Isn’t PIMS a drink?

Paris, France — Representatives from over 10 countries and 20 organizations gathered in Paris on April 26th to the second Personal Information Management Services (PIMS) meetup hosted by the think- and do-tank FING. Topics covered ranged from use cases and business models for human centric personal data management to blockchain technologies and trust frameworks. This workshop was the second in a series of PIMS meetings, the first having been convened by the European Commission in Brussels in November 2015 with the purpose of charting the landscape of the nascent personal data management industry. The meetings will continue in London on May 27th and in Helsinki on September 2nd as part of the MyData 2016 Conference.

As companies, organizations, and public authorities try to chart a course ahead within the new post-GDPR personal data economy, events such as the PIMS meeting and the upcoming MyData 2016 event provide the space for finding a way to build new data ecosystems without closing data borders.

One of the key takeaways from the Paris meeting was the pressing need to define and simplify the myriad terms currently being thrown around by people working in the field of human centric personal data. The terms and acronyms for the core concepts of personal data management abound, including “API of me”, “Internet of Me”, midata, MyData, “Life Management Platform”, Me2B, “Personal Cloud”, “Personal Data Storage (PDS)”, PIMS, “Self Data”, “Vendor Relationship Management (VRM)”, just to name a few. The proliferation of terms may be amusing to industry insiders, but they are simply confusing for everyone else (and many insiders, as well). What are the differences between these concepts and how they relate to each other? What would be the title of a Wikipedia article about personal data management?

The participants at the PIMS meeting agreed to tackle the “too many terms” problem by launching a collaborative “white book” (a.k.a. white paper +), which will outline the core concepts of the personal data management field and create a common language for communicating about human-centric personal data management and how it can help to improve trust, data logistics, and privacy, thereby creating new value for both individuals and corporations.

You can contribute to the book. The content production process for the white book will be open and collaborative,  facilitated by an editorial team, currently composed of Antti Poikola (Aalto University), Kai Kuikkaniemi (Aalto University) Daniel Kaplan (FING), and Tanel Mällö. If you are interested in contributing, please see our open invitation to contribute to the book.

The first draft, nicknamed the “pink book,” will be delivered to all the MyData conference participants in August. The final version will be published following the MyData 2016 conference in order to incorporate the information and ideas generated by the conference sessions and interactions.

Image by Lima Pix.