Profits & Privacy

First of all, today is Minou’s birthday! Happy Birthday partner! In celebration — — tonight we attended the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) Technology in Focus event in Seattle. The topic was Profits & Privacy: At What Cost?

Illuminate Public Relations was honored to have the opportunity to participate in the Steering Committee for the event, serving as Speaker Chair. As a Committee we were successful in lining-up a powerhouse panel, including:

• Jim Adler, CEO of Demoxi, Inc. (Moderator)
• Chris Hoofnagle, associate director, Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic and Senior Fellow, University of California-Berkeley Center for Law & Technology
• Ken McGraw, chief compliance officer of Zango
• Basem Nayfe, chief technology officer of Revenue Science
• Stephen Toulouse, lead program manager for policy and enforcement with Xbox LIVE
• Charlene Brownlee, partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP

The event’s summary was this:

Every search, click, email address and cookie is another nugget in the online data goldmine – just waiting to be aggregated, measured and monetized. What is the true cost of this data when it collides with consumers’ expectations of privacy? Is it possible for profits and privacy to co-exist online? One New York lawmaker said “there ought to be a law…” after reading about how Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! collect information about people online.Tough questions face companies working to maximize revenue and profits without violating their customers’ privacy. The problem is that in the fast moving Internet, boundaries are fuzzy or don’t exist at all. We read stories daily, like Facebook, Beacon and ISP monitoring NebuAd and Phorm, around search privacy, online tracking, ISP monitoring and location-based marketing. Behind these headlines, and across nearly every web service, are managers making tough decisions on how to monetize their online audience without trampling their privacy. Our expert panel will review what companies can and are doing to deal with these issues in a fluid technological, regulatory, and advocacy landscape.

The event was a success and highly insightful. Thank you to each of the panel members for their time and efforts.

One final footnote, Illuminate Public Relations also leads the WTIA’s Marketing SIG (Special Interest Group). The next Marketing SIG is July 15. The topic is Email Evolved and will feature Kirk Bentley of full-service interactive agency POP. Hope to see you there.