Social Media Camp - I'm presenting in Seattle

Tomorrow (Saturday, July 12, 2008) is Social Media Camp in Seattle. Social Media Camp is a BarCamp targeted to those interested in Social Media and community-based marketing.

I've never even attended a BarCamp, but I figured I should just go boldly into it... So I'm presenting a session on Data Portability. I've recently started singing the praises of Data Portability, because I'm feeling a growing sense of ownership of my social data. The tools being built out there to create and share social data are changing the world, for sure. But they're just tools, after all. The data we create has a life of its own beyond those tools - and we should be able to do with it as we please.

The benefits of Data Portability go far beyond the ideals of freedom and ownership - it presents great business opportunities as well. Yoono is the primary sponsor of Social Media Camp, and they probably wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the fledgling efforts the big social media companies have made toward portability.

The most passionate supporters of Data Portability put together a working group - The DataPortability Project - to encourage services to use open standards. Many of the big companies in this space have joined the group (deep breath... LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, SixApart, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, et al). So if you care about Data Portability, throw a little support behind The DataPortability Project; they have the attention of the big guys.