She’s Geeky is coming to Seattle in April 26-27.
I will be heading up to facilitate and am very excited to finally have this event coming to the North West.
She’s Geeky is a kind of magical event where women geeks of all kinds, gaming geeks, linux geeks, fandom geeks, crafting geeks, beekeeping geeks, drupal geeks, raspberry pi geeks, Arduino geeks, geeks in training, come together and hang out learning from each other.
Maybe we can even get some women from my native Vancouver to come down. 🙂
Archives for March 2013
Online Community Unconfernece "Its BACK!"
I am really excited to be working with a super awesome crew of leaders of the Online Community Manager Tribe – or OCTribe. We have been considering reviving the event and the pieces have finally come together to do it.
May 21st at the Computer History Museum
Registration is Open!
I really love the other co-organizers who are all rockstar community managers.
- Bill Johnston, Red Plastic Monkey
- Susan Tenby, Blog
- Gail Williams, Blog
- Scott Moore, Phoom
- Marina Ogneva, Twitter, Facebook
- Rachel Luxemburg, Fait Lux
The conference was originally produced by Forum One and I contracted with them to help design and facilitate. That event itself grew out of an invitational summit they hosted annually on online communities. I actually attended one of these in 2004 as a replacement for Owen Davis who I worked for at the time at Identity Commons (1).
My firm Unconference.net is doing the production and facilitation for the event.
I plan to bring forward topics of digital identity forward at the event and hopefully get some of the amazing expertise on identity and reputation to participate in NSTIC.
Another Bill of Rights
I did a collection called the Bill o’ Rights o Rama.
Here is a new proposed one a Gamers Bill of Rights based on another gamers bill of rights (this one looks beautiful)
Preamble
Gamers are customers who pay publishers, developers, and retailers in exchange for software.
They have the right to expect that the software they purchase will be functional and remain accessible to them in perpetuity.
They have the right to be treated like customers and not potential criminals.
They have the right to all methods of addressing grievances accessible by other consumer.
They have the right to the game they paid for, with no strings attached beyond the game and nothing missing from the game.
Gamers’ Bill of Rights
I. Gamers shall receive a full and complete game for their purchase, with no major omissions in its features or scope.
II. Gamers shall retain the ability to use any software they purchase in perpetuity unless the license specifically and explicitly determines a finite length of time for use.
III. Any efforts to prevent unauthorized distribution of software shall be noninvasive, nonpersistent, and limited to that specific software.
IV. No company may search the contents of a user’s local storage without specific, limited, explicit, and game-justified purpose.
V. No company shall limit the number of instances a customer may install and use software on any compatible hardware they own.
VI. Online and multiplayer features shall be optional except in genre-specific situtations where the game’s fundamental structure requires multiplayer functionality due to the necessary presence of an active opponent of similar abilities and limitations to the player.
VII. All software not requiring a subscription fee shall remain available to gamers who purchase it in perpetuity. If software has an online component and requires a server connection, a company shall provide server software to gamers at no additional cost if it ceases to support those servers.
VIII. All gamers have the right to a full refund if the software they purchased is unsatisfactory due to hardware requirements, connectivity requirements, feature set, or general quality.
IX. No paid downloadable content shall be required to experience a game’s story to completion of the narrative presented by the game itself.
X. No paid downloadable content shall affect multiplayer balance unless equivalent options are available to gamers who purchased only the game.
Interesting events in 2013
This is a calendar of events that I know in 2013 (and beyond). I think their interesting, I’m currently planning attending all the events in , I’m helping co-organize all the events with RED headlines. Some events will change from interesting to attending as they approach.
* Cloud Computing Workshop and Big Data Forum, Gaithersburg, Maryland, January 15 – 17, 2013
* Strata Online, DataWarefare, January 22
* State of the Net Conference, Washington DC, January 22 – 23, 2013
Online Community Manager Meetup link San Francisco, January 23th
The core of this community are some amazing people who I really love and share the professional practice of doing community management online. Randy Farmer, Gail, Susan Tenby [personal hero for testifying before congress pro-social good use of second life and pro-nym and then having that picked up by the Daily Show, ] Bill Johnston, ,
* Cloud Security Alliance, Bay Area, January 24th
* Streams, Gardens, and Clouds: Visualizing Dynamic Data for Engagement, Education and the Environment: A CITRIS Data and Democracy Event to Celebrate Data Innovation Day link, Berkeley, January 24th
She’s Geeky!!!! link Bay Area – Mountain View, January 25-27
I am super excited about this year – we have the amazing Kas Nettler executive producing and
* CFP Mini Conference in DC, January 28th
* Green Data Center Conference, San Diego, January 29-31
* Research Exchange talk by Tim O’Reilly at CITRUS, January 30th
Personal Cloud Evening in San Francisco, last week in San Francisco
Working with Johannes
* Computers, Privacy and Data Protection, Brussels, January 23-25
FEBRUARY
Community Leadership Summit link, San Jose,
Van Riper
NSTIC IDESG Face to Face, Phoenix, Feb 5-7
First of all you can register here – this will be the 3rd
* Lift Conference, Geneva, Feb 6-8
European Identity Workshop, LINK, Vienna, Feb 12-13
* Personal Digital Archiving, Maryland, Feb 21-22nd
* W3Conf: Practical Standards for Web Professionals, San Francisco, Feb 21-22nd
* Wisdom 2.0, February 21-24th
* Future of Banking Summit, Paris, Feb 26th
* Strata Conference, Santa Clara, Feb 26 – 28th,
RSA Conference, San Francisco, Feb 25 – 29th
* Network & Distributed System Security Symposium, San Diego, Feb 25-27,
Hosted by the Internet Society
* Public Interest Environmental Law Conference PIELC, Eugene, Feb 28 – March
MARCH
* Economist Technology Frontiers: Humans and Machines, London, March 5 – 6th
* Computers Freedom and Privacy, Washington DC, March 5 – 6th
* IAPP, Washington DC, March 6 – 8th
* SXSW Interactive, Austin, March
* GigaOm Structure, NYC, March 21-22
* UnLike us #3, link, Amsterdam, March 22-23
- Theory and Critique of ‘Social’
- Are you Distributed? The Federated Web Show
- Political Economy of Social Networks: Art & Practice
- Mobile Use of Social Media
- Facebook Riot: Join or Decline
* Ideas Economy: Innovation 2013, Berkeley, March 28th
Redefining the Speed of Business
APRIL
Harvard Leadership Program with YGLs, link, Cambridge, April 2-12th
* Cloud Connect, Silicon Valley, April 2 -4
* White Privilidge Conference, April 10-13, Seattle
* Nonprofit Technology Conference, Minneapolis, April 11 – 13th
* HOPES, Eugene, April 4 – 6th
* TEDx Berkeley, April 20th
Future of Money and Technology, link, San Francisco, April ?
UnMoney Convergence, link, San Francisco, April ?
* Social Venture Network Spring Conference, San Diego, April 25-28th
MAY
Internet Identity Workshop #16, Mountain View, May 7-9
* European Identity Conference, Munich, May 14-17
The product
* WWW 2013, Rio de Janeiro, May 13 – 17
JUNE
YGL Summit Mayanmar, and WEF East Asia link June 2 – 7
* TERENA, TNC2013, Maastrich, Netherlands, June 3 – 6
* Ideas Economy: Information 2013, San Francisco, June 4 – 5, 2013
Democratization of Big Data
* Personal Democracy Forum, NYC, June 6 – 7
* Cloud Expo, NYC, June 10-13
As advanced data storage, access and analytics technologies aimed at handling high-volume and/or fast moving data all move center stage, aided by the cloud computing boom, Big Data Expo is the single most effective event for you to learn how to use you own enterprise data – processed in the cloud – most effectively to drive value for your business.A recent Gartner report predicts that the volume of enterprise data overall will increase by a phenomenal 650% over the next five years.
* Smart Cities, London, June 11-12
* Indie Web Camp, Portland, June 22 – 23,
* Open Source Bridge, Portland , June 24-26,
* Aspen Ideas Festival, Aspen, June 26 – July 2
JULY
* ePIC European ePortfolio, London,July 8-10
Cloud Identity Summit, link, Napa, July 8 – 12
Hollyhock Invitational, link Cortez, July
* Open Source Convention, Portland ,July 22 – 26
* International Forum of Visual Practitioners, NYC, July 23-26
* BlogHer, Chicago, July 25-27
AUGUST
* Blackhat, Las Vegas, July 27 – August 1
* DefCon, Las Vegas, August 1 – 4
* Burning Man, Nevada, August 26 – Sept 2
Art Theme: Cargo Cult
SEPTEMBER
* dConstruct, UK, Sept 5 – 7
* Indie Web Camp, UK, Sept 8th
Digital Enlightenment Forum link, ___, September
* Biometrics Consortium Conference, Tampa, September 17-19th
* Web of Change, link, Texas Hill Country, Sept 18-22,
* DataWeek, link, September 28 – Oct 3
OCTOBER
* Money 2020, Las Vegas, October 6-9
* Bioneers
* New Yorker Festival
Interent Identity Workshop #17, link, Mountain View, October
NOVEMBER
* 88th IETF Meeting, Vancouver BC, Nov 3-8
* Identity Next, The Hague, November 19-20
DECEMBER
Chaos Computer Congress, link, Germany, ~ Dec 27-29
————–
* FOSDEM
* 89th IETF Meeting, London, March 2-7, 2014,
* WWW 2014, Seoul, April 7-11, 2014
* TERENA, TNC2014 Dublin, Ireland May 19-22, 2014
* 90th IETF Meeting, Toronto, July 20-25th 2014
* 91 IETF Meeting, Hawaii, Nov 2014
————
* 92nd IETF Meeting, Dallas, March 22-27th, 2015
* 93rd IETF Meeting, Prague, July 19-24, 2015
* 94th IETF Meeting, Japan, Nov 1-6, 2015
Mass-Educational Databases = Wrong Architecture
[This is cross posted on the PDEC blog – http://pde.cc/2013/03/edudata/]
Every day it seems there is a new story about new “big data” systems are going to make things better – but then… they just made things creepier.
The latest news like this came from inBloom Inc. via SXSW-Edu (on Reuters). inBloom is a newly formed nonprofit to host a massive database of student records created with $100 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The goal seems good: track the progress of students through school and use the data to improve their outcomes.
The records can be comprehensive and inBloom doesn’t need students’ parents to consent to have their records in the database.
Federal officials say the database project complies with privacy laws. Schools do not need parental consent to share student records with any “school official” who has a “legitimate educational interest,” according to the Department of Education. The department defines “school official” to include private companies hired by the school, so long as they use the data only for the purposes spelled out in their contracts.
The whole idea that you must have one massive educational database of all student records is an architecture of the past.
The core idea is right: more data about a student’s learning experience in school is good for them and could be good for the overall school system. The challenge is how it is engineered. Are students and their parents put at the center of their own data lives? Or are they in another giant system they have little control over or say in?
We need to empower students with their own personal clouds. They must be able to download their own student learning records. They must be able to share them with companies and services that will work on their behalf. With personal clouds and infomediaries to help, students will find educational resources/and tools that can help them fill gaps in their learning and discover communities of interest. This infomediary market approach puts personal data to use without revealing any more data than needed and only on the student’s terms.
Infomediary Market Model for Personal Data
In this market model the individual collects data in their personal cloud. This could be a machine in their home or a service provider they trust (they must have the right & ability to move service providers with all their data if this is truly a personal cloud service). The individual trusts an infomediary service to look into their personal cloud but does so with a fiduciary duty to the end-user. The infomediary then works on their behalf in the market place to find relevant vendors and services. It does not reveil specific personally identifying information to prospective service providers. It helps the individual have good choices and they decide who to transact with (thus reveling personal information).
The inBloom project sounds like an marketing project: companies will comb through the data base, find students to approach, and sell them with “education” products. The student data is up for grabs.
We need a better set of policies, technologies, and products that put parents and their kids at the center of and in control of their data. This single point of failure won’t do.
Related articles
- K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents (mercurynews.com)
- Your Child’s Data: Now Online (dianeravitch.net)
- K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents (news.yahoo.com)
- Why This $100 Million Student Information Database Is ‘A Godsend’ For Education Startups (businessinsider.com)
- Public Education is About to Get A Lot More Orwellian… (libertyblitzkrieg.com)
WEF Report #3: Unlocking the Value of Personal Data!
[This is cross posted on the PDEC blog – http://pde.cc/2013/03/wef-report-3/]
The World Economic Forum released its third major report about Rethinking Personal Data: Unlocking the Value of Personal Data: From Collection to Usage. PDEC has worked with the WEF’s Rethinking Personal Data project since before its first gathering in the Summer of 2010. It is really gratifying to see this third report come out and continue to move the issue forward.
The Rethinking Personal Data work is now within a larger umbrella WEF’s calling “Hyperconnectivity,” lead by Bill Hoffman, the original steward of the Rethinking Personal Data project.
Unlocking’s executive summary highlighted what PDEC member startups have been building:
New ways to engage the individual, help them understand and provide them with the tools to make real choices based on clear value exchange.
and the path forward of
Needing to demonstrate how a usage, contextual model can work in specific real world application.
The report says we must solve simplicity and elegance of design for usability so people can see the data generated by and about them.
The last part of the executive summary calls for “stakeholders to more effectively understand the dynamics of how the personal data ecosystem operates. A better coordinated way to share learning, shorten feedback loops and improve evidence-based policy-making must be established.”
The Rethinking Personal Data project convened six face-to-face events leading to the report. I participated in four of them in 2012 on behalf of PDEC: March in San Jose, June in London, September in Tianjin, and October in Brussels.
One of the meetings’ themes was the challenge to rise to the Fair Information Practice Principles. The US FTC‘s FIPPs were written in the 1970’s when citizens raised concerns to Congress about how they were ending up on catalogue mailing lists. This offline model is not an ideal basis for how to address the economic opportunities of personal data and the challenges it presents today.
The second chapter covers the context of data use, where everything surrounding data use affects people’s privacy expectations and the choices of institutions using their data. It’s great seeing this level of nuance brought to a general business audience.
This report is notable for highlighting the role of the personal data store in initatives put forward by the UK, French and US governments that mandate Data Handbacks, that data created by an individual when transacting with a government or business should be given back to the individual.
A few paragraphs stand out for me in looking ahead and the opportunity for PDEC companies.
Potentially, markets can encourage a “race to the top” in which user control and understanding of how data is used and leveraged become competitive differentiators. Various trust marks and independent scoring systems will help stimulate this kind of response.
Given the complexity of choices, there is also potential for the development of “agency type” services to be offered to help individuals. In such a scenario, parties would assist others (often for a commission or other fee) in a variety of complex settings. Financial advisers, real estate agents, bankers, insurance brokers and other similar “agency” roles are familiar examples of situations when one party exercises choice and control for another party via intermediary arrangements. Just as individuals have banks and financial advisers to leverage their financial assets and take care of their interests for them, the same type of “on behalf of” services are already starting to be offered with respect to data.
The last section of the report outlines thirteen different use-cases for personal data by a range of stakeholders, including two PDEC startup circle companies – Personal and Reputation.com.
Related articles
- Data Vaults Go Mainstream at World Economic Forum (personal.com)
Super Trip Review from NSTIC to RSA
I’ve been on two super trips recently. One went from before American Thanksgiving to early December. This last one was much of February beginning with NSTIC and ending with RSA. I wrote this in pen and paper last week and typed it up today.
One way I manage to get around is to piece together what could only be considered “super trips” – 18 days.
I actually started off at home on Feb 2nd helping Van Riper run the Community Leadership Summit West. Its an unconfernece for mostly technical community leaders but also managers but was inclusive of other community based community leaders. I will have a blog post about it up on my Unconference.net site.
February 4th I headed to NSTIC’s 3rd plenary in Phoenix. I presented the results of the Holistic Picture Visualization Sub-Committee printing out the images we found online. Bob Blakley and Brett McDowell did a good job shaping the agenda and inviting plenary participants to connect with the big vision of NSTIC of 10 years out.
- All implementation actions are complete, and all required policies, processes, tools, and technologies are in place and continuing to evolve to support the Identity Ecosystem.
- A majority of relying parties are choosing to be part of the Identity Ecosystem.
- A majority of U.S. Internet users regularly engage in transactions verified through the Identity Ecosystem.
- A majority of online transactions are happening within the Identity Ecosystem.
- A sustainable market exists for Identity Ecosystem identity and attribute service providers.
While at the same time reminding on the way to getting a man on the Moon we got a Monkey into the Ionosphere – so what is our monkey in an Ionosphere – at the plenary groups were invited to articulate this:
- Relying parties from multiple sectors are demonstrating identity and strong authentication credential interoperability
- Is easier to use than the broken user account and password methods
- Licensed professionals now have a common way to express credentials and ongoing certification. No longer do licensed professionals need to scan, fax or otherwise send paper copies proving their qualifications every time another client seeks to retain their services.
- allows citizens to securely establish a multi-purpose single identity that will significantly reduce, and eventually eliminate, the need to create and maintain multiple passwords and PINs.
- Secure web accounts for use in circles of on line providers by 10 banks, 15 insurance companies and 25 hospitals.
NSTIC in six simple parts
One of the challenges with the whole NSTIC thing is that it has a bunch of different parts. I wrote up this description as part of our What could Kill NSTIC paper.
NSTIC National Program Office. The NSITIC NPO operates within the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards. It is lead by Jeremy Grant. The office has several full time staff and they are responsible for the transition of NSTIC from a US government initiative to an independent, public- private organization. They’re smart, talented, and they care.
Identity Ecosystem Steering Group (IDESG). The NPO invited many people, NGOs, government bodies, and companies to participate in building an identity ecosystem in the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group. All the people and organizations who sign up to be a part of this are together called “The Plenary.” The NSTIC NPO wrote IDESG’s charter and its first bylaws.
IDESG Management Council. The IDESG management council is elected by the members of the plenary who self-selected into stakeholder categories. Each stakeholder category elects a delegate to the Management Council. The entire plenary also elects two at-large positions and two leadership positions. The management council can create sub-committees to get its work done. I’m chaired one that collected holistic ecosystem pictures, for example.
Committees within the IDESG Plenary. These committees do the actual work of making the identity ecosystem’s vision a reality. New committees can be proposed by any member. Committee membership is open to all plenary members. The work and activity of the committees is shared openly. A few of the active committees are working on standards, privacy, trust frameworks, accreditation, and nymrights.
The Secretariat. The NSTIC NPO awarded a $2.5 million dollar contract to provide support services to the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group. Trusted Federal Systems won the contract to act as the IESG’s “Secretariat.” They coordinate meetings, manage listservs, and the like.
NSTIC Pilot Projects. In early 2011, the National Program Office put forward $10 million in funding for five pilot projects that worked to solve some of NSTIC’s challenges. Grants were awarded in September 2012 and run for one year. The pilot projects were set up before the IDESG existed and the IDESG had no input into the selection of the the winning pilots. 187 different initial pilot projects applied for grants, 27 were selected to submit full proposals, and five were selected. Applications for a second round of pilots are coming in Q1 2013.