Monthnotes for June & July 2018

Lots of travel and a brief time off means a combined summer-ish edition of month notes for June & July. A lot has happened over the last 8 or so weeks, so let’s dive right in. In no particular order…

Trustable Technology mark

The ThingsCon trustmark for IoT has a name, finally! Meet the Trustable Technology mark, or #trustabletech for short. The URL (trustabletech.com) still forwards to the trustmark page on ThingsCon.com, but will have its own place soon. The most current version of the explainer presentation is up on Slideshare:

The Trustable Technology Mark from Peter Bihr

What’s more, I’m not alone in this endeavor—far from it! More and more folks from the ThingsCon network have been giving their input, which is priceless. Also, Pete Thomas (University of Dundee) has been taking the design lead and been a great sparring partner on strategy questions, and Jason Schultz (NYU Law) has been thinking about legal and policy implications. A big thank you to Pete & Jason! I’m super excited this is moving along at such a clip.

Going forward, the next steps are to finalize and then test more extensively the checklist for the assessment that’s open for comments in this gDoc. Jason and I also just presented the trustmark at the most recent ThingsCon Salon Berlin (video below), and I’ll be presenting it again at ThingsCon Salon Cologne on August 3rd. (Thingscon.com/events has all up-to-date details.)

Media, etc.

Brand Eins interviewed me about IoT and how it challenges our notion of ownership and trust. Details in my blog post here.

My somewhat eclectic newsletter Connection Problem has completed Season 3 with just over 30 installments. I’m taking a writing break of a few weeks, and then I’ll kick off Season 4 soon. Sign up now if you want to follow along!

ThingsCon

With ThingsCon, we co-signed not one but two declarations and open letters: The Toronto Declaration about AI and human rights (initiated by AccessNow) and the Open Letter to G20 Leaders.

Travel & Events I Attended

I got to join a whole bunch of things those last few weeks.

I thoroughly enjoyed both a workshop on IoT security and market surveillance by Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, where we discussed all things certification, incentives and assessment frameworks; and the always fascinating Museum of the Future workshop in Berlin. I’d been to one in Amsterdam before, and even though I’m spoiled by greatly curated events, the group that Noah & team convene in this context is humbling and fascinating and the only thing I wished is that I could have been there full time, which this time alas wasn’t possible.

In between the two I got to go to New York City for meetings and a quick swing-by at Data & Society, as well as Toronto for the Mozilla Foundation’s all-hands where I was kindly invited to participate as a fellow. Speaking of committed & warm & driven groups!

After that, some family time in the Pacific Northwest, and a short vacation, which included a little road trip through the Cascades. What a stunning & wonderful region!

What’s next?

On one hand I’m gearing up the planning for fall. If you’d like to work with me in the upcoming months, I have very limited availability but am always happy to have a chat.

On the other I’m pretty much heads-down to get the trustmark to the next level. This includes the nitty gritty work of both improving the trustmark assessment tool, and of lining up launch partners. It also means planning a little road show to expose this idea to more eyes and ears, including ThingsCon Salon Cologne, Mozfest, ThingsCon Amsterdam, and a few other events in between. We’re also in the middle of copy-editing the upcoming 2018 issue of the ThingsCon report “The State of Responsible IoT” (#RIoT). More on that soon.

So back to the text mines!

Have a great August.

Yours truly, P.

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