Mydex at the first VRM West Coast workshop, May 2009

Mydex was strongly represented at Internet Identity World in Palo Alto, California 15–16 May. It was an unconference format event, ie people gave quick updates of what they were doing then we suggested, chose and led the sessions we decided were most important.

Iain Henderson spoke about the “me in the middle” data model and kept reminding people of the need for robust, standard legal terms and conditions on which we volunteer our personal data. Alan Mitchell drew the veil aside on his latest work for Ctrl-Shift sizing the market for volunteered personal information. William Heath got feedback on the role of social enterprises in delivering VRM.

People are starting to get what Mydex is trying to do, but Mydex is, we believe, unique in trying to do it in the manner it is: an asset-locked community interest company that collectivises our individual efforts and activities in the personal data market, and reinvests its profits back into this core community purpose. We came across strong aspects for why a community-interest VRM utility needs a global dimension, and global participation.

In California, eating pizza with geeks on another part of the same Stanford University site where 40 years ago Doug Engelbart gave “the mother of all demos”, and where so much or the history of the Internet was dreamed and then realised, we shared a strong sense that fundamental change is ready to happen: change that will restore human dignity to our transactions on the Internet.