InCommon

We are officially powering through the back half of InCommon BaseCAMP 2026, and the energy—both strategic and fun—keeps reaching new heights! 🚀✨

Looking back at the past couple of days, we had a fantastic presentation from Andrew Hiltz (Rochester Institute of Technology) and Dameion Brown (Jackson State University). They shared invaluable tips for communicating across your organization, grounding the strategy in the core principles of organizational change management. Their biggest takeaway emphasized the critical importance of truly knowing your audience and meeting them exactly where they are. 🗣️📊

Our community thrives on that exact philosophy. We saw it in action during Kevin’s "Welcome to Wednesday" session, where a live word cloud of attendee job titles proved that while everyone is starting from different places in their organizations, we are all here this week to learn, share, and belong. 🤝

Of course, it wouldn’t be BaseCAMP without our signature quirks. Between sessions, our famous duck timers have been keeping everyone on track during the breaks, and yesterday’s attendee-curated playlist took us out of this world with a "2026 A Space Odyssey" theme: Songs to introduce an alien to human culture! Tune in and listen to the community tracks here: https://buff.ly/8YbnMwr 🎶👽🛸

Whether you are navigating change management within your organization or introducing extraterrestrials to earth music, BaseCAMP is all about finding your crew. What has been your favorite takeaway or duck-timer moment so far? Let us know below! 👇🦆

"You're not getting a vendor pitch deck, you're getting 'here's what we tried, here's what broke, here's what finally worked.'" 🎯💡

When we asked today's InCommon BaseCAMP 2026 Day Sponsor, Instrumental Identity, how attending sessions this week helps teams solve today's complex identity challenges, COO and Founder Mark Earnest didn't hold back. He emphasized that in the higher ed IAM space, real progress only happens one way: "by borrowing shamelessly from each other." 🤝

That exact spirit of transparent, practical problem-solving is precisely why we love collaborating with them.

To see how Instrumental Identity puts this solution-agnostic approach into practice, take a look at their deep-dive case study with the University of Pennsylvania. They supported UPenn in moving away from a 20-year-old homegrown system, designing a custom plugin to handle complex "fuzzy matching" challenges and drastically cutting down data resolution times for campus stewards. Read how they did it here: https://buff.ly/fit9ykE 🖥️✨

A massive thank you to Mark Earnest and the entire Instrumental Identity team for being today's Day Sponsor, keeping the conversation authentic, and empowering our BaseCAMP community to build smarter, stronger identity programs! 🚀🌟

We are officially at Day Three of InCommon BaseCAMP 2026, and the energy is incredible! Whether you are sitting in the sessions with us this week or are unable to attend this year, we want to bring a piece of the BaseCAMP spirit to your Wednesday. 🏕️✨

For everyone navigating the vast world of identity management, remember the big lesson from storytime with Kevin Morooney in our opening session: there is a mountain of information to absorb, but you never have to climb it alone. 🏔️❤️

That is the absolute heart of our community. BaseCAMP is not just an event for the people in the room—it is a reflection of a massive, welcoming network of higher ed IT peers who are always ready to share lessons, collaborate, and support one another through complex challenges.

Want to match our mid-week energy? Whether you are taking a break between conference tracks or focusing on your daily tasks today, tune into our official BaseCAMP Spotify playlist! 🎧🎶
Listen along and join the vibe here: https://buff.ly/xomZXnv

To our attendees, keep those great questions coming! To those who are not in attendance, we are sending some BaseCAMP energy your way. Let's finish the week strong! 🚀💻