pii2014: Putting Individuals in Charge: Inside the Personal Data Economy

Moderator: Rachel O’Connell, Founder and CEO, GroovyFuture
Katryna Dow, Founder and CEO, Meeco
Shane Green, Co-founder and CEO, Personal
Blake Hall, Co-founder and CEO, ID.me

Rachel: the companies here are the vanguard of personal data economy.

Katryna: as individuals, we’re literally sitting on gold. We’re building an ecosystem in which everything we touch will have data. It’s what the future looks like in terms of custody.

Shane: personal is changing the rules about collecting and using data, technically and policy-wise. The ecosystem is really starting to change, very exciting. Will transform how we use data with transparency and control. Announcement: Fill-It browser plug-in.

Blake: intersection of portability, standards, control and choice. Digital identity will transform the world. DMV credential is a miserable experience and a universal identity tool. We’re working with gov, standards, others. Hybrid approach: decentralize password management, add privacy layer.

Katryna: this fuels the P2P area, a consumer marketplace for historical and in-context data. Talk of consumer apathy but experience is different. People work around models. Disruption is at business model level, apathy can be overcome by innovation.

Rachel: flow from data vault to user value?

Shane: one way to think of data vault is structured, machine-readable data, productivity app, strong enterprise component. Not just a place where data is stored. Over 99% of data we won’t have created purposefully; it streams in and gets used. Different from productivity apps of today. Services haven’t existed before, isn’t about using data in all context. BYOD = bring your own data. Give the data back to individual to own and control the data that can be combined with other data. Partner of US Dept Ed for student loans.

Blake: everyone has own idea of what privacy is, put it in hands of consumer for use decisions. Show the value rather than telling them. Example: many special programs (vets, students, seniors)–they got access to registration authorities. Went to retailers, talked with them about options like AirBnB or work with standards network member–burden is less and value is more. Once you’ve bound an attribute to their wallet, can reuse elsewhere. Dept Commerce to use Facebook or Google as user account for managing health data. (ouch.)

Rachel: some European countries, different agencies issue digital identities: banks, telcos, govs, etc. Every country has to mutually recognize other countries ID standards, interoperable.

Blake: GSA about to announce partnerships about using credentials.

Katryna: (good points)

Shane: Providers using data to price discriminate is terrible. We should decide who to provide what data to, a new ecosystem developing. It’s shocking what assumptions are being built in, based on companies owning your data.

Katryna: commercial opportunity on monetizing personal data, huge numbers on the balance sheets. Re Shane’s point on transparency, his company gave him a fitness device. Who has access to data, and what are circumstances of that use? Will company help or use against you? Designing systems for the best of us, that the rest of us can use too.

Ethan: if you put user in control, consent, it’s efficient market, more symmetrical, makes everyone better off.

Rachel: how do we empower and educate people?

Shane: build great products that demonstrate value. Forms don’t speak to each other today, but financial does. The ability to demonstrate the immediate use of data is transformative.

Katryna: bitcoin and currencies: data can be exchanged for data. We can help create insights that show where value is. Protocols, new birth info that’s encrypted and moves forward. Education and what Nico said about photographs that show development. We can create commercial models, secure and finite.

Rachel: final words?

Brent: figure out which markets suffer from this problem, drive from there.

Katryna: “winter is coming.” Will be interesting to see where we are next year.

More »