The MyData Conference was an international conference on human centric personal information management held in Tallinn (August 30) and Helsinki (August 31 - September 1) in 2017. The event brought together 800 participants from a variety of backgrounds, including hackers, activists and representatives from companies, NGOs, government and research. The conference covered twelve thematic tracks, covering issues such as GDPR, the ethical processing of data, consent, personal data markets, and health data.
Francesca Bria took part in two sessions during the conference. The first was a main-stage session called ‘Cities Driving for Personal Data’, hosted by Kai Kuikkaniemi. This session explored how cities are opening up their personal data to create better services and how cities approach digital identity. In particular, it focused on questions around the kind of personal data platform strategy that cities should adopt. Other presenters included Ingi Steinar Ingason from Iceland and Hervé Groleas from Lyon.
The second session was part of a thematic track on the collective use and social value of data. Francesca Bria joined four other presenters to discuss DECODE and how personal data technology might be harnessed to promote social justice, new forms of agency, participation, and collective action. It explored a variety of questions concerning how personal data can be used for wider social and community benefit, what we do with ‘data excess’, and how collective action can be leveraged to counter power imbalances in the data economy.
DECODE was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme, under grant agreement number 732546.