I’ve been involved with the idea of ‘data portability’ for a while now. Data Portability is the principle that data on the web should be easy to securely move around by those that have the rights to do so.

At ad:tech 09 in Sydney I participated in a panel discussion with Ross Dawson, Chris Saad and Danny Housseas which explored the opportunities and challenges of data portability. It affirmed for me that the data portability principle is just too academic. It seems that most people just don’t get it.

This is a problem because I believe that the issue of data portability is one of the biggest problems for us to solve on the web today.

I think it is only possible to grapple with data portability by first thinking about the web as an operating system of enormous storage capacity and processing power. We need to stop thinking about ‘controlling/owning the users’ and start to think about how our apps can work together. Users need that. I need that. And products that don’t support it will not be valued.

If your local operating system would only allow you to open photos with certain applications, or prevented printing out your address book, or would not allow cut and paste of an email address from a message to a document.

If your OS performed like the web today you would say it was broken.

What is the cut and past of the web? How do I give permission for some people to do something with my photos and not others? Do you mind if I import your email address into this new app?

Flickr is a ‘viewer’ application that I use to show my photos to people in other places. I should be able to ‘open’ my photos in another application (another site on the web) to edit them and then save them back into Flickr, or somewhere else.

When I start using a new web product I should be able to bring my friends with me from other social networks (other silos where I manage my mates) and they should be able to easily accept or decline coming with me .. and I’d prefer not to use Facebook Connect to do this. I want a way to do it that some company can’t claim ownership over. That kinda defeats the purpose of me controlling my own data.

So what’s the answer? Do you agree this is a problem?

How do we do a better job of communicating the promise if we get it right?

Click here for Phil’s blog

I was on a panel at Ad:tech on Tuesday talking about ‘The Importance of Digital Strategy’. A pretty broad question I know, almost like the importance of digging foundations for a massive skyscraper. But with the help of Kate Tee (Diageo), Stephan Gervois (NRMA) and panel leader Ben Cooper (The Population) I like to think we managed to put together something that was of interest. Thank you guys, it was a pleasure.

One of the things I wasn’t quite ready for was the sheer vulnerability you now have as a speaker these days. Not only do they rate you with a little black box, you have to sit there thinking, ‘shit am I going to get in the neck from the Twitterati just because I said if you have thousands of followers it doesn’t mean you are engaging’. That aside I thought it did enhance the experience overall, even if 90% of people were in the classroom and 10% were behind the bike sheds saying that Sharon from class C5 had big ears.
Anyway with it all still fresh in my mind here are my thoughts.

Keynotes
Nick Brien from Mediabrands was excellent and probably the best presentation of the whole two days. I particularly like his view on the R word. Not recession but reset. This is the opportunity for brands to start doing things how they should be done.

The Social Media Debate wasn’t much of a debate, but Jenny Williams did a very good job of leading the discussion. Very interesting to see how they plan on engaging brands now and in the near future. I particularly liked the idea of approaching them for their capability around the whole package rather than just as another ad channel. I think that was the guy from Bebo.

The other ones from Kodak and BBC were a bit disappointing, the former the evolution of Kodak, the latter a bit too much of a sales pitch.

Panels
Integrating social media into your marketing plan
Well articulated although I was a bit disappointed with the case study used. IMHO it didn’t really demonstrate a good use of social media. It was essentially a Facebook app, a voucher and some banners. It also felt like a bit of a sell from McCann who couldn’t help but tell the audience that no one else in the room has done such a great Facebook app like them.

Specialist vs. Generalist: Uncovering The Best Of Both Agency Relationships
Probably one of the only panels I saw that really started to disagree with each other. There was never going to be an answer on this but I enjoyed Mike Zeederberg from Profero and Fionn Hyndman from DGM duke it out.
Fionn: “You wouldn’t go to a GP if you had something severe that needed treating would you”
Mike: “You would if you wanted a long life, good health and well being”

Effects Of Transparency: Cash For Comment And The Dark Marketing Debate
An entertaining show put on by Julian Cole and some good case studies of failures. Probably didn’t really get going until the audience questions but full marks for bringing the 50mins to life a bit. I was flagging a bit by this stage of the day.

The Relevance of Twitter
Gavin Heaton and Mike Hickinbothan from Telstra/Bigpond were both very good and were the only ones that took it out of the ‘what is Twitter’ territory into the ‘why it’s relevant’. Jye Smith did a good job leading the panel and getting amongst the audience.

How to engage consumers online?
I really liked the case studies particularly from Clemenger and Edelman, although it was too much like a presentation of work than a discussion. It was however one of only a handful of sessions to actually show digital creatively and the effects of it living outside of the web.
In fact thinking about this, if you rounded everyone up who attended, took their brains out and put them all into one person with a massive head, it would walk anti-clockwise all day long. The first questions from the audience in almost every session were ‘How much did it cost?’ and ‘How many sales did it generate?’

Online Metrics: What, How And Who Should Care
A good panel, that gave a good insight into what is important to their businesses and very well moderated. I did feel leaving like it was all about just measuring sales, reach and frequency. If everyone measures the same things don’t we all just say the same thing, to the same people in the same places?
I would have liked a rogue in here to push a few buttons. Brian Fine of STW Insights did briefly ask the panel what was the difference between their metrics and KPIs although it wasn’t quite picked up.

Measuring social media
This had a very good panel broaching a very difficult subject. Very different from the session prior in that people like Stephen Collins emphasised the need to be people focused and consider quality objectives and qualitative methods, not just the numbers. Iain McDonald led the panel well, although I would say that I sit next to him.

http://thecommunicationsroom.com/2009/03/12/thoughts-on-adtech-sydney-2009/