Identity Woman

Independent Advocate for the Rights and Dignity of our Digital Selves

Personal Data Ecosystem

Grace Hopper Celebration and Presentation – Ethical Market Models.

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In mid-October I had the opportunity to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing for the first time.
Here is a link to the paper that I presented – MarketModels-GHC Here are the slides

I also had the pleasure of working on a Birds of a Feather Session with Roshi from Google – she works on their identity team and was the one who asked me work on the session with her along with encouraging me submit a proposal for a lighting talk.
We had a great discussion about the internet of things and considering various ideas about what internet of things things…we might invent and how we might identify ourselves to them.
The conference is really a giant job fair for undergaduate women CS majors. There is not a lot there for mid-career women, all of the ones I spoke to felt this way.  I realize if I was a young woman….at a CS department where most everyone is a man.  Attending this event would make me feel like the whole world opened up…and anything was possible.
The event made me more committed to putting energy into helping She’s Geeky expand and serve more cities and more women and particularly those who are at high risk of leaving the industry – those who have been in the industry for around 10 years.

I've co-founded a company! The Leola Group

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Thursday evening following Internet Identity Workshop #18 in May I co-Founded and became Co-CEO of the Leola Group with my partner William Dyson.
So how did this all happen? Through a series of interesting coincidences in the 10 days (yes just 10 days) William got XDI to work for building working consumer facing applications. He showed the music meta-data application on Thursday evening and wowed many with the working name Nymble registry.  The XDI [eXtneible Resource Identifier Data Interchange] standard has been under development at OASIS for over 10 years. Getting it to actually work and having the opportunity to begin to build applications that really put people at the center of their own data lives is a big step forward both for the Leola Group and the  Personal Data community at large.
[Read more…] about I've co-founded a company! The Leola Group

Personal – a personal data service is LIVE!

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It is a big day 11-11-11 for many reasons. One is that Personal emerged out of closed beta. Yeah!   When I first met and talked with Shane Green, I was so excited because I met a kindred spirit who shared core beliefs with the community around IIW (user-centric identity, VRM etc). I knew after spending 5 hours in 2 days talking to him that with his experience, personal leadership, and the funding they had already secured  (from Steve Case and others) that they were going to make a big splash when it finally launched.
As a bonus, the whole topic of Personal Data got coverage in AdAge yesterday mentioning both Personal and Reputation.com in an article:

Why Your Personal Data Is The New Oil

I think the biggest thing Personal has going for it its focus on design and usability.  Wire protocols (the technical bits of moving data and formatting it) are easy compared to how people can easily understand, interact with and manipulate the vast range of personal data they have, that is information which is personal TO them – not their tweets and photos that they proactively share, but all the “stuff” they should have a record of somewhere. Their car serial number, passport number, codes to garage doors for baby sitters and the kids allergies that need to be shared with playdates, school and the soccer team.
They are using OAuth, a key open standard, in their connectors linking information you have at one site to your personal vault in their store.

 
It is pretty simple when you get started.
1) You can add empty gems and fill them out.
2) You can share them with others… and also revoke permissions.
Anyone who sees a gem you have given access to has to agree to your “control” of the data and that when it is revoked they don’t keep a copy of it. They also can’t share it with others without your permission (you would give that other party access to your gem if you wanted to share with them). 
3) You can look for gems that have already been created by others about things they own or preferences/needs they have.
4) And get the mobile app.
Now that they have launched, I am going to dive in and start playing with gems and sharing relevant ones with friends and colleagues.
Other key items to note are the coming anonymity features they are planning on rolling out.

We believe strongly in your right to remain anonymous when you choose. At present, we only support remaining anonymous when publishing community gems, but will be rolling out new anonymity features in the very near future.