You are being watched, tracked, and analyzed right now. But what are they collecting and analyzing? Who’s selling it, who's buying it, and why? And who are “they” anyway? The subject of personal data collection, analysis, and control has become increasingly covered in various media channels recently such as the Wall Street Journal series, “What They Know”, reporting that a new industry of tracking has arisen, and you better watch out. Is this buzz fear mongering, or is it true that there’s a dark underbelly of the Internet where your information is traded by big corporations every day to the detriment of web citizens? Or, on the other hand, is there a benefit for keeping this information open? This data is often used to improve user experiences, web sites, programs, etc. that some of us wouldn’t want to live without. As cloud technologies and database processing improve the ability to mine user data, analyzing and valuing that data will become an even more critical part of the Internet ecosystem. But where do web citizens fit in this world? Shouldn’t they be free to own and control their data? If so, how can they derive value, and in that process of creating value can they also improve the data? Can we achieve an information system beneficial to all participants? We will address these questions from two perspectives: individual and industry.
Marc Davis invents mobile, social, media, and personal data technologies that connect people, the web, and the world. With a twenty year career of technology research and development spanning the MIT Media Lab, Interval Research, UC Berkeley, Yahoo!, Invention Arts, and Microsoft, he has done pioneering work in context-aware computing, computer vision, mobile media metadata, social media, mobile and social advertising, and personal data technologies and applications. He has transformed his ideas into over 150 patent applications, as well as numerous research prototypes, products, and publications. Marc Davis is a Partner Architect at Microsoft working on the vision and technology strategy for Microsoft’s Online Services Division.
Before Microsoft, Marc Davis was Chief Scientist at Invention Arts, where he focused on new approaches to how people can better control, share, and benefit from their personal data. His ideas on Personal Data Banking and Exchange inform a joint project with the World Economic Forum and other organizations to redesign the personal data ecosystem. Before Invention Arts, Marc Davis was Chief Scientist and Vice President of Early Stage Products (ESP) for Yahoo! Mobile, where he worked on innovative products and platforms such as oneConnect, Social Pulse, the Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS), and the vision demo for the future of Yahoo! shown at CES 2008. Marc Davis was also the Founding Director of Yahoo! Research Berkeley, where he and his teams developed ZoneTag and Zurfer (context-aware mobile photo upload, tagging, and browsing software), and TagMaps (a collective map of human attention created by analyzing millions of geocoded Flickr photos). Marc Davis served as an Assistant Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information where he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for New Media and directed Garage Cinema Research, where he led a multi-year Mobile Media Metadata research project that pioneered context-aware mobile media uploading, tagging, and sharing as well as context-aware face recognition.
Marc Davis gives talks at leading conferences such as SXSW, Web 2.0 Expo, Telco 2.0, and Mobile 2.0, and his ideas and work have been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, BBC News, GigaOm, O’Reilly Radar, AllThingsD, SearchEngineLand, and ReadWriteWeb.
Nick’s diverse background spans multiple analytics and communications disciplines during 10 years in media.
Nick is Umbel’s secret weapon as he designs custom analytics structures to manage consumer data and business intelligence in addition to user experiences for all Umbel interactions.
Most recently Nick was President and Co-Founder at Lytiks, Inc., a marketing analytics company in Boston, MA. Nick also created the web-TV show, 20onFive.com interviewing Boston area innovators. Prior to 5 years with Lytiks, Nick gained marketing experience with his own AdWords consultancy which he began in law school.
Nick began his career in film with Academy Award-nominated screenwriter John Sayles, and later a stint in broadcast journalism with Emmy Award Winning journalist Charlie Rose.
Nick holds a B.A. in English from Williams College.
Paul Krasinski is the Senior Vice President, Digital Media and Analytics at Arbitron Inc., a media and marketing research firm serving the media - radio, broadcast and cable television, online radio and out-of-home - as well as advertisers and advertising agencies. He is responsible for leading Arbitron’s service development efforts in the continuously evolving digital space. He works closely with the company’s product, sales and IT departments. Paul joined Arbitron in January of 2011.
Prior to joining Arbitron, Paul served as Chief Operating Officer at Ando Media where he was involved in all facets of the business including daily operations, corporate development, and strategic relationship management.
Paul has been a member of the digital media evolution since the beginning of his career. He has been partnering with organizations to aid them in the evaluation and execution of strategic growth and development opportunities. Mr. Krasinski has worked with venture capital funds, startups, advertising agencies and financial services organizations. Prior to joining Ando Media, Paul was VP/General Manager of Westwood One and Director of the Digital Media & Interactive Division at Greater Media.
Early in his professional career, Paul was instrumental in the launch of an angel-backed Silicon Alley incubator. He evaluated, sourced and funded businesses in a variety of segments and was responsible for working directly with the entrepreneurs to provide operational advisory and hands-on direction. Krasinski was then recruited to lead change at G2X, a CRM software provider to the insurance industry. Using this operational experience as a springboard, Krasinski launched Lion Strategy, a boutique strategic consulting group advising venture capital funds.
Paul holds an A.B Honors in Organizational Behavior and Management from Brown University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He is on the Development Council at the Center for Sport in Society. He lives in Boston, MA with his wife, Ashley and their son Hudson.
