baia panel on data portability july 2008

www.baia-network.org

The Future of the Web is the Future of Our Data

Business Association Italy AmericaJuly 23 2008Palo Alto, California


An independent, member-based, non-profit incorporated association whose mission is to promote an open ecosystem linking the Italian business communities in California and Italy www.baia-network.org

Canale con la Silicon Valley per imprenditori e investitoriCanale con la Silicon Valley per imprenditori e investitori

http://www.baia-network.org/


Daniela BarbosaDow Jones

An information junkie fascinated by trends in information delivery. Daniela helps companies and users achieve successful information delivery and search strategies including collaboration with social software and other web 2.0 applications.

Daniela is part of the Client Solutions group within the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group based in San Francisco. She works with large corporations in deploying information strategies through various parts of the enterprise. She has worked with many Fortune 500 clients in the High Tech, Consumer Products, Consulting, Telecommunications, Pharmaceutical and Financial industries as well as many B2C customers. Currently Business Development Manager for Synaptica a Vocabulary and Metadata Management Solution at Dow Jones, she has a masters degree in Library and Information Science.

As a co-founder of the DataPortability Project, Daniela is evangelizing data portability principles for users, vendors and developers.

WEBSITE www.Synaptica.com BLOG www.danielabarbosa.com TWITTER http://Twitter.com/DanielaBarbosa

http://www.synaptica.com/

http://www.danielabarbosa.com/

http://twitter.com/D


Steven GreenbergFounder and CEO, Ciabe

Steve has more than 20 years experience designing, building, and deploying software. He is currently CEO of Ciabe, a company developing a portable social network.

Prior to Ciabe, Steve was Chief of Strategy for Messaging and Community Products at AOL. While at AOL, he also managed several instant messaging and community products. Previously, Steve managed the engineering and services groups for Riva, a startup in the wine industry, and was a senior engineer at Epinions.com. He was a Principal Consultant for Netscape Communications, where he helped large enterprises develop and deploy web technologies. He also worked as a developer in the financial and defense industries.

WEBSITE www.ciabe.com

http://www.marytrigiani.typepad.com/


Gian Lorenzo ThioneFounder, Powerset

Gian Lorenzo Thione is Founder, Product Architect, and Director of Natural Language Technologies at Powerset, Inc. a Silicon Valley startup company creating transformative internet search technology based on natural language processing. Powerset was recently acquired by Microsoft as part of Live Search's innovation strategy.

Lorenzo founded Powerset after a tenure as a member of the research staff at the Fuji-Xerox Palo Alto Laboratory, where he focused on document analysis, automatic summarization, question answering and natural language search, and information retrieval. He is a named inventor on 13 worldwide patent applications spanning the fields of computational linguistics, mobile user interfaces, search and information retrieval, speech technology, security and distributed computing.

A native of Milan, Italy, Lorenzo holds a Masters in Software Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

WEBSITE www.Powerset.com



Mary TrigianiSpada Inc

Mary Trigiani is a veteran consultant in market positioning for startups and business-to-business companies.

Currently, Mary’s focus is the use of social media in traditional as well as emerging enterprises. Mary's favorite things are: putting technology terms into plain language; creating branded concepts that differentiate people and companies; hearing what customers and users think; analyzing markets; and helping clients focus on customer and buyer values.

Mary lives in San Francisco, which she considers an ongoing social experiment. WEBSITE www.SpadaInc.com BLOGS www.MaryTrigiani.Typepad.com, www.SURVIVORSiliconValley.com TWITTER http://Twitter.com/MaryTrigiani

http://www.spadainc.com/


http://www.survivorsiliconvalley.com/

http://twitter.com/MaryTrigiani


What is data portability?

Daniela says

The option to use your personal data between trusted applications and vendors that you choose

Resulting questions: Privacy, ownership, define trusted, consequences



Steve says

Broad – different things to different people Social networks, government data, medical records,

science, personal financial data A central location or sites that keep each other up to date? Big consideration: How do sites hosting content make

money as they allow more portability? The key: People re-using their data and keeping control of

it – not as easy as it sounds – technical and legal stuff, too



Lorenzo says

Data’s ability to branch out beyond a walled garden Portability enables data to find new contexts for re-use –

which makes it more valuable For users, portability can multiply the original value of the

data and afford greater access to digital activities For content hosts, portability can generate more value as

long as they protect user security and privacy


Why is data portability important to you?

Lorenzo says

Powerset is a search company -- search is how you navigate data

As users are enabled to own their own data, we’ll be accompanied by an ever-growing cloud of information, wherever we are on the Web

Powerset will help users find what we need – and portable data is the enabling link to finding truly useful information



Daniela says

I became “involved” with data portability as a user, not because of my work

I work with enterprise clients, though, and as data portability has gained visibility, they’ve been asking about it

Enterprises see data portability as a benefit to their customers and to themselves



Steve says

My company, Ciabe, provides a platform for data portability

We enable users to create cross-site groups, messages and friend lists -- we even have a widget.

We provide all of these through an easy-to-integrate API or plug-in UI


Variety: Five years ago, you could not move data around in the quantities we can today – it would have cost too much

Incentive: Because we can build and deploy Internet applications so much more easily, and because people are joining more services, the market is recognizing all the different ways there are to do business around the moving data

Quality: Eventually, what you do on one service will improve your experience in all services

What does making user data portable add to the digital experience?

Steve says



Daniela says Relationships: Better connections between people Productivity: More effective movement of information –

real-time synchronization of data – no delays in how one change to a bit of data gets captured and re-used

Industry influence: Shows that tech can not only invent applications but influence how they can be maximized – in small steps, even the big vendors are realizing that they must adjust their “properties” to meet user demand for easier use of their own content



Lorenzo says Everything: Making data portable means giving core

information a new context in application after application Value: The digital experience will become richer than the

mere sum of each individual domain and application Alternatives: For Internet companies, giving data portability

rights to users – securely – will emerge as a competitive edge


Why should Joe User care about data portability?

Lorenzo says Return on our “human” investment – ROHI: As

we add to our data and curate it over time, our commitment to it gets deeper, so we want to own it ourselves

It keeps the playing field level – as long as we have ownership stakes in our own data, there’s balance between site and user



Daniela says We can create so much more content now, so we

need a way to address content re-use We’ve already embraced standards like Creative

Commons for the production of our own content Next, we have to consider privacy, ease of use

and re-use, finding new connections, making sure we do the choosing of Internet services



Steve says We don’t want to enter or create the same data

over and over again We want our data available to us, wherever we

are on the Web


What should Internet companies do in the next six to twelve months to make data portable?

Steve says

Really focus on working out what you’re willing to do Understand what users are willing to do Develop a common vocabulary Participate in setting standard data portability policies – so

users and sites know what to expect from one another Mid-sized companies: Standards will lower your cost of

user acquisition and increase engagement



Lorenzo says

Switch the value proposition from your ownership of user data, however limited, to your innovation of data-centric systems that benefit more from the influx of consistent users, already integrated via other services

Respond to your users’ desires – if they want to move, re-use, export, import and control their data, don’t fight it – use it as an opportunity to innovate and compete



Daniela says

Look at the standards being identified and developed in The DataPortability Project – and start doing what you can

Talk with your users to see what they want and expect

Above all: Acknowledge that user data is valuable and that the user owns it – build your business models around that

baia panel on data portability july 2008

Economy & Finance

personal data

data portability principles

data portability important

government data

personal financial data

information strategies

information science

search company