By Kevin Schneider in Self-Development — 06 Jan 2025

Creating an online identity

Establishing an online identity can significantly enhance your credibility and expertise, ultimately boosting your career prospects. It serves as a platform for intellectual exploration, enabling you to articulate your ideas and attain a profound understanding of a subject.

In today's digital age, your online identity can be your most powerful asset. But how do you go from being just another face in the crowd to being recognised for your expertise in your field?

Why I’m starting a blog

One of the key motivators for starting this blog came when I was on the train home and reflected on the tough all-day workshop I just had with a client. While I was happy with my answers to the questions I was there to answer, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the workshop could have gone better. I realised that it was the wider subject, complex questions not directly related to the product but in the same field of knowledge where I didn’t have answers readily available. I lacked authority, and with that, the discussions became sidetracked and at times stuck. That was a key moment when I realised I needed a platform to develop and share in-depth insights and solutions.

The following are the key reasons why I think it is important to establish expertise with an online identity.

Building Expertise and Trust

As a Technical Consultant at PingIdentity, a major Identity and Access Management vendor, my job is to enable customers to make the best use of our products, guide them through technical issues and find solutions to fit their often highly complex architectures. I frequently encounter customer inquiries regarding topics relating to the general application of IAM. Questions that aren’t covered by product documentation because they either are outside the direct scope of the products or are specific applications that require a long-form article to fully describe and resolve. By being able to point these customers to my own content, I can establish trust and demonstrate subject matter expertise which is immensely valuable, especially at the start of integration projects like I often work on. An example of this is where clients struggle with configuration management of the PingOne Advanced Identity Cloud platform (formerly ForgeRock Identity Cloud). I was able to get them started through this series of articles I published on Medium.

Opening career opportunities

Having gone through an IPO and shortly thereafter being bought by private equity and merged with a competitor and the following rationalisation in the span of just a couple of years has made it very clear to me that job security isn’t something to take for granted even for a highly qualified employee. Likewise, I do enjoy my job well enough that I am not planning on an immediate change. But interests and situations change and building an online presence to market one’s expertise is not something that happens overnight. So when the time comes to move on, I see this blog as a valuable resource for my next adventures, whatever they may be.

Broadening Horizons

I firmly believe that a broad knowledge base is essential for success in both professional and personal endeavours. My curiosity drives me to explore new topics not only in IT-related fields but also in seemingly unrelated fields like economy or politics. However, the true potential of knowledge lies in one’s ability to connect disparate subjects and identify patterns and synergies. This is where writing serves as an effective means of clarifying thoughts and finding these connections. Putting these writings online means those thoughts are going to be criticised by my readers. I hope that this will encourage discussions and provide a feedback loop that will further broaden my and the reader's insights.

Discovering a Passion for Writing

Over the past few years, I have contributed a few long-form articles to Medium. The relatively low barrier to publication there provided an opportunity to assess my writing aptitude. This experience confirmed my genuine enjoyment of writing and demonstrated that my content resonated with readers, despite the niche and product-specific nature of my posts. However, I recognised the need for a sense of pride and ownership in my writing endeavours, which I hope will be more readily achievable with this personal website and give me more motivation to keep up writing.

Upcoming Focus: Technology and AI Deep Dives

With this blog, I intend to cover both high-level articles about technology as well as deep dives and tutorials into specific products as I did on my Medium blogs.

In the immediate future, I intend to concentrate on two primary topics: OAuth 2.0/OIDC and the practical application of artificial intelligence in my workflow. Despite being well-established protocols and enjoying a lot of beginner-friendly tutorials, OAuth 2.0/OIDC still presents a challenge to customers as I frequently encounter customer questions that lack a well-defined resource for guidance. These usually are more nuanced questions, such as best practices for storing tokens in different application types, special use cases like CIBA or extensions like OAuth 2.0 token exchange. Conversely, artificial intelligence has captured my interest, despite my initial dismissal of the initial hype surrounding the subject. As I accumulate knowledge about LLMs and GPT and experiment with the available tools, I intend to share my thoughts and findings to not only widen my horizon but provide some input for my readers as well.