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.

Twitter recently announced its policy for handling the accounts of deceased users. Before I get into my thoughts about the policy, Kudos to them. They’re ahead of the many social websites that do not have any stated policy.

It’s also worth stating that there’s a pattern here. Facebook created the memorialized profile around the same time that they began to suggest friends or ask you to reconnect with inactive users. When users complained about reminders of their deceased friends, Facebook acted on the issue accordingly. I’m sure that Twitter faced the same complaints. Nudges from our friend, Adele McAlear and Gizmodo probably didn’t hurt either.

Another friend of ours, Jeremy Toeman, CEO of Legacy Locker, proposes that the policy isn’t good enough. I’m inclined to agree.

So let’s break the policy down. I like to evaluate policies for deceased users along three categories: notification, verification and action.

I’m pleased with the notification method that Twitter has provided. I believe that email or a web form is sufficient, so I applaud them for allowing fax and postal mail as well. Their verification process seems alright, too. While not 100% secure, verification via obituary or news article seems fair. My dissent with the policy lies in the actions that Twitter will take.

Twitter allows families of the deceased two options: remove the account and/or provide the family with an archive of public tweets. I have to commend them for providing the archive. That’s more than Facebook will do. The blog post regarding Facebook’s policy is littered with comments about losing the wall posts of the deceased.

Jeremy mentioned that the policy lacked the idea of desired intent and I agree there as well. I would say, however, that their policy doesn’t specifically exclude that concept. If a user asks their digital executor to either delete or archive their Twitter account, they would be in luck. That said, the ideal situation would allow Twitter users to specify their wishes before their death, perhaps in their account settings.

I have to ask why deletion and archiving are the only options. Why not allow profiles to stay in place with a memorialized indicator? Perhaps even dedicate space on a user’s page to replies that they receive following death. There are opportunities here to design a much better memorial to the user, rather than ushering their profile away as if they never existed.

To summarize my points quickly: Having a policy is better than not. Users should have a choice in their accounts’ disposition. Social networks need to shift from dealing with death to designing for it. Their services hold great potential as memorials and, out of respect for their users, they should embrace it.

The Digital Beyond has added a comparison chart to their Digital Death Services List. Visitors to the site can now scan down our handy list and see at a glance if a service offers:

• Digital Estate Planning
• Posthumous Emails
• Online Memorials

“We wanted to provide a chart to help make finding a service easier.” said Evan Carroll. “The list of companies offering services in this space is growing at such a rapid pace. We simply needed something to tell them apart. Oh, and there’s more to come. Stay tuned.”

Robert Calem at Techlicious wrote a great article titled “What Happens to Your Online Accounts When You Die?” He quotes John, Evan and Nathan Dosch extensively as he discusses the complexities of terms of service for Google Yahoo and Facebook. Next he gives an overview of several digital afterlife services including Legacy Locker, DataInherit, and Entrustet.

We just found this great article from Robert Roper in Obit Magazine. Inspired by Digital Death Day, it’s a great overview of digital death and mentions materials from The Digital Beyond throughout the article. It’s worth your time to read through it.

Read the article.

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of attending the first Digital Death Day in Mountain View, CA. For those of you keeping track, that’s a long way from NC, but the trip was well worth it. I left refueled with ideas, inspiration and connections. In this post, I’m going to cover all of the great folks I met. I also recorded podcasts with several of these folks and will share those in the next few days. You can also expect a compilation of everyone’s session notes, which I will share when they become available.

One of the unconference principles states something like “the people who come are the right people to be there.” In this case, I couldn’t agree more. We had a very diverse group: authors, researchers, technologists, funeral directors, estate planners/attorneys, and entrepreneurs. Some quick notes about the people I met…

It was a pleasure to finally meet Jeremy Toeman and his business partner Adam Burg from Legacy Locker. They’re both good guys and share a spirit of cooperation, not necessarily competition. Speaking of competition, it was good to see Nate Lustig from Entrustet again. Both Legacy Locker and Entrustet (along with DataInherit who couldn’t send a representative) were sponsors of the event.

I also met Sam Beal, founder of online-legacy.com. Sam is helping older individuals record their family stories in digital form. I was especially impressed by his telephone service that allows non-Internet users to phone in their stories. They are then preserved, like a voicemail message, for their family. The oral tradition preserved digitally—what a great idea.

Stacey Pitsillides, PhD student and creator of digitaldeath.eu, joined us from London. I’ve followed her work for some months now and I was pleased to meet her. She also shared some great videos with the group and is going to lend her design talents to the group in the future.

Some professions are slow to change, and with digital death we deal with at least two of them: funeral directors and attorneys. We had both in attendance at Digital Death Day. I was pleased to meet Nathan Dosch (www.digitalestateplanning.com) and Ryan Thogmartin (www.connectingdirectors.com) who are leading the digital charge in both of these industries. Kudos to both of them.

I also want to mention Dazza Greenwood, executive director of the eCitizen Foundation, which addresses legal and policy issues for tomorrow’s Internet systems. I’m personally excited to see a policy leader in the group and I’m sure Dazza and the Foundation will help us raise awareness and create policies for dealing with death on the Internet.

Of course, I also have to recognize Kaliya Hamlin and her team for coordinating the event. Having everyone in the same room was exactly what our community needed to move forward.

There were many others who contributed great ideas—too many to name. Thanks to everyone for the great ideas. I’ll devote a future post to the new ideas that came out of the event, but for now I’ll say that the event was an overwhelming success and I look forward to Digital Death Day 2011. (I’ve actually signed on to help coordinate the next event.) It’s an exciting time for the Digital Death community. Onward!

Here’s a great video from SXSW 2010 featuring our friend, Adele McAlear. Like us here at The Digital Beyond, Adele is a digital afterlife advocate and runs a Web site, Death and Digital Legacy. You should check it out. Great video, Adele.

I received word today that Entrustet has officially launched its new digital afterlife service. While we do not endorse any one service we’re pleased to see another strong player in this growing space. Details below from the press release.

Entrustet (www.entrustet.com) today announces its services that securely and legally enable users to delete or designate heirs for digital assets (including email, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, PayPal and more), with new features to further help users protect and pass on personal information after death. Entrustet is the first to offer a complete solution for individuals, lawyers and companies to ensure that these accounts are transferred or deleted according to customers’ wishes.

Features:

Account Guardian – The free flagship service allows users to assign an executor and multiple heirs to inherit or delete all digital assets.

• List all digital assets including photos, email, social networks accounts
• Nominate up to 10 heirs to inherit assets
• Store personal documents – one document for free, each additional is $1 per document/per year
  • As a premium add-on service, users looking to back up all files on a hard drive are referred to data backup partner Mozy.

Additional Services:

• Lawyer Directory – The Lawyer Directory serves as a referral service for Entrustet users. Entrustet has partnered with estate planning lawyers throughout the country who understand digital estate planning needs and how to incorporate digital assets into new or existing wills and trusts.
• Double verification – Before facilitating the transfer or deleting a member’s digital assets, Entrustet requires a death certificate from the Digital Executor and then verifies the information with the local records office.
• LegalZoom legal protection – When signing up for Account Guardian, members receive a printed summary of digital assets, last wishes, heirs and digital executor.  For security reasons, any usernames and passwords will not be included in the document. Members can then turn the form into a legally binding document with a do-it-yourself will through partner LegalZoom for an estimated cost of $60-$129.

Upcoming Features:

• Account Incinerator – Entrustet offers a service that will keep designated personal assets private
  • Annual fee of $19.99 per account/per year
  • Users upload account information they would like to remain private after they die. These accounts will be immediately deleted by Entrustet once a member’s death is double verified.
  • Account Incinerator will be available in Summer 2010

Corporate Partners:

Entrustet’s Corporate Partner Program provides online companies with a free, simple and effective service to monitor member deaths across their user base, as well as users’ individual last wishes for their accounts. Entrustet has also created a widget to help networks estimate the number of member death rates per year.

Entrustet is working with a number of established sites including BroadJam, a Web-based promotional tool and service site for independent musicians, the music industry and fans around the world.

Perhaps a testament to the growing awareness of digital afterlife issues, a number of events have sprung up recently ostensibly focused on the topic.  Here are the ones that I have learned about.  Let me know if you have one that isn’t listed here.

HCI at the End of Life
April 10th, 2010
Workshop at CHI 2010 restricted to those who submitted position papers. Primarily an academic audience.
Cost: $175 plus variable costs for CHI.

Afterlife & Death in a Digital Age
April 17th, 2010
One day seminar at the National University of Singapore. Again, a primarily academic audience.
Cost: free

Digital Death Day
May 20th, 2010
This event is a one-day un-conference co-located with the 10th Internet Identity Conference in Mountain View, CA. It’s audience seems to be primarily professional.
Cost: $75

While I have some academic pursuits, the exclusivity of the CHI workshop and the distance required to visit Singapore will keep me away. I’m seriously considering Digital Death Day. It looks to be the the most relevant and accessible to me.

Hi Friends.  I’ve submitted an idea to speak at Ignite here at home in Raleigh.  I would appreciate your support by voting for my idea.  Here’s the summary:

Last Tweet and testament? Email from the grave? Funerals in World of Warcraft? When you die, your identity will ascend into the cloud—the Internet, that is. But you won’t be around to push the buttons on your Facebook, Twitter, Email, or Web sites. You’ll need somebody or something to do it for you. Learn how planning today can secure your own (digital) immortality.

For those of you who don’t know, the Ignite format is different.  Speakers get exactly five minutes and 20 slides to say whatever they would like.  This seems like a great opportunity to raise awareness of digital afterlife issues to a captivated audience.  Thanks for the support.