CIAM Discovery Kit (Part 1)

As I write this, and for folks who celebrate it, that one particular day in the Christian calendar has once again come and gone. And with it comes the herald of an approaching New Year! But before we say a (fond) farewell to 2023, there’s still time for another delve into the CIAM box; a “Boxing Day” gift so to speak ?

When I had the idea to build Discovery, my notion was that it would give me a consistent and repeatable way of connecting with Developers on all things Customer Identity & Access Management. And the plan, at least for phase one, was to be the creation of CIAM centric content; I’ve always envisioned the development of Discovery as a multi-phase effort, where new functionality and new assets (not just content) are released progressively over time. I knew I wanted to start by creating topic-centric content, because then I could talk about the challenges surrounding CIAM and relate back to how Auth0 can help.

Naturally, being web hosted, I knew I’d be able to create links and write posts (like this) that I could use to share the content I’d create. And syndicate to reach a wider audience. However, as I thought about it more, what I also began to realise was that I had a fantastic opportunity to leverage this topic-centric content in support of my role as a Developer Advocate at Auth0 by Okta too. For someone like me, who likes to “reuse” wherever possible, that’s a particularly interesting avenue to explore ?

As a Developer Advocate I often get to attend events. And at these events I often find myself part of the team running a booth. I really love booth work ? Primarily because I get to talk to members of a developer community face-to-face and chat about all things technology. Even ease a pain point or two from time to time ? When I’m at a booth people invariably come up and ask “So what is Auth0? What does it do?” These are folks who’ve never used the platform, and it’s often tricky to find an answer. Not because it’s hard to answer those sort of questions, but rather because Auth0 does so much! The benefit(s) it could bring to one scenario might not be the same as the one(s) it can bring to another. Articulating why using Auth0 is beneficial can be a challenge – particularly when one is only using words to paint a picture.

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. So instead of just using words what if there was a better way to pictorially visualize what Auth0 does and the benefits it can potentially provide. Topic-centric content is certainly a good way to provide descriptive narrative, but what would be really beneficial would be a way to illustrate each of those topics in a surprising and delightful manner (“surprise” and “delight” being bywords for delivering a really engaging and valuable experience at a booth)!

Over the years, some really eyecatching artwork’s been created that’s been part of numerous Auth0 Blog articles. Wouldn’t it be fun if I could take that artwork and bring it to life as something that folks could physically touch and interact with? At a booth, people love things that are both eyecatching and are tactile; all part of that “surprise” and “delight” philosophy. If I could create something visual (or, as it turned out, some things) that could be arranged to illustrate all of Auth0’s features in a topic-oriented fashion, and that folks could also use to access topic-cetric content too – ideally via a personal device – then wouldn’t that achieve my aim? Satisfying my desire to “reuse” too.

Well, to cut a long story short, that’s essentially how phase two: the CIAM Discovery Kit, illustrated below, was born! ? For now I’ll leave you peruse the Discovery Kit assets at leisure. In CIAM Discovery Kit (Part 2) I’ll tell you more about how I transferred pieces of Auth0 artwork from their digital home to a physical medium, in order to create the eyecatching assets depicted below. And in CIAM Discovery Kit (Part 3) I’ll tell you more about how I’m combining the use of NFC and QR codes to provide visitors to our booth with dynamic access to Discovery content, at scale, using a personal mobile device.

Happy Discovery ?