6 Talks That Developers Will Be Excited to See at Oktane21 – InApps Technology 2022

On April 6-8, 2021, Okta will host its annual conference: Oktane. Like last year, this year’s event will be virtual. Unlike last year, we’ve had a whole year to figure out how to hold a fantastic virtual conference. Most developers probably don’t think there is any content for them, but as a developer myself, I can tell you that there are a number of talks you’ll be fascinated by. I encourage you to register for Oktane21 to check out the talks I’m most excited about plus many more for yourself. You can check out the full agenda here. The best part about virtual events is that you can come and go as you please.

Everything You Want to Know About WebAuthn

I know developers hate thinking about authentication, but it’s something that you HAVE to get right. Changes in this space are something every developer should at least be aware of. WebAuthn is a pretty new authentication standard that turns your phone into a security device. I’m excited to hear how this new standard might help in making things easier and more secure. I’m also interested in what problems may still exist with the standard and whether or not I should consider this standard to be ready for production or not.

The New Developer Experience at Okta

Like many of you, I am a developer that works with Okta every day. I am always interested in changes to technologies I use every day and how those technologies have improved. I am very interested in seeing how the developer experience has changed at Okta and what things have become more straightforward, and if there are still things that need improvement. As an Okta employee, I want to see the experience for the developer community improved. I haven’t even seen some of them in their final form yet, so I am super excited to see it all in a big demo session.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About OAuth and OIDC

Aaron Parecki is a friend and colleague, but he’s also a super OAuth nerd. He’s also one of the co-editors of the OAuth spec. That means getting information from him about the spec is getting it straight from the horse’s mouth. I always enjoy asking Aaron super technical questions about the spec and seeing his passion for the spec wash over him. He loves it! In this session, there will be other people asking questions, so I will be interested to see what kinds of things I haven’t even thought to ask. This one will undoubtedly teach me some things!

A Developer’s Guide to SCIM

Managing users across domains is always tricky, and I’ve been woefully behind in learning about SCIM (System for Cross-domain Management). Joël Franusic seriously knows his stuff, and I am very interested in learning more about how SCIM works and how to implement my own APIs using SCIM. Of course, the fact that there’s live coding in this session makes me even more excited to see it. Seeing things in a practical, concrete example helps drive concepts home for me, and Joël is a killer programmer. It should be like watching Jimi Hendrix teaching guitar.

JSON Web Tokens, Macaroons, and PASETOs, Oh my!

Web tokens are a fact of life for developers, and Brian Demers knows more than most about how they work. He has one of the authors of JPaseto, a library to help make working with PASETO tokens in Java easier. I’m genuinely excited to learn more about each token type’s spec and where and when to use each type. Brian is always entertaining in his talks and has a way of making dry subjects like this easier to understand while not putting attendees to sleep.

Building an Auth Experience for Humans

Heather Downing is an outstanding developer and is super-passionate about keeping the user at the center of every piece of software she writes. She’s going to talk about creating authentication that is easier for users and cover some of the things you should avoid when building a user-centric authentication experience. Even though I’ve been building authentication for quite a while now, I am sure I will pick up some tips for upping my game in this talk!

What Are YOU Excited to See?

If you were going to skip Oktane because you think there’s no content for developers, think again. You can check out the agenda here and register here. What sessions are you excited to see at Oktane this year? Feel free to leave a comment down below, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our YouTube channel for killer developer content!

Lead image via Pixabay.