product and its inner workings.

This is a broad question that I could easily go on and on about, detailing the specifics of why developers love Auth0 and what I’m working on, and how, why, and when. But generally speaking, I keep a close eye on everything and enjoy collaborating across multiple departments, lending my time, advice, and work on a variety of projects. I oversee that we consistently present the best versions of our content, webpages, social and other media, press releases, cross-channel campaigns, re-designs, and much more.

**Kevin: In [your LinkedIn bio](/https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmathson/), you write "Auth0 web properties and micro-sites have a large footprint and volume of webpages published". _Do you use microsites as part of your SEO strategy?_**

**Scott**: Right, and readers can see this footprint of our main domain by doing a quick ```site:auth0.com``` search, revealing the 16,000+ webpages that we currently have in production.

There are a handful of people shipping great work to Auth0’s domains. I love being a part of all of this and focus on making sure that the articles, the landing pages, catalogs and microsites, videos, and more continually surface in a variety of places, and for a variety of different queries.

Certain initiatives and projects, like [JSON Web Tokens (JWTs)](https://jwt.io), where it may not make sense to host them on the main auth0.com domain do end up becoming microsites that we develop, promote, and maintain.

Are they a part of my SEO strategy? Yes and no. Of course, everything is optimized and presented well, but we’re not expecting, needing, or relying on these microsites to bring us thousands of new visitors (_though they absolutely do_). Rather, they’re fun initiatives and projects we work on that do happen to add to our footprint and these microsites often do serve as nice lead-generation tools, to boot.

The majority of these sites were in-place before I joined the team, yet I have opened pull requests, managed new projects, and made improvements and adjustments to them since (also, some new ones have shipped, as well as some having been sunset/shut down).

I have been directly involved in every step of go-to-market from development, setup - front- and back-end, sharing/promoting, and optimizing the more recent microsite initiatives. Once live, we’ll often announce them on the main Auth0 Blog, which obviously provides a great initial backlink opportunity to help grow these budding domains.

Now, I keep an eye on these various properties and measure analytics, monitor for any discrepancies or issues, and generally ensure smooth sailing across domains.

Our primary Auth0 domain has micro site-within-sites and single page apps and catalogs too that we have designed and developed and continue to update and iterate on. We’re exploring new tech stacks and techniques in these projects. These are targeted initiatives that we decided should live on our main domain and they’re serving us very well in the way of organic traffic.

Again, as with my experimentation across other areas of our site and off-site, I recognize opportunities and hypothesize outcomes for a variety of tests and experiments that we ship to these catalogs. Actually, I have a title A/B SEO split test running on the [AuthCatalog](https://auth0.com/authenticate) (auth0.com/authenticate/) portion of our site right now. Always be experimenting!

![semrush auth0.com domain backlinks report](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/2FqHqYSG584mnK8nlUaIhb/fc15650d4c1dc04c6672705905b8ccf1/semrush-backlinks-chart-auth0-domain.png "semrush auth0.com domain backlinks report")
_original semrush backlinks growth [graph shared on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6550143773949730816/) (and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/scottmathson/status/1144377391273238528?s=21))_

Thanks for checking this interview out, I really had a great time discussing things and putting this together with Kevin. Reach out to [me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/follow?region=follow_link&screen_name=scottmathson) or continue the conversation in the comments below.

---

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Scaling Auth0's Web Presence - Interview with SEO Manager Scott Mathson

steven-rees-pullman

I am an Internationally proven professional with experience including full P&L, Business Sector and Corporate planning and execution roles. My specialities — driving revenue and organisational growth in the EMEA.

General Manager EMEA

Steven Rees-Pullman

An interview with our partner, Houston Inc. about why identity is critical for building an audience


Thanks to digitization (and a lot of human effort and planning), the media and entertainment industry has transformed from a network of products to a network of services. Media and entertainment customers now enjoy media and entertainment wherever they are &mdash; via mobile apps, streaming subscriptions, and connected devices.

But all that convenience also created the login box.

Now, media companies must provide a frictionless login experience in addition to creating content and increasingly personalized experiences. Growing audience means meeting (and exceeding) customer expectations &mdash; often growing that audience one person at a time by marketing on a one-to-one basis. And all of this has to take place while minimizing data breach risks that might compromise sensitive user information.

With so much to achieve, where should media companies begin? We asked one of our Nordic partners, [Tomi Ruotimo, CEO of Houston Inc.](https://houston-inc.com/) Consulting for his perspective.

![Headshot of Tomi Ruotimo, CEO of Houston Inc.](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/3NYv1ZHycLe4eaQxi6LuBx/91e28da1c0953dee5385b49c9c97bca1/tomi-ruotimo-ceo-houston-inc)

Tomi founded Houston in 2003 with the vision to help companies design and build digital services to solve specific business problems. Fifteen years later, Houston has 100  employees and have helped companies like Finnish media giant Alma Media, Finnair and Konecranes digitise their offerings. Working with Houston and Auth0, [Alma Media](https://auth0.com/learn/alma-media-sees-30-total-savings-seamless-brand-access/) achieved 30% total savings by providing seamless access across their brands.

**Why is identity important in the Nordics?**

The European Commission ranks Denmark, Sweden, and Finland as the EU's most advanced digital economies, with the highest levels of [digitization](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/desi). According to Reuters, the region also leads the world in paying for [online news](http://media.digitalnewsreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/digital-news-report-2018.pdf?x89475).

Working with large, multi-brand media companies, we know identity can seem incredibly complex. It's about choosing the right solution for the use case, and giving Nordic media companies a clear roadmap toward turning their free users into paying subscribers.

**What is your answer to "_where do I begin with identity management_?"**

The answer is always: with a good user experience. Your login box is the gateway, and making it as easy as possible for people to sign in is the first step toward conversion. In the case of multi-brand media companies, users should also be able to securely switch between brands or services without having to sign in a second time.

From a technical point of view, the most difficult challenge is merging customer information from different brands and login types into one customer profile. For this, you need verified emails. [The right identity provider can walk you through this process and make identifying single customers much quicker](https://auth0.com/blog/solving-5-media-industry-challenges-with-auth0-identity-solutions/).

Then on the front-end, it's all about reducing friction for the user. Consider [Single Sign On (SSO)](https://auth0.com/single-sign-on/) across brands and features like social login to simplify registrations and logins for end users.

**What about media companies looking for identity management beyond the basics?**

Identity is a great tool for learning about your users, while also complying with data privacy and security laws like GDPR. The key is first-party data, collected directly from the user, with their consent. This doesn't mean companies should ask for a user's life story right away. Customers are turned off by a long sign up form: 86% of users will [quit at registration](https://auth0.com/blog/progressive-profiling/) if the form is too long, while reducing form fields from 11 to 4 increases conversion rates by 120%.

We often recommend "Progressive Profiling," an identity feature that allows media companies to collect information over time, as users interact with their platform. The first time a user signs in, you might just ask for their name and email. The second time, you could ask for their location to improve the experience. The third time could be topics of interest, etc. Ultimately, your goal is to get high-quality information from your users without pushing them away so you can personalize their experience.

**How can media companies use the customer data they've collected?**

Along with our partners like Auth0, we typically recommend that media companies integrate their identity solution with marketing or analytics platforms, so they can deliver personalized messages, content, discounts, etc.

[Media companies](https://auth0.com/media-publishing/) can also use identity data to identify frequent users, and offer them a premium experience or simply message them in a different way. In a similar way, media companies that appeal to a wide demographic can tailor their experiences for different audiences, and make sure they're collecting the appropriate data for each age group. People will want to use your service more if you provide the right content. Netflix and Amazon do this well.

**What advice do you have for media companies investing in identity?**

Look at your business needs, and ask: should I build my own identity platform, or invest in a ready-made product? Auth0 has a good resource with [20 questions for Build or Buy](https://auth0.com/learn/build-or-buy-20-identity-management-questions/). There is always opportunity cost to committing your own resources to identity management. If you choose to buy, find a partner who understands your business and processes, and can validate the right approach to the service, both at the technical level and in the user experience.

The bottom line: if turning free users into subscribers, and monetizing interactions with those subscribers is the goal, then identity is step one.

## About Steven Rees-Pullman

Steven Rees-Pullman is General Manager of Auth0, a leading Identity-as-a-Service platform that secures more than 2.5 billion logins per month. More information can be found at <https://auth0.com/>.

## About Tomi Ruotimo

Tomi Ruotimo CEO and Founder of [Houston Inc.](https://houston-inc.com/) Tomi is an innovative idealist, disruptive thinker, but also known as "enfant terrible of business". He has over 30 years experience in IT. He has founded Houston Inc. which, alongside with a sibling organization called Houston Analytics are one of the leading IoT software consultancy organizations in Scandinavia.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


If You Want More Paying Subscribers, Invest in Identity

jenny-obrien

I'm a former business journalist who's fascinated by the intersection of tech and business strategy — in particular how the right solution can transform an idea into reality. I specialize in ROI, data privacy, and identity.

Business Content Manager

Jenny O'Brien

Identiverse 2018 recap: Focus on Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) for developers + Solutions Review interview with Vittorio Bertocci (video).



We had a blast at [Identiverse 2018](https://identiverse.com/) (formerly Cloud Identity Summit) in Boston last week and we had an amazing new booth specially designed for this event. The energy at the world’s largest gathering of identity professionals was inspiring. 

<p style="text-align: center;">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2-roRnqW3Jw?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</p>

There was a definite trend towards 'Customer Identity' (identity solutions for application developers), says [Auth0 Head of Content and Guidance Mike Fitzbaxter](https://twitter.com/mikefitzbaxter). "This was in contrast to the normal Enterprise-centric Identity solutions which are predominantly showcased at these events. It was an exciting justification of Auth0's product vision.”

## Solutions Review: Vittorio on Open Standards in Identity

[Solutions Review’s Doug Atkinson](https://solutionsreview.com/author/solutions/) caught up with [Auth0 Principal Architect Vittorio Bertocci](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-welcomes-vittorio-bertocci/) at the conference. They spoke about Vittorio’s recent move from Microsoft to Auth0 and the need for open standards in identity.

<p style="text-align: center;">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-coC5zusfRc?rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</p>

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Check out @vibronet’s #Identiverse 2018 interview with @Solution_Review on his move to @auth0 and open standards in identity + our conference recap!"/>

## Wide Range of Identity Challenges, 5 Auth0 Sessions

In addition to discussing a wide range of identity challenges at our booth (biometrics for login, 500 legacy apps that needed to migrate quickly to a new framework, and wanting to add second-factor authentication to existing mobile apps), Auth0 offered 5 sessions, including one with our customer ATB Financial:

Beyond API Authorization ([Jared Hanson](https://twitter.com/jaredhanson))

The Critical Role of Identity in CX for ATB Financial ([Martin Lapointe](https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-lapointe-633ba050/))

The Wheel, Reinvented. Or not. ([Mike Fitzbaxter](https://twitter.com/mikefitzbaxter))

Auth0 Masterclass: Architecture & Identity: 3 IAM Examples to Support Digital Transformation (Jared Hanson)

Auth0 Masterclass:The Curse of Knowledge: Designing a Developer-Friendly IdaaS ([Vittorio Bertocci](https://twitter.com/vibronet))

## What About the Hack the Code Contest?

Over 400 Identiverse attendees tried to [Hack the Code](https://auth0.com/blog/auth0-is-going-to-identiverse-2018/) to get into the Auth0 safe and claim the $5K Amazon gift card. Our most tried codes were 0000, 9999, 1234, and 2018 — typical codes that people use, but also an example of why you should avoid using those common options. To improve their chances, people also wanted to know who set the code and whether it was random or had a specific meaning.

The winning Auth0 code was actually a compilation of two random numbers chosen by two Auth0 employees: 4743. 

In the end, it took a trio of colleagues to crack the code working a winning strategy that combined logic and luck with a little social engineering. Due to a request from their employer that they decline an interview and reveal neither their place of business nor their professions, we are only able to identify our winners by their first names, but we can share how they hacked the code!

On day one, each member of the trio tried random numbers. They could tell from watching Auth0 employees very closely that Joseph had to be close to the right number. 

Aware that a lot conversation was happening at the Auth0 booth as attendees tried to hack the code, the trio remained close at hand, listening for possible clues. When day two came and went without the safe opening for them or for any other attendees, they took their social engineering strategy to the conference floor. 

The trio talked up other conference attendees who had attempted to hack the code and decided that it was highly likely that the sequence relied on a repeated number, but the third day of attempts didn’t open the safe.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Find out how a trio worked together to hack the @auth0 code at #Identiverse 2018!"/>

On the fourth day of the conference, they agreed to try again, with the three numbers they thought were correct, but with each of them repeating a different number fourth. Neither Brett nor Merrel cracked the code, but on the last try, Joseph entered the right sequence. The green light went on. The safe opened and the crowd went wild! 

Since they had already joked about how they split money if they won, Joseph, having opened the safe received $2,000 Brett and Merrel each took home $1,500. We congratulate them on their successful strategy!

## How Big was that Conference?

Thanks to everyone who helped make this conference possible. We can’t wait for next year! To get a sense of the scale of this conference, please check out the [official Identiverse compilation video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG4zesTtpkM&feature=youtu.be) (and watch for Auth0). We hope to see you there next year!


<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Strong Emphasis on ‘Customer Identity’ at Identiverse 2018

krti_XnE_400x400

At Auth0 we ❤️ developers. Serving & giving back to the community is one of the most rewarding things we do. We want to empower others to join the mission!

Auth0 Ambassador

The Interviews with Ambassador series continues with Ignacio Anaya.



The [Auth0 Ambassador Program](https://auth0.com/ambassador-program) was created to empower the developer community and help make the Internet a safer place for everyone. Our ambassadors give talks at various conferences, host workshops at local meetups, and create all sorts of content to help developers learn about the latest standards and best practices when it comes to identity, authentication, and security.

The *Interviews with Ambassadors* series shines a light into who are ambassadors are, how they got here, and what they are doing next. This month, our highlighted ambassador is [**Ignacio Anaya**](https://twitter.com/ianaya89), who joined the Auth0 Ambassador Program when it was just starting out.

![Ignacio Anaya](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5dWPTFfeUqmXtZPNPqECmW/f4cdf54032c07bdc2fa0df1dbc9693cc/ignacio-interview)

## Interview with the Auth0 Ambassador Ignacio Anaya

**Thank you for making the time Ignacio, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?**

I am a full stack developer and tech speaker. I really love to code and it is probably my biggest passion. But what I also love is to share knowledge, to teach, and to exchange experiences. I think the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else.

I like communities, I am leading a [Vue.js Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/vuenos-aires/) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Besides computers and coding I love sports, so when I am not coding I am playing something. I am a field hockey player (and a frustrated soccer player) at Gimnasia de Esgrima de Buenos Aires. I have a beautiful and smart wife, (we got married some weeks ago). What else can I say? I think I am a happy and lucky man.

**Well first of all congrats on getting married! Second, what made you want to join the Auth0 Ambassador Program?**

Last year I decided that I wanted to be a speaker, I started preparing talks for local meetups and then I had the chance to speak at some big conferences and travel around the world. The problem is that this is really hard to achieve alone and there is no such thing as a Speaker School.

So when I read about the program, I thought “that is exactly what I need”. A group of people coaching, giving feedback, teaching and sharing resources to improve and grow together. I love the program, it is a win-win solution that helped me a lot and it opened many doors for me.

**That’s really great to hear. We may need to rebrand to Auth0 Speaker School. What have been some of your favorite experiences with the Ambassador Program?**

Thanks to the program I had the chance to visit really nice places like Tallinn (Estonia), Lisbon (Portugal) and Sandusky (US). But, the best part was that I met a bunch of amazing people and made new friends around the world while getting to speak as an authority on various subjects.

**What has been your favorite event to attend in the last year?**

I liked [TopConf](https://www.topconf.com/conference/topconf-tallinn-2018) because Tallinn is one of the most awesome places I have ever seen. This year I also participated in [CodeMash](http://www.codemash.org/) which was an incredible conference in Sandusky, Ohio. The venue was great and it had an indoor water park inside it. It was an amazing experience and really quite different from other conferences.

**Besides speaking at conferences and meetups, you help organize the Vuenos Aires meetup in Buenos Aires. Can you tell me a little bit more about the work you do there?**

I was one of the first people in Buenos Aires working with [Vue.js](https://vuejs.org/). I recorded an online course, I did some workshops about the framework, and gave a bunch of talks around the world, so why not also create a local community in my city?

We have MeetupJS that is really cool, lead by folks like Cris Duran, Nico Isnardi, Ale Oviedo and Cami Cepeda who inspired me to start the Vue.js meetup. Picking the name was really easy, and I have to say it’s one of the best names ever. Then, Cami Cepeda and Mati Blayer joined me and we started organizing the events together. In less than one year, we have around 800 members and we are doing monthly events that attract a lot of attendees and speakers. I am really proud of what we built.

**That is so awesome. Vuenos Aires is so clever! Auth0 has an HQ in BA, what type of interactions and support do you get from Auth0 for being an ambassador?**

A lot... I am always bothering [Tony (Diego Poza)](https://auth0.com/blog/authors/diego-poza/). I visited the offices several times. I always get feedback from my talks and a lot of assistance for events and travel expenses. We even host Vuenos Aires meetups at the Auth0 HQ from time to time. The most important thing is that I have access to the coolest swag in the world. I am looking forward to visiting the new offices now.

**Tony is the best. You’re obviously a big fan of Vue.js — why do you prefer it over [Angular](https://angular.io) or [React](https://reactjs.org/)?**

What I mostly like about Vue.js is that is simple but really powerful. You can use it to develop the most basic or really complex application and it works great for both scenarios. I really hate comparisons, so I will not say that Vue.js is better but definitively is different.

I believe that Vue broke down the existing paradigms compared to current solutions and I love to break paradigms. Vue combines some of the best parts of Angular with some of the best parts of React, and the result is terrific.

**That’s a really good way to put it. I have to spend some more time with Vue.js now. How do you balance the Ambassador Program with your regular job?**

For me, it is not hard. I work at Bloq Inc, which is a remote friendly company and very flexible. This means that I can work in any part of the world. I just need my laptop and an internet connection. The good thing about the Auth0 Ambassador Program is that you don’t have to meet strict goals, you can be as active as time allows. The real problem is balancing work with your life, friends, hobbies, and family. Thankfully, I have enough time for everything (most of the time).

**What are some of the big challenges you face running a local developer community and how can the developer community help?**

For us, the biggest challenge is finding speakers for the events. Especially for a group that is only focused on a single JavaScript framework. The community is big, there are a lot of people but I think it is crucial that people stop being read-only members. Please do not be afraid to participate, to get involved, to speak, or bring some help. The community does not belong to the organizers, it belongs to its members, but we need active members to keep growing and opening up opportunities for everyone. You have write-access, use it.

**Read/Write access, I love it, that is a great way to put it. Can you share a few tips for aspiring Ambassadors?**

I think so. First of all, lose the fear and take courage. I gave my first talk around one year ago. It took me a while to take that first step forward, but three months later I was traveling around the world participating as a speaker at different conferences.

Second, keep your head up and always keep trying. **You will be rejected… a lot**. Most of your proposals will not be selected for the conferences but that is normal and will happen. Don’t let this discourage you, just because your talk wasn’t selected does not mean it is bad. Conference organizers get hundreds of submissions and usually less than twenty speaking slots. Keep submitting, you will get selected.

**Good advice and very true. It is typical to get rejected ten times before getting selected once, so keep trying would be my advice as well, and also ask for feedback as it can be invaluable to getting selected and becoming a better speaker. Are there any projects you’re working on that you’re really passionate about and want to bring awareness to that we can highlight?**

I started working in the blockchain world some months ago. Right now at Bloq Inc, we are working on a new cryptocurrency called Metronome. It is a very challenging project and I am learning a lot.

[Ethereum and Smart Contracts](https://auth0.com/blog/an-introduction-to-ethereum-and-smart-contracts/) blow my mind. I will definitely be playing with them in the coming months.

**Where are you speaking next/or what events are you planning next?**

Not sure yet, as I got married last month I put submitting CFP’s on hold for a bit. But I will be back in the ring soon. I will be talking and participating in local events in Buenos Aires in the short terms but will focus on proposals for second-semester conferences later in the year. There are a lot of interesting topics that I would like to share with the audience. So wish me luck.

**Good luck! Thank you for taking the time to speak to me today Ignacio, is there anything you would like to add?**

I don’t think so, thanks for being awesome and having me as an ambassador. I am really happy with the results and I hope to keep rocking together.

That wraps up our interview with Ignacio Anaya, Auth0 Ambassador from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I hope that Ignacio’s tips on how to get involved with your local community and how to get on the big stage have inspired you to go out there and start sharing knowledge!

If you are interested in learning more about or joining the Auth0 Ambassador program, check out the [Ambassador page on our website](https://auth0.com/ambassador-program).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Interviews with the Ambassadors - Ignacio Anaya

The Interviews with Ambassador series kicks off with one of our most active ambassadors, Mercedes Wyss.



The [Auth0 Ambassador Program](https://auth0.com/ambassador-program) was created to empower the developer community and help make the Internet a safer place for everyone. Our ambassadors give talks at conferences, host workshops at local meetups, and create all sorts of content to help developers learn about the latest standards and best practices when it comes to identity, authentication, and security.

The *Interviews with Ambassadors* series shines a light into who are ambassadors are, how they got here, and what they are doing next. Our inaugural interview is with [**Mercedes Wyss**](https://twitter.com/itrjwyss?lang=en), one of our earliest and most active ambassadors. She has won the highly coveted Ambassador of Month award three times so far. Let’s get into it.

![Mercedes Wyss](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/64PyN1XvWdHzZvfspG0Ewq/aca2edb0c89ba1959cd25b189a1bdbd4/mercedes-wyss-interview)

## Interview with Auth0 Ambassador Mercedes Wyss

**Hi Mercedes, thank you for taking the time, can you tell me a little about yourself?**

Of course. I will tell you some things that people don’t usually know about me. I am a software engineer and community leader, working with communities locally and abroad, but how I got there is kind of unique.

I never finished university, in fact I studied three different careers, first Software Engineering, then Aquaculture, and finally Fine Arts with Music Specialization. I studied music for 7 years, my specialization being the piano. I did theater, contemporary dance, I played chess, and ran a science and astronomy club at the university. We even had an observatory and did astrophotography.

I always like to say to others "don’t be afraid to be different", because maybe we are not what the world wants, but we are what the world needs and the only way to create a different and better world is by being different.

**That is so interesting. I often find that leaders in the tech community generally don’t come from a traditional Computer Science background. What made you want to join the Auth0 Ambassador Program?**

When I attended [Java One](https://www.oracle.com/javaone/index.html) in 2016, I met representatives from Auth0 at the sponsors' exhibition hall. I didn’t know what Auth0 was, but they had free t-shirts, so I approached and asked: "What do you do?"

"We are an identity management platform, we manage logins, and make it easy to add social integrations like Facebook."

"That is freaking awesome!" I said, because from experience, building your own integrations with Facebook is a nightmare. But more than that, it was about this amazing platform that made managing it all so simple.

In 2013, I found myself fighting with Facebook integration on a project, and like any frustrated developer copying and pasting code for my users module implementation until something worked. I even proposed to the company where I worked that we develop a platform for user management and integrations with Facebook so developers wouldn’t have to implement it themselves, so imagine my surprise when I came across Auth0.

Auth0 represents that, only bigger, better, and more awesome. When I saw the call for ambassadors on Twitter, I didn’t think twice, I submitted an application. To be part of the Auth0 Ambassador program is to be part of that freaking awesome platform, that makes working with identity management easy, safe, and fast.

**Well we are very happy to have you as an ambassador and the stuff you’ve been doing is freaking awesome! What have been some of your favorite experiences with the Ambassador Program?**

The opportunity to inspire others.

Since I get to travel and speak at international conferences, people come up to me and say, "If Mercedes can, we can too." At least three friends that I made over the last year have been inspired to get out there and try. I am happy to see more Guatemalans and Latin American speakers at conferences.

I have a friend that joined the [Auth0 Guest Author](https://auth0.com/guest-authors) program. Other friends have joined the [Auth0 Ambassador Program](https://auth0.com/ambassador-program).

Last year, I talked about [JWTs](https://auth0.com/docs/jwt) and now I see many people trying to better understand how JWTs work and all the possible scenarios where they can use them.

After inspiring others, being able to support the community, travel, and discover new places is a huge plus.

**What has been your favorite conference to attend in the last year?**

Java One — it’s the biggest Java conference and people from all over the world attend. What I really love about Java One is that there is so much opportunity to interact with developers, last year I had about 8 different activities ranging from talks, Open Spaces, interviews, and volunteering opportunities.

![Java One conference website screenshot](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/38CSh61AARHIWsf0tehalE/cfc612cf349bf2566d9cb8de3f778c1c/java-one)

**Besides speaking at conferences, you do a lot of work with local communities in Guatemala. Can you tell me a little bit more about the work you do there?**

I run two communities in Guatemala, the first one is [Devs+502](https://devs.plus502.com/), a community mainly focusing on Google technologies. We meet the second and fourth Monday of every month and most of the time I am the speaker. Protip: To grow and maintain a successful community, a stable and periodic schedule such as having the meetups be at the same place on the same day really helps. With Devs+502 we also run an Android conference called AFest across three of the most important cities in Guatemala.

![Devs+502 website screenshot](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4G0i2r6ukXf38jwpsthD1A/0dad5e1f4c471c435a855bf6e3094bdc/devs-502)

I also run a [JDuchess](http://www.jduchess.org/) chapter. JDuchess are the female Java chapters, focusing on increasing women participation in Java related technologies. In Guatemala, there are very few women in tech, and even less so working with Java, so JDuchess is open to any technology and the main focus is to increase women participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). With JDuchess, we host three kinds of activities. The first is the typical meetups every two months. Next, we are combating women leaving tech by creating community branches in Universities to motivate and increase participation in local communities. Finally, we are running technological inclusion activities for girls in elementary schools.

**Increasing diversity and getting more women in tech is a goal many aspire to. How can we as a community and industry improve in this regard?**

This is a somewhat of a difficult subject and often a topic of discussion in the JDuchess community. While evaluating strategies one of the ladies made a great point when she said: "it is probable that women don’t come to us, so we must go to them".

To attract more women to tech, one strategy is to provide strong role models and motivate women inside the industry to participate more in the community. Increasing women participation in strategic positions is another goal, but a tough one as these positions are usually occupied by friends, or acquaintances of the company. This reminds me of an article I read about increasing women participation in the industry, and a case of two companies. The first one hired their first woman as employee number 100. When asked why, they responded "because we have hired only our acquaintances". In the second company, they hired the first woman as employee number 4. When asked why, they responded "because we have hired people we do not know".

The next aspect is the focus on community. In order to increase the number of women in technology, we must inspire them. One of the things that makes many women not interested in technology, are the parenting patterns. For example, buying boys legos and girls dolls. We cannot change this much, but we can tell the girls that they are future women who can develop technology. If you can’t run activities with girls for tech, then teach them about technology , look for outside communities and groups that do and support however you can. These groups always need materials, tools, and other things.

**What can conference/meetup organizers do to help?**

The most important thing that conference and meetup organizers can do is offer a safe environment for everyone.

Unfortunately, I have been part of communities and events in Guatemala where many of the organizers are stalkers of the highest level. This signal to attendees leads to little or no female participation in the events.

I experienced this situation with a friend of mine. She was harassed by members of a community over a period of about three months. We received threats where they indicated that only round one had passed, nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a few beers, or that she should be grateful that they were interested in her at all. The message that impacted me the most was from another woman who said "she is not pretty enough to ask that they not harass her, if you don’t like it, then don’t participate." We had to raise the tone of things to demand that the harassment stop, fortunately that worked and we didn’t have to proceed legally.

But how fix that? The most important thing is to learn the culture of no harassment.

In contrast, let me tell you about my experience at Devnexus, an event organized by the [Atlanta Java Users Group](https://www.meetup.com/atlantajug/), where I have seen a very strong participation of women and a real synergy to make this happen. First of all, they have a [Code of Conduct](http://confcodeofconduct.com/), something I’ve been seeing at conferences more often, where it is stated that harassment is prohibited. Devnexus works very closely with [Women Who Code](https://www.womenwhocode.com/) and this really helps promote participation and inclusion. Making strategic alliances can be the key to success, here we can apply the proverb, **"Alone you can go faster, but together you can go further."**

**You’ve won Ambassador of the Month three times so far. How do you balance the Ambassador Program with your regular job?**

This can sometimes get a bit complicated, combined with the meetup organization I work with it is like having three part-time jobs. I will certainly confess I may have an advantage over others in that my work contract allows me to work from home which allows me to combine work, meetings, activities and trips much easier.

But I need to be careful with this, as I have a limited number of hours per month that I need to dedicate to accomplishing my work tasks as well as meeting my financial goals. I have a physical to do list — where I write each activity by hand to strengthen the need for execution in the mind, as well as a virtual one powered by Trello. I manage priorities, what things must be done before traveling, and what things I can do during the trip.

Another thing I do to avoid a disaster is to have a highly detailed calendar, with dates of conferences, flights, community meetups, important family activities, vital work meetings, and so on. I try not to cross over important family activities and work with conferences.

In essence this is something really hard, I have found myself working some weekends and on other occasions sleeping only three hours. I try not to do the latter as sleeping is important to be able to function successfully throughout the day, but just as important is to eat well too.

To summarize: **organize well**, **prioritize your activities**, **sleep** and **eat well**.

**Getting accepted to conferences is often a challenge. Do you have any tips and tricks to share for getting accepted?**

Everything has a pattern and we must discover it.

When I speak at a conference, it is not about what I want to say, rather more about what I can say that is relevant for the audience of the conference. Many conferences don’t like product pitches, they look for more technology trends. We need to find a way to combine those hot topics with what we want to say.

That is only for choosing the topic, next we need to convince the organizers to accept our talk. A tip here is to go and see the titles and abstracts of the talks from previous years. Look and see if they are funny titles, or very formal and descriptive. Some organizers want to see objectives and exactly what your audience will learn in your abstract, while others want to know what makes you the best choice to give that talk.

Do something that many don’t like to do, read. Many conferences give indications of how to make a successful proposal in their CFPs, what topics they want, how to define your talk and how to develop the abstract. In fact some give up tips on how to make an excellent presentation. So read first, then submit.

**Can you share a few tips for aspiring Ambassadors?**

Always share your passion, be an ambassador, not only of Auth0 technologies, but in everyday life. Being an Auth0 Ambassador is more than being an expert in the technology, or using it in your day-to-day. It is to show to the world how it inspires you, and that can only be done with passion in the heart.

**What are some technologies you’re personally excited about?**

I love programming on Android, and I am always looking for what new things we can do there. I am focused on learning and slowly migrating my apps to [Kotlin](https://kotlinlang.org/).

![Kotlin Programming Language website homepage screenshot](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/1VtggwKWQ4Tq5cRr4oigyq/662b0ace9587979b4cae9f2f0cad1ece/kotlin-homepage)

I use a lot of Java, and love the [Play Framework](https://www.playframework.com/) for both my frontend and backend development. But in Devs+502, we recently learned about Golang — a really fascinating programming language and [Angular](https://angular.io/) — an amazing frontend framework. I will not be migrating my backend from Java to Golang just yet, but I will be using Angular for some frontend stuff in the near future.

Right now I am improving my knowledge on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and I am exploring tools like [Tensorflow](https://www.tensorflow.org/), [Google Assistant](https://assistant.google.com/explore), making integrations with [Alexa](https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit), and we are part of the Visual Recognition API JSR (Java Specification Request) in the JCP (Java Community Process) for improving the use of Java in Computer Science Aspects and making it a standard in the Java Programming Language.

**As a huge fan of Golang myself, I just want to give a shoutout and totally agree with you that Go is a fascinating language. Where are you speaking next?**

* March 17th, at OUG Paraguay, Encarnación Day, "Serverless in Deep"
* March 27th, at Droidcon Boston, "A More Secure World for Android Apps"
* April 17th, at Oracle Code Boston, "Serverless in Deep"
* April 24th, at Oracle Code Bogotá, "Serverless in Deep"
* April 25th or Thursday 26th, Medellín JUG, "Serverless in Deep"
* May 5th, Java Day Istanbul, "Serverless in Deep"
* June 11th, JBCNConf (Barcelona), "Serverless in Deep"

**Looks like you have a very busy schedule ahead of you. Thank you for your time today.**

If you are attending any of the above conferences, be sure to stop by and say "Hi" to Mercedes Wyss! That about wraps it up for our first interview in the *Interviews with Ambassadors* series. Thank you again Mercedes for taking the time to answer our questions today and we can’t wait to see what you do next.

If you are interested in learning more about or joining the Auth0 Ambassador program, check out this [Ambassador page on our website](https://auth0.com/ambassador-program).

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Interviews with the Ambassadors - Mercedes Wyss

ngVikings brought the European Angular communities to Espoo, Finland for two days of networking and learning.



A big part of being an [Auth0 Ambassador](https://auth0.com/ambassador-program) and Evangelist is attending and speaking at conferences all over the world. Our ambassadors attend a very diverse set of events ranging from technology-specific conferences, like [Oracle Code](https://developer.oracle.com/code), to technology agnostic conferences like [CodeMash](http://www.codemash.org/), and everything in between.

The **Conference Recap** series will summarize our experiences at the various conferences we attend, sharing the big news, things we learned, things we liked, and more. We’ll kick the series off with [ngVikings](https://ngvikings.org/).

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## ngVikings 2018

![ngVikings Venue](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/39jPAKVqu8vOejBL7XQTh2/b36446505b50304cdbb11d97532c8903/ng-vikings-2018-stage)

Dubbed as the "main Angular event in the Nordics — and the only traveling Angular conference in the world", ngVikings was a unique two-day conference organized by a coalition of Angular and GDG Meetups from the Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. This year, the traveling conference was scheduled to be in Helsinki but found itself in close-by Espoo, Finland and was held at [Aalto University](http://www.aalto.fi/en/).

The conference brought together over 300 developers and speakers from all over the world.

The keynote address was delivered by a core member of the Angular team [Matias Niemelä](https://twitter.com/yearofmoo/) and focused on his journey to Angular, how Angular has evolved over the last five years, and where it’s headed next. [Angular Elements](https://github.com/angular/angular/issues/20891) and the new ngIvy renderer seem really promising additions to the already excellent framework. Watch the keynote here:

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After the keynote, the conference was split into two tracks with each speaker giving a 30-minute presentation. The talks featured at ngVikings focused mainly on Angular 2+ showing best practices, sharing lessons learned, and focusing on the future of the framework. You can view all of the talks [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WahpV6zn8lQ&index=1&list=PLVI0Ut22uwY4UC1v5fUvi2RIU4R4jPkba), and while all of the talks were great and worth checking out, a few that really stood out for me where:

### Deploying Angular and Node to the Cloud

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by [John Papa](https://twitter.com/John_Papa)

> Your Angular app is complete! Now it's time to deploy it to the cloud. But how? One key ingredient is determining our goals. Do you want to publish directly from your laptop or through source control and CI/CD? Do you worry that it may work differently on your machine than the cloud? What about locking down versions of node, packages, and OS? Is your head about to explode? We'll explore several good options as we discuss the pros and cons of each including direct deployments, GitHub hooks with CI, and docker. We'll demonstrate how to code, debug, and run docker locally to have confidence that what works locally will work in the cloud. The good news is that tooling has improved to make all of these deployment options within your reach to guide you to successfully deploy your Angular app to the cloud.

### Advanced Angular DI

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by [Ward Bell](https://twitter.com/wardbell?lang=en)

> You Don’t Know DI? Go beyond Dependency Injection basics. Learn about the two parallel DI hierarchies and which one wins, what happens when you provide the same token twice … when multi is true, what’s the effect of lazy loading, what’s going on in forRoot and forFeature, what’s in a component’s injector, and how to talk to the components in content children when you don’t know their types. It’ll be fast, code-frontal, fun.

### 6 Apps One Codebase with Ionic

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by [Sani Yusuf](https://twitter.com/saniyusuf)

> You and your team have this great Idea and you have your users using different devices and operating systems to access the same application. Some users are on the Web, some on Mobile some of their Desktop and you also have to worry about what operating system they are on and also have to consider how your application is presented on each device & operating system. What if there was a way to code your app without worrying too much about operating systems/devices/screen sizes and just focusing on getting your idea across to your users regardless. Join me on a journey where I show you how to use Angular, Ionic & the PWA standard to build apps for IOS, Android, Windows, Web, Mac & PC with the same code all using just HTML5.

A big shout out to the organizers including [Maxim Salnikov](https://twitter.com/webmaxru), [Shahrzad (Sherry) Aziminia](https://twitter.com/sherrrylst), [Chris Noring](https://twitter.com/chris_noring), [Jussi Kinnula](https://twitter.com/jussikinnula), and the [rest of the team](https://2018.ngvikings.org/team/) for putting together such a great conference.

## Auth0 at ngVikings 2018

[Ado Kukic](https://ado.xyz), Developer Evangelist at Auth0, was the only Auth0 representative at ngVikings and gave a talk titled “A Token Walks Into a SPA…”, which focused on token-based authentication for single page applications and Angular in specific. You can watch the talk here:

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The talk covered topics ranging from why you should consider token-based authentication, how JSON Web Tokens actually work, SPA architectures and security considerations they bring with them, and finally how to incorporate token based authentication using various Angular specific features like HTTP Interceptors, Route Guards, and more.

## ngVikings 2019

I am very hopeful that ngVikings makes a return next year, and the official conference website implies it will. Check out the [official site](https://ngvikings.org/) for updates on where the traveling conference is sailing to next!

![Over 300 developers attended ngVikings](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/5ysl15Y4PNwYquLgpU7r3E/0a5ed58058f87f7c08effe5b1057022a/attendees)

If you are interested in learning more about or joining the Auth0 Ambassador program, check out the [Ambassador page on our website](https://auth0.com/ambassador-program).

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Conference Recap: ngVikings 2018

ryan-chenkie

Ryan is a full-stack JavaScript developer and trainer who mainly works with React, Angular, Node, and GraphQL. He runs a consultancy where he builds apps for companies and also helps established dev teams with their modern JavaScript challenges.<br /><br />Ryan is a Google Developer Expert, the host of the Entrepreneurial Coder Podcast, the author of Securing Angular Applications, and an all-around fanatic about application security.

Developer

Ryan Chenkie

TJ Holowaychuk has been working on a new project called Apex. We caught up with him to get all the details!



---

<span <span style="font-weight:700">TL;DR:</span> TJ Holowaychuk's tech stack for his new startup includes AWS Lambda, Go, React, and Auth0. We interviewed him to get the full details on his first product, Apex Ping, and what his motivations were for choosing the stack he did.

---

You might be familiar with [TJ Holowaychuk](https://twitter.com/tjholowaychuk) from one of his [550 modules](https://www.npmjs.com/~tjholowaychuk) on npm, including [express](http://expressjs.com/). TJ is well known for his NodeJS work, but he's recently made the switch to Go and has been working on his own self-funded startup called [Apex](https://apex.sh). We wanted to catch up with him about his new project and learn more about the tech stack he's chosen for his first product called [Ping](https://apex.sh/ping/).

![apex ping dashboard](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/27MdTXW2o3SYQ4tnPUQY3V/cdfda4ae0080839816783a3ee0d76754/apex-ping)

### Background

<span style="font-weight:700">Auth0:</span> Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

<span <span style="font-weight:700">TJ:</span> I'm a backend and frontend engineer from Canada. I was previously part of the backend team helping scale segment.com to billions of events per day. I recently started my own software company, Apex, as a solo self-funded venture, with Apex Ping being my first 'micro' product.

<span <span style="font-weight:700">Auth0:</span> Can you tell us more about Apex Ping? What is it and what does it do?

<span <span style="font-weight:700">TJ:</span> [Apex Ping][1] is an uptime and performance monitoring tool with rich reporting and alerting capabilities. Anyone maintaining a website, app, or API can create “checks”, HTTP requests performed against an HTTP end-point every minute from a number of selectable locations all over the globe.

Alerts and weekly reporting keep the team informed so your customers are always provided with the best experience possible.

### The Tech Stack

<span <span style="font-weight:700">Auth0:</span> What stack are you using for Apex Ping?

<span <span style="font-weight:700">TJ:</span> With the exception of the app server and marketing site, the entire product is “serverless”, running on AWS Lambda. All backend infrastructure & API code is written in Go.

Checks and alerting are batched and parallelized, with SNS sitting between each segment of the pipeline for fan-out capabilities, which is useful for things like S3 archiving. I’m also using AWS Firehose quite a bit. The tool used to manage and deploy functions is [apex](https://github.com/apex/apex).

My primary database of choice is Postgres (RDS) and “check” results are stored in Elasticsearch (hosted by AWS). I also use Elasticsearch & Kibana for internal logging, with some custom code for alerting which also runs in Lambda.

On the front-end the notable packages I’m using are React, D3, browserify, postcss and babel.

<span <span style="font-weight:700">Auth0:</span> What are some of the reasons you decided on this stack?

<span <span style="font-weight:700">TJ:</span> The biggest motivators for me are scalability, performance, and low maintenance. The AWS Lambda pricing is currently a bit steep for I/O intensive use-cases like this, but the scalability, workflow, and maintenance aspects have been fantastic. I’ve stress tested the platform with the equivalent of 5,000 users with no issues and no additional work on my part.

I use Lambda internally for many small programs as well, which “garbage collect” Elasticsearch indexes, alert against my logging cluster, perform stats rollup to Postgres among other things.

I went with Elasticsearch for its flexibility and query performance. I believe there’s some improvements that could be made for the time-series use-case especially regarding compression, but it has been doing well so far. The JSON query language can be a bit daunting, but it’s very flexible, and Elasticsearch has some great options grading scaling, via routing keys and so on.

On the front-end I chose React, I was attracted to the functional aspect and modularity it provided. The learning curve was very low barring some old habits, otherwise it has been a great tool to work with!

### Authentication and Authorization

<span <span style="font-weight:700">Auth0:</span> What were some of the considerations you needed to make regarding authentication and authorization?

<span <span style="font-weight:700">TJ:</span> My primary concern is user experience. I wanted to utilize OAuth front and center to eliminate the signup process for the user. It was also important to me to have a custom look, to fit with the minimalistic design of Apex Ping.

I also really wanted to utilize [JSON Web Tokens (JWT)](https://jwt.io/introduction) for stateless authentication & authorization, cutting down on the amount of infrastructure required.

<span <span style="font-weight:700">Auth0:</span> How did Auth0 help with this?

<span <span style="font-weight:700">TJ:</span> Auth0’s [documentation](https://auth0.com/docs) is fantastic, it was easy to find an example for [React & Go](https://auth0.com/docs/quickstart/spa/react/golang) in order to get started right away. The provided open-source [Go JWT middleware](https://github.com/auth0/go-jwt-middleware) worked as-advertised.

Going with <a href="https://auth0.com/signup" data-amp-replace="CLIENT_ID" data-amp-addparams="anonId=CLIENT_ID(cid-scope-cookie-fallback-name)">Auth0</a> meant I didn’t have to spend days fiddling with half-baked solutions, which is especially frustrating with new specifications such as OpenID Connect. With Auth0 I was able to just focus on building my application, instead of re-inventing auth.

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="Going with Auth0 meant I didn’t have to spend days fiddling with half-baked solutions."/>

<span <span style="font-weight:700">Auth0:</span> You recently published a package called [auth0-lite](https://www.npmjs.com/package/auth0-lite) to npm. Can you tell us about that?

<span <span style="font-weight:700">TJ:</span> The JavaScript client libraries provided by Auth0 through their CDN offer some powerful capabilities, however with my use-case being quite simple, and having a custom look, I decided to slim things down. My auth0-lite npm package is a fraction of the size with just the bare-minimum requirements for my use-case. I brought up the idea of light-weight bundle(s) with the Auth0 team and they were great and receptive to the idea!

### Wrapping Up

<span <span style="font-weight:700">Auth0:</span> Thanks for taking the time to chat with us about your new project, we wish you all the best with it! Is there anything else readers can check out?

<span <span style="font-weight:700">TJ:</span> Have a look at [Ping's features](https://apex.sh/ping/#features) and check out the [free plan](https://apex.sh/ping/#pricing) if you're interested. Keep an eye out for more [Apex](https://apex.sh/) projects to come!

[1]:  https://apex.sh/ping/ "Apex Ping"


"interview"