Digital Immortals: Preserving Life Beyond Death
Adam Ostrow, Adele McAlear, Bill LeFurgy, Evan Carroll
Sunday, March 11 5:00PM – 6:00PM
Austin Convention Center Room 9ABC

Robot Panelists, AI and the Future of Identity
Ben Goertzel, Bruce Duncan, David Hanson, John Romano
Monday, March 12 3:30PM – 4:30PM
Driskill Hotel Citadel

Adam’s vision for the potential future of interacting with our digital content as a true representation of self is exactly one of our reasons for advocating that users plan for the future of their digital content. I highly recommend that you take a five minutes and watch his presentation.

“We are introducing a new and improved Friendster site in the coming weeks. As part of this change, we will remove a number of social networking functions in Friendster. This includes your existing accountprofile, photos, messages, blogs, and shoutouts. However, your list of friends will be preserved, along with your basic profile information.

We understand that your photos, blogs and other private data may be important to you. An application is available in the “Apps” section of the site, until May 31st 2011, to help you download or export them securely to third party sites, such as Flickr or Multiply. The application is available here.”

With respect to digital legacy this move has implications for users. For deceased users, without heirs who might have the username and password, their content will be deleted and heirs, even if they are willing, have no way to download the content automatically. From a greater standpoint, we’re set to lose some of the earliest social networking data. It’s likely that this content would be of interest to researchers in the future.

We encourage you to download your data if you’re a Friendster user and consider how you will archive that information. After all, it’s Preservation Week.

We highly recommend that you participate in two of the public webinars offered this week.

Accidents Happen: Protecting & Saving Family Treasures

Nancy E. Kraft
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
11 am Pacific, noon Mountain, 1 pm Central, 2 pm Eastern

Preserving Your Personal Digital Memories

Bill LeFurgy
Thursday, April 28, 2011
11am Pacific, noon Mountain, 1pm Central, 2pm Eastern

Nancy and Bill are sure to share valuable information for you during each of their hour-long sessions. If you’re up to it, you should also check out the other events that the ALA has planned for the week.

The Details:
Digital Death Day
May 6th, 2011
San Francisco Bay Area (Venue TBD)
DigitalDeathDay.com

The panel

“You’re Dead, Your Data Isn’t: What Happens Now?”
March 14th at 9:30 AM
Come hear our panel of speakers talk about the subject.

Bookstore Apperaance

Your Digital Afterlife
March 14th at 10:50 AM
We’ll be at the South By Bookstore to greet interested registrants and sign copies of our book, Your Digital Afterlife.

The Meetup

The Digital Death Meetup
March 14th at 12:30-1:30PM
Meet people policy people, archivists, academics, lawyers and entrepreneurs. Join us and continue the conversation. Come share ideas and connect with people in this casual meet up.

1/3/2010: Evan and John met to make plans for 2010. This is when we started looking for a publisher for our book idea.

1/15/2010: We published Digital afterlife predictions for 2010, our most popular post of 2010.

2/26/2010: New Riders Press extended us an offer to write Your Digital Afterlife.

3/3/2010: Evan speaks at Ignite Raleigh.

3/16/2010: John and Evan moderate the core conversation Become Immortal: Understanding the Digital After Life at SXSW

5/20/2010: Evan attended the first Digital Death Day in Mountain View.

6/3/2010: The Digital Beyond was mentioned in Obit Magazine.

6/29/2010: Evan is quoted in a Techlicious article, What Happens to Your Online Accounts When You Die?

8/9/2010: Twitter announced a policy for deceased user’s profiles. Our response was the 2nd most popular post of 2010.

10/6/2010: Facebook announced that profile information and media are now available for download. The Digital Beyond provides an analysis.

11/17/2010: Your Digital Afterlife was released and began shipping.

12/21/2010: John published So what *does* happen to your digital assets after you die? and became our 4th most popular post of 2010.

Here’s the description of the event:
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.

Learn more at the SXSW panelpicker website.

Our panelists

We would like to introduce our 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.

Adele McAlear

Adele McAlear is exploring the relationship between death, social media and technology through research, speaking and her blog at DeathAndDigitalLegacy.com. Her expertise has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other international media. An early adopter of social media and a technology enthusiast, Adele was named one of the Top 10 Most Influential Women in Social Media in Canada and is an experienced integrated marketing consultant based in Montréal.

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.

In the book we explain how our culture is in the midst of a shift from analog to digital and the complexities of digital life are challenging the the way we prepare for, experience and deal with death. After highlighting the issues at hand we provide a step-by-step guide for individuals looking to secure their digital assets.

You can read more about the book at its website.

Published by Peachpit/New Riders, Your Digital Afterlife is available in stores and online. Get your copy today:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Borders
• New Riders

And in case you haven’t heard, they’re spending the next six months running Entrustet from Chile as a part of the Startup Chile program. A new country and a new homepage within one week? Sounds like a good week to me.

Here’s a look at the old and new homepages:

Old Homepage

New Homepage