It was held in the Tropenmuseum (Museum of the Tropics) that has an exhibit on currently called Death Matters. The exhibit is very moving and covering many different aspects of death and how it is celebrated around the world.

We will have photos and notes up soon. Sessions included:

• Live online after you die. A conversation about the possibilities and ethics of this
• combined with: Archives of the Self and Digital Heritage: What is the future of our Data.
• Sharing passwords?
• There will be a next facebook – so your digital data life is at risk.
• We think about “identities” online, but in mourning/remembering there seems to be a concept of “personality” or “essence” How does this translate online/digitally?
• Personal Data Stores & Services along with the Locker Project
• “Manage” data for people “inbetween” Life and death with diseses etc.
• What should a deceased person/”user” be able to “do” within the functionality of an online account? (new relationships “friending”?, what gets frozen, etcetera..)
• (Why) does the internet lend itself to the idea of the immaterial and therefor a medium to the dead? (Does technology facilitate this?).

One of the outcomes is going to be to outline the possibility of a special kind of OAuth token that companies that provide people services online “post life” could use to interact with these services.  The community of companies that provides services in this area are all on our list - SUBSCRIBE HERE

The current practice of such services is to ask for a list of all the sites you use/have accounts with and some of them go so far as to ask you for your password – how ever when you die, you might have changed the password.

photo by Tomas Valenzula Blejer

Digital Death Day 2011 Europe will be November 11, 2011.

9am to 4:30 at the TropenMuseum

Registration IS Open.

BEAUTIFUL LONG FORM INVITATION

DEATH IS A PART OF LIFE AND LIFE HAS (TO AN EXTENT) BECOME DIGITAL.
Our increasing digitality means that we will increasingly be forced to come FACE to SCREEN with the various dimensions and complexities of Digital Death.
Held in the inspiring setting of the Tropenmuseum’s exhibition Death Matters, this conference will be primarily concerned with provoking discourse around the social, cultural and practical implications of Death in the Digital world.
Thus stimulating a reconsideration of how death, mourning, memories and history are currently being augmented in our technologically mediated society.
‘We hardly know what life is how can we hope to understand death?’ -Chinese sage Confucius (fifth century BC)

IF YOU ARE A:

• Funeral Director
• Thanatologist
• Social Network Admin
• Data Systems Admin
• Product Manager
• Information Systems Researcher
• HCI Researcher
• Digital Designer
• Psychologist or Grief Counselor
• Palliative Care Specialist
• Historian
• Pre-Need Sales Person
• Funeral Celebrant
• Estate Planner
• Legacy Planner
• End of Life Planner
• Solicitors and Barristers in Intellectual Property and Estate Law
• Clergy OR
• Simply an Interested Human Being

THEN THIS IS THE CONFERENCE FOR YOU!
The format will be an open space un-conference with attendees creating the agenda and proposing sessions at the start. If you have a presentation, question, answer or particular interest you can propose a session at.

ABOUT THE TROPENMUSEUM
The Tropenmuseum presents, researches and encourages knowledge about and exchange between cultures. It offers a wide and varied audience an experience that utilises every form of museum presentation: exhibitions, collections and expertise, publications, the historic building, educational and other activities. The Royal Tropical Institute’s museum is active internationally in the field of culture and development.

DEATH MATTERS @ THE TROPENMUSEUM
Death Matters shows how people deal with death in different parts of the world. How they mourn and commemorate: whether privately or openly, soberly or exuberantly, alone or communally. Various forms of leave-taking, mourning and commemorating are presented in the exhibition. These reveal much about what people think about life, death and the hereafter. Besides objects, personal stories and films, Death Matters also features recent work by international artists such as Marina Abramovic, Yang Jiechang, Jan Fabre, Carlos Amorales and Krien Clevis referring to various cultural traditions connected with death.SOME

QUESTION WE HOPE WILL BE RAISED BY THE EVENT:

• What does this change mean for loved ones of the departed?
• What does it mean for professionals in end of life care and post mortem services?
• How does it change the way online tools and social networks are constructed and the service providers ‘terms and conditions’?
• What are the new forms of estate and legacy planning?
• What does this mean for governments in terms of archiving, digital heritage and the collection of public records?
• What businesses are serving this ‘new’ market and what do these businesses have to offer?

PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Accessible by tram 3, 7, 9, 10, 14 and bus 22

TROPENMUSEUM
Linnaeusstraat 2, 1092 CK Amsterdam

- social grief

- comparing online memorials to social networks

- transformation of social profiles into memorials

- people don’t care about their own profile but have strong feelings about other people’s profiles

- a memorialized profile still “belongs” to the deceased
– people talk TO the dead on profiles, not about the dead

- tasks of grieving
– requires talking to the dead
– also requires talking to the living

- pattern matching makes people mirror what others are doing
– creates shifting norms that people follow

- declaration of purpose of the place defines how people act

- is the social network the right place to grieve?
– what people really want their social network to do
– mixed social spheres often makes communal grieving difficult

- there are third party grieving sites that are more intentional places to grieve

- messages from the dead

- avatars

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace
- Not a single ID
- Not a national ID

It is coming through the chamber of commerce, business focused

Comes via three initiatives:
- Obama addressing challenges in cyberspace
—- Phishing and Password reuse
- FICAM (Federal Identity and Credential Access Management, Under the Federal CIO Roundtable
—- Link to K’s FastCompany article, National! Identity! Cyberspace! Why we shoudln’t freak out about NSTIC.

One way to solve current identity issues is with a national ID.
- Not gonna work in the US. (Political, logistical reasons)
- Government cost of maintaining a user account is between $12-100/yr (this is currently experienced by each government entity that handles identity verification separately)

NSTIC is a vetted identity that is issued by a 3rd party, that can then be used at any number of service providers/user accounts
- Talking about another layer via two-factor authentication (e.g., single use passwords)

Identifiers
- Email uses a password
- Bank accounts use a card, and pin number
- Banks are mandated to do two-factor authentication. The second factor is invisible to end users — it is the “we don’t recognize this computer” screen.

NSTIC has asked for feedback
- We should probably write in and say “what about death?”

OAuth
- Let’s you connect two accounts without passwords, and lets information move between them
- Works by service A saying “do you want to link account on service B to us”? You then go to service B that says “are you sure”? They exchange tokens that effectively creates a tunnel that information can move through.
- I’ve predominantly seen this in terms of logins
- This can be thought of as a series of tunnels.
- Could conceptually be used as a notification service: E.g., a death related service could have links to a variety of providers that could be notified when using the death service

Trust Framework
- Set of policies that a group of agrees on
- Needed to enable scaling beyond federation (pairwise or hub and spoke structures to network structures).
- A set of policies that is used for identity vetting (e.g., ICANN, PBS Kids, etc.)
- If the criterion are met, you can “trust” the implementer

- Levels of Assurance (how well are they vetting)
- Levels of Protection (how well is it secured)
- Levels of Control (how much control do end users have)
— Potential for LOC relative to death?

- Auditors have then emerged to test a provider in relationship to these trust frameworks

The session was about Business Models for services based on Digital Death.
- problem : solution : benefit : value
- current legal process
- a new legal process by choice and automated control
- different kinds of value
– emotional value
– familial value
– historical value
- business models
– while alive user pays
– legal
– access control
– driving traffic (advertising model)
– post death paid by relatives
– idea: kit that person can buy
– idea: discovery system like Entrustet

3 identities – SL, work, wordpress , blogs for multiple identities asked at She’s Geeky, (3-5) personas how you manage your online identity define personas in different ways
twitter- break out and two separate twitter ids
different shared interests
wouldn’t care or would be annoyed
stuff that other groups of friends wouldn’t be interested in and then there’s stuff that people would be too interested in… top level interested – geeky details
friend in SL who is both president of synagogue but is also a huge sexual dominant – wouldn’t want to know
separation and segregation – access – after death
work addresses to do personal things
online manager point of view – used to use their work address but cant get a password
not sophisticated about deciding where the access is going to be

online dating – send stuff from your real e-mail address who is this guy?Find him, find pictures – real identity – reality check – guess! Don’t understand how easy it is for people to observe them .
3rd guess for a password – mess with them
Social network is unique – Different subject matters \Alternate lives
Issues are still the same but the motives are different – transparency
– who? And how are they connected?
Hypothetical: got a upstanding life and secret life – legal structures 0r what they would put in their will – assets go to my sister on the (BDSM) site … good thing for the company or service to provide a private site , out of will mechanism to notify what has happened
make sure companies add as their terms of use they add that you can add a beneficiary might delete or do nothing
Internet Identity Workshop – policy
meta data tagging
speaking on public mailing lists and not understand that its public
social norms that develop around respect – never intending it to be how they are seen in a public – where info was aimed at – pulled across networks – actual authorization
persona – vivid- avatar – a possible direction – SL – I don’t want this avatar to be able to be populated by someone after death –reincarnated – had a virtual or romantic relationship –
trademark a SL character – people who try to become their personas
girl genius – people in SL role play – major villain – his characterexists in SL – look like
trademark – law – part of your estate
ip 2003 developed by inworld creations – any pictures I make – input – I own the trademark and the copyright – creator – legal cases – suing SL  for copyright equipment – copy textures and scripts and then resell – developed that into making those transactions  - taxed for currency transactions – irs – gone that far – copyright infringement cases – someone has had their scripts their picture their items infringed on – not taking enough actions to prevent the theft
files – server – real – intangible – easily copied and moved – created authored anticipated in service contracts for years you own what you create but your licensing it to us \
Who gets what, if something happens to an avatar?
3 yrs they have run a nightclub in SL / owning of building blocks in SL / possible for people to build thing out of several prims which looks like whole – no right to remove prims – if something happened to one of them, could not rebuild or edit- permission by the joint owner – modify art which is not solely reproductions of 2D art – died gave his rights to his partner – all artists a should do – rest of the estate feel about this – fight – legally ??? Final wishes
Legal communal property – sizable major assets- converted into real world money – who should get those virtual assets RL – spouse hasn’t gone into SL – structured things over the centaury’s – not going to follow the state organized formula  - designate a beneficiary – bank account – helpful – not going to change overall rules on inheritance –
better to go to a company ? Account identity – this identity and this sort of passwords –
Can a person decide what secrets die with them – never had to deal with in this way before.
Just here the person who controls my account – executioner – is my bro but he isn’t the one who will access she knows where the lines are a little bit in my life.
People have different voice – professional voice – private voice –management of my account – one persona getting master access – I have a couple – family identity vs generic public identity
Theoretic possibility personas that have legal standing but aren’t necessary linked back to you services in the name of that persona (limited liability persona) – potential solution – you have to do transaction with your real name and identity (delink) – break structure
Concepts about personal data stores/ data banks
Thinking about services around those – identity, oracle – people =
massive data set online – yes/no questions to build trust in a certain context where you wouldn’t see all of it but you could probe it  - all the data of your whole life – can I make the data I’m creating now automatically go into my data
bank – fragmentation – all my info – auto designate someone who could go to – password managers – identity management systems – legal and technical – tied to tech ( I can designate different beneficiaries for
different sets of data) activation code, access ?? Integrated with a password manager Not just a repository – dashboard – convergence
Funerals for a avatar – not dead themselves – wired – actually die, I have been to at least one memorial – no attempt to have the avatars representation or bury her – one funeral for someone who left SL – Victorian funeral – really nice picture – bell that rings – named it after her – airplanes – memorials make an SL funeral kitschy and apply
Religion and religious practices – parody, religions, pagans, find just about anything on the grid people tend to take, SL celebrates relay for life – March to July and a lot of activities which have to do with raising money for cancer research – tease each other about being immortal there’s and acknowledgement of death and loss and that
sort of thing. Funerals, picture of the avatar gather at certain time gather, sharing stories , friend of the woman who died , logged off now that her good friend died
Freedom and anonymity – griefer mindset – lolz and awful where the idea is to get laugh by provoking people into emotional angry responses

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8691238.stm

http://obit-mag.com/articles/life-after-death-in-digital-form

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/05/dead-media-beat-digital-death-day/

http://deathreferencedesk.org/2010/05/23/digital-death-day-is-every-day/

http://www.thedigitalbeyond.com/2010/05/digital-death-day-good-people/

Tweets: http://www.twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/ddd2010

We are excited to announce that Digital Death Day #2 will happen in London on October 9th! Thanks to the work of Stacey Pitsillides, we will convene at the Centre for Creative Collaboration at the University of London.

This (un)conference is open to anyone with an interest in the legacy of digital assets in the modern world.  Because of the open space format, all attendees will have the opportunity to propose sessions. If you have a product, problem, question or answer,  you will have the opportunity to discuss your topic at the conference.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Convened by Ryan Thogmartin from Connecting Directors

How can funeral directors help families in preparing for their digital death?
Digital death has not been discussed in the industry at all to date.

Funeral directors need to be better understand and be taught about digital death, at least a resource point for this information.

• how can funeral directors be a facilitator for digital death information.
• could companies like legacy locker be instrumental in working w/funeral directors, as a means for funeral directors
• how do we pull together all of the players and all of the resources for funeral directors to be able to make recommendations.

- funeral homes s/b an integral part of “getting one’s affairs in order”

- one’s estate is larger than just digital assets… digital assets are only a part of this larger set of tasks.

- funeral directors need to be aware of all of these services and resources.

- estate planners and funeral directors could each be a center for resources.

- financial planners and CPAs are points of contact for estate planners because they have more points of contact.

- the person who initiates the client contact, should lead the resource sharing, but where people don’t have financial planners, CPAs or estate planners, the funeral director s/b the “quarterback” for these services.

- hospice industry might also be a place for some of this to take place, but today they’re not thinking about digital issues at all.

- hospices may not have a choice to deal w/these issues since over the next 10 yrs every one dying will have to deal w/digital death issues.

- the “digital” side of this is almost irrelevant because these issues extend well beyond digital assets, but all assets.

- 75% of people haven’t create a will or their power of attorney.

- 92% of peeps on Facebook know what a power of attorney is.

- 80% of peeps will die a lingering death (ie. Alzheimer’s).

- Estate Planners and funeral directors make a good team where estate planners can be educational arm for the family.

- pre-paid funeral market in Canada is $3B. 10-20% plans never pay.

- in the U.S., Medicaid allows pre-payment of funeral arrangements. Because of this, funeral directors can be a facilitators for these relationships right away.

- what *is* a digital asset? Many of the online services provide licenses for use, not necessarily ownership.

- in some cases online services (ie. email) will send next of kin the data (messages) but will not let the family have access to the email account per se.

- Grave Robbers book on Amazon, talks about ISP policies.

- unclaimed asset issues and honoring people’s death desires can be better addressed through the electronic services being discussed.

- how do we educate the various constituencies about these issues.

- DieSmart.com was started for the purpose of disseminating information about the different types of information.

- DigitalDeathDay can serve as a clearing house and collaboration around being an information disseminator to the different constituent associations.

- Tying in DDD to the end of IIW could be the model for further discussion by tying it in to the back end of other associations.

- Government involvement is important and we should consider how we help to shape the evolving ecosystem and policy thicket.

- PR around these issues could help get get attention to this issue.

- Any service that is capturing user information should have a death policy to dictate what happens to people’s information after they die.

- Is it a “joint asset”… does it have survivorship?

- Digital assets could be designated as “title assets”.

- A “title property” designation means that an asset can be stipulated as having title which can then state who can have access to them after death.

- The issues may require that we focus on the underlying policy/legal issues.

- Frequent Flier Miles needs to be in a will for most companies to effect a transfer.

- Digital Death is a subset of the greater death industry, but the area that needs to be addressed better.

Ryan
Death care side
Tried to id what industries should be forefront in talking about digial death and assets.
Concluded can’t just pinpoint funeral industry or estate mgt, it is whoever is first point of contact.
Who owns digital assets? Joint husband and wife?
Some deep questions without imm answers that will provide stepping stones to future conversations
Some intangibie things like accounts will be very valuable

To conclude Digital Death Day on May 20th, 2010 we invited everyone to share some reflections.

Kathleen Lane: Importance of having some kind of decision policy to decide what is assets
Next step, try to get this or some other group to create policies in right direction

Gordon Clark: He was in several sessions. Glad people interested in Family search services. Recording activity as it happens: Session had lots of ideas, like loggin all unser input. LEarned abou new FB streams, JSON aggregators Other thing brought up is parental control soft could keep track of activities. PErsistent urls would aid keeping track

Other session: What a web hosting co should do? Have verbiage in tOS about inheritance etc. Could be new templates for Creative Commons.

Steve Schmull?: Sessions he attended came down to legal, need for new laws and precedent. Thinks this needs to be established as precondition. If policies developed could become law.

Cam Hunt: More clearly realized difference between capability and data we want to preserve. Also made him think about his personal curation and how to protect other peoples interests

Josh Hunt: How do we determine what law is. Discussion gets down to basic terms. Tried to boil down what needs to be done first off. What are we doing as a society for data? Until answered can’t develop law. So law lagging technology.

Pierre Wolff: Who can introduce the information to the families? Estate or financial or funeral planners? WRT law, interesting things came out: idea that depending on classification of asset, it may not be yours to dispose of. You may not have a right to do what you want! How complicated could this get? There is concept of “Future Descendant Authorization” : rights to descendants you don’t even know yet. Wow!

Nate Entrustet: most interesting sessions were brainstorming terms of service that would fit with what people want to do. E.g. direction to delete property or other

Guy in blue shirt and glasses:: Impressed how early stage this stuff is. Not sure if people will be interested in everything I’ve ever done. So many unanswered questions, good to get many perspectives, knowledge tools today.

Eli: Learned a lot! Was also in legal context session on TOS. Death beneficiary clause to avoid probate complications. Ran first own unconf session on managing multiple identities after death. May want to hide things, or keep them in certain family, busines, or other context.

Stacey P: Great to meet other people doing this kind fo work. Session she ran was really informative. Good to chat about sociological, anthropological, ethnographic viewpoints.

Nate: Property distinction is key. Ownership is 90% of stuff we deal with. professionals here each had their own viewpoint, lawyers, funeral directors, etc. Josh said laws are written generally because lobbyists bend ears. Here they will come from big service providers, may not have users interests in mind. Will not want to be constrained by legal protection, would prefer to continue to impose their own TOS. Looking forward to future collaboration.

Kaliya: Death legacy is another angle on data ownership – in identity community we work on ownership of own data by the living, but this may be valuable also in gaining protections. Cross-industry collaboration could be effective, let’s work on it. Move on to how to continue the conversation? Group here was small but an amazing cross section. What kind of outreach do we want to do? And what conversation do we want to continue from here online?

How do we keep the Digital Death Day (DDD) effort going? how does community take stewardship of this process? what does the next event look like?…or do we get other communities involved or pitch at their events?

How do we keep the discussion going online?

• Google Group to continue the conversation.
• Need to get more money into the group?
• Follow-up event at the end of the next IIW.

Piggy-back on other associations’ events.

• American Law Institute in Madison, WI (2nd week of June)
• Eckerling in Miami, FL
• UPPO (Unclaimed Property Practioner Organization)
• Nat’l Unclaimed Property Administrators
• National Funeral Directors Association
• Int’l Cemetery & Cremation Funeral Association
• Internet Identity Workshop

• E.U.-UK/US Skype link in order to enable discussions between DDD groups in the EU and the US.
• Consider creating a .ORG to carry the banner for the issues of the DDD
• the Identity Commons service can enable groups to operate autonomously w/o having to create a DDD org. Kaliya can help facilitate that.
• Is Digital Death Day the right name? –> Arrested Pixel –> Digital Afterlife
• How closed or open should this group be? –> can we have a public space and a private space? –> require people who want to be involved in participating to make the effort to request participation. –> use Keith Teare’s “s.erious.ly” blog aggregation service to get blogs fm the various folks talking about this issue feeding into the site. –> resource site w/links the various related services
• Create support for “piggy-back” events.
• Kathy to lead effort for next estate planning group in CA. Cam to lead effort for next IIW event in Washington DC.
• Blog aggregation editors: Eli Edwards & Evan Carroll.
• Need a way for people to provide email address for signing up to e-newsletters and notifications from the organization.
• Does an association w/Identity Commons dependence frame how others see what we are trying to do? –> one response was “it’s a positive association” –> another response was “we need to keep our design very independent”
• Stacey will work on a design of our logo.
• Pierre will begin reach out to some of the large social media companies to get to the right people who need to be involved in the conversation.
• Kaliya will include every one on to an email list and send out request for opting out of having DDD participants email addresses shared with the group.
• Kaliya and Nate will pursue discussion on moving forward w/initial piggy-back event.
• Stacey will circulate a “mood board”.
• Co-administrator to approve applications for email list: Cam & Stacey [Kaliya]