Following our top-rated core conversation in 2010, Become Immortal: Understanding the Digital Afterlife, we’re ramping up for SXSW 2011. But to get there, we need your help. The first round of the panel selection process is underway and that means it’s time to vote for your favorite ideas in the Panel Picker.

You should give us a thumbs up. We’d really appreciate it. All you have to do is create an account and click the thumbs up icon on our page.

Here’s some more information about our idea and the awesome set of panelists we have lined up.

Description

The Web has changed your life, your death and what you leave behind. Your heirlooms like photos, videos and letters are now stored in digital form and—in many cases—on servers that you don’t own like those of Flickr, YouTube and Gmail. What should happen to your “legacy” data? With over 285,000 Facebook users set to die this year, you really should think about it.

The Internet generation is coming of age and this issue is only growing. We have to respond with new legal frameworks and standards to support this change. The good news is that entrepreneurs, attorneys, archivists and scholars are already working on solutions. Join us to learn what happens to your digital life after you die and what’s being done to give you a say in it.

Key Questions

1. How significant is a lifetime of data and how should it be preserved/archived/deleted after its creator is gone? Can we keep it forever?
2. How is the law changing to support the legal transferability of digital assets? What can I do to secure them today?
3. How is the business of death changing to support digital assets? What companies and solutions are emerging to deal with this?
4. Today, online identity is designed for short term use, what types of information architectures and policy structures would support identity throughout and after our lives?
5. If the social Web is redefining the way we interact with each other, what role will it play in the way we grieve together?

Panelists

John Romano

John is one of the earliest scholars of the digital afterlife. He started his research in 2008 and has written and presented extensively on the topic. He co-founded the first website devoted to this topic, thedigitalbeyond.com, and is in the process of writing the first book on this topic, to be released later this year. As an Internet professional John brings a high level of technical and social understanding to this topic.

Evan Carroll

Evan Carroll is co-author of “Your Digital Afterlife” (2010 New Riders Press) and creator of TheDigitalBeyond.com. An experience designer and researcher by trade, he is also completing graduate studies at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science. He is a recognized leader in the digital afterlife arena as a frequent speaker and media source. He lends his cultural and archival expertise to the panel.

Dazza Greenwood

Dazza Greenwood has focused his career on creating legislation and policy to support use of the Internet and enable online identity. He was previously a lecturer and researcher of law and technology at MIT and the MIT Media Lab where he developed identity, privacy, transactional and architectural solutions. Dazza runs the consultancy CIVICS.com, has led several open standards efforts and currently is helping to start up the eCitizen Foundation. Dazza brings his expertise in law, policy and online identity to the panel.

Nathan Dosch

Nathan Dosch is an attorney with Neider & Boucher, S.C. where he concentrates in the areas of estate planning, tax and business law. He is a recognized expert on digital estates and counsels Entrustet on the development of their digital afterlife service. He regularly presents and is a frequent author on the topic of estate planning and probate. He blogs about digital estate planning at digitalestateplanning.com. Nathan brings a digital estate planner’s perspective to the panel.

Jeremy Toeman

Jeremy Toeman is the founder and CEO of Legacy Locker, the first online service dedicated to helping people create wills for their online assets and identity.  He is a serial entrepreneur, with successful consumer lifestyle technology ventures at Sling Media and Mediabolic, and has also consulted with numerous top-tier consumer businesses.  He is also a well-known thought leader in the technology industry, and a frequent speaker at conferences and other events. Jeremy brings a business and entrepreneurial perspective to the panel.

John and I make no bones about how we came to start a blog about the digital afterlife. We pitched the idea for a panel talking about this for the 2009 SXSW Interactive Festival. After its selection as a core conversation, we devoted ourselves to study the topic in preparation for the event. The response at SXSW 09 was overwhelmingly positive, with a heated, hour-long discussion amongst attendees. Shortly thereafter (likely by coincidence and not causality) a deluge of services came about promising to help individuals deal with digital death and afterlife. In response, we created this blog and started preparations for SXSW 2010. Now that the panel submissions are closed, I’ll share with you our proposal.

Become Immortal, Understanding the Digital Afterlife
When you leave the mortal world, your identity will ascend into the cloud. But the complications of digital preservation pose serious questions. Our panel of legal, technical and cultural experts will discuss the control, format and sustainability of the digital beyond.

Here are the questions we plan to address:

1. Does the past have value? Should we make an effort to preserve it?
2. Is it too old school to die and be dead?
3. With the onset of widespread preservation, will the past lose its significance? Quantity or quality?
4. Is the current deluge of digital afterlife services sustainable? Will they really outlive me?
5. Public or private? What would an open-source model for digital preservation look like?
6. How can current advancements in data portability across social networking services support this goal?
7. What new legal structures and precedents does this require?
8. Are digital personas an accurate reflection of an individual?
9. Will my legacy be more significant if I leave my content distributed across multiple sites like Flickr, Facebook and Twitter?
10. How will the wealth of preserved information change the way that future generations look back at us?

We’ll be asking for your vote in August, when the panel picker goes live.  Hopefully your support (a.k.a. vote) will help us give this topic a proper panel discussion with other digital afterlife experts.

Update: Here’s the link to the PanelPicker: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3854