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Own your own data

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Re: Own your own data

#11

Post by amirmc »

jmathai wrote: post #6

I've spent the last 3 years in this space[1]. 2 of those were with a fellowship from the Shuttleworth Foundation[2]. I applaud all the efforts to free up and decentralize data. I believe it's the future but the way we're approaching it is making that a very distant future. My suggestions are simple. Data ownership will not be solved by technology. Focus and practice on framing the solution in a way that people connec…

> "Data ownership will not be solved by technology"

I would say 'data ownership will not be solved by technology alone'.

I think it's completely wrong to think we can deal with any of the data ownership issues without understanding how the current technology got us here and what new technologies we need. However, I do agree that throwing some tech out there and expecting it to take off is not going to happen. There is the hard work (as with any new solution) of defining and selling the benefits.

Re: Own your own data

#13

Post by amirmc »

kentonv wrote: post #12

Funny that half the comments so far are people linking to their own projects in this space. Yep, me too. Try a demo: https://demo.sandstorm.io/demo And here's the code: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm

I take that as a positive sign. I'll be trying Sandstorm out soon and wish you well with the crowd funding (I'll be contributing once I'm at my desktop).

Re: Own your own data

#14

Post by kentonv »

amirmc wrote: post #13
kentonv wrote: post #12

Funny that half the comments so far are people linking to their own projects in this space. Yep, me too. Try a demo: https://demo.sandstorm.io/demo And here's the code: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm

I take that as a positive sign. I'll be trying Sandstorm out soon and wish you well with the crowd funding (I'll be contributing once I'm at my desktop).

Thank you!

Re: Own your own data

#16

Post by infocollector »

This space is not easy to penetrate. VCs are not interested because there is no easy short term money in it. Large companies are not interested because they would like something with market traction (impressive prototype stage) to buy. Developers who are in this space know well that this requires way more money than you can raise from Kickstarter. It would be great if all of the people who posted on this page did a google hangout and joined hands (or at least a subset). I think this is bigger than any of these projects individually. Succeeding in this space means something as big as Google, Facebook and Apple. If you are interested in the hangout idea and would like to meet up with other similar project founders (or like minded people), perhaps you can drop me a message (with your email) and we can get started?

Re: Own your own data

#17

Post by ghayes »

jmathai wrote: post #6

I've spent the last 3 years in this space[1]. 2 of those were with a fellowship from the Shuttleworth Foundation[2]. I applaud all the efforts to free up and decentralize data. I believe it's the future but the way we're approaching it is making that a very distant future. My suggestions are simple. Data ownership will not be solved by technology. Focus and practice on framing the solution in a way that people connec…

I largely feel we should be building companies that do this naturally. If you are making a site where you share photos, bake this concept into your model. Show that it can be non-intrusive for businesses and effectively implemented.

Re: Own your own data

#18

Post by kentonv »

infocollector wrote: post #16

This space is not easy to penetrate. VCs are not interested because there is no easy short term money in it. Large companies are not interested because they would like something with market traction (impressive prototype stage) to buy. Developers who are in this space know well that this requires way more money than you can raise from Kickstarter. It would be great if all of the people who posted on this page did a g…

The trick is to find a working bootstrapping strategy.

Our approach with sandstorm.io is to make sure it's easy to port existing open source apps. Even with just the platform we have now and the apps we're porting, I feel like Sandstorm is already a product useful enough to stand on its own. Crowdfunding (as we're doing; http://igg.me/at/sandstorm) can't pay for a revolution, but can pay for the MVP, which can then pay for the next iteration, and so on.

"Joining hands" sounds nice in theory but in practice more developers simply does not equal more productivity. At the early experimental stage, it's important to have many small teams iterating quickly on different approaches; a single large team will simply spend all its time arguing and will get nowhere (a lesson I have unfortunately learned the hard way). I am happy to see lots of people working on solutions to this problem because it makes it more likely that one of them will succeed. :)

Re: Own your own data

#19

Post by infocollector »

kentonv wrote: post #18
infocollector wrote: post #16

This space is not easy to penetrate. VCs are not interested because there is no easy short term money in it. Large companies are not interested because they would like something with market traction (impressive prototype stage) to buy. Developers who are in this space know well that this requires way more money than you can raise from Kickstarter. It would be great if all of the people who posted on this page did a g…

The trick is to find a working bootstrapping strategy. Our approach with sandstorm.io is to make sure it's easy to port existing open source apps. Even with just the platform we have now and the apps we're porting, I feel like Sandstorm is already a product useful enough to stand on its own. Crowdfunding (as we're doing; http://igg.me/at/sandstorm ) can't pay for a revolution, but can pay for the MVP, which can then…

Thanks for the comment. I agree that in practice more developers don't equal more productivity. And I agree that things happen better in small teams. But I still don't see the point of not talking to each other, and learning from each other. One reason I suggested what I suggested is this:

If you just run some one else's Linux applications on linux boxes, and call it a personal data store, you have a bunch of problems to solve:

1. No cohesion in UIs 2. No cohesion in APIs 3. A crappy user experience. 4. Code Maintenance

As soon as you think of solving these problems, you'll see the problem of scale, of the number of programmers needed to do things (both frontend and backend).

I still think that the people interested in this should talk to each other(, and perhaps try a divide and conquer approach -- whenever possible), compared to just trying to patch each other's code to make it work in a small team.

I hope you agree, that this is not an easy problem to solve technically. At least I think so.

Re: Own your own data

#20

Post by overdrivetg »

mrb wrote: post #15

My proposal in this space is unique: decentralized AND built on an existing protocol, email! See: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=76 You don't even need special software to set it up. Standard email autoresponder features make it work (see my demo).

Is there some reason this is better than being built on an existing protocol, http!?

"It is quite technical to set up, but in the future if the technology becomes more popular we could imagine webmails making it easier to set up."

The problem is adoption, and this seems to have the same problems as any other approach there, maybe more.

Interesting thought, good luck if you keep pursuing it - sorry to be a downer but it seems like a long-shot IMO.

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