Marketing Monster

For much of the last year, I’ve been working on a side project to research, speak and write about issues surrounding digital legacy. It’s been an incredible experience to meet and interview experts in archival issues, lawyers, writers, service providers, wills and estate planners, identity specialists, palliative care doctors and some mighty big thinkers in technology innovation.

But nothing brings home the purpose of my research more than when I speak with the bereaved who are struggling with a loved one’s digital remains or those who are pondering their digital legacy while facing a terminal illness. It’s been a privilege and a gift to speak with them.

Like on this blog, I haven’t been posting much to DeathAndDigitalLegacy.com, which I launched in January. I make my living as an Integrated Marketing Consultant, which means supporting my clients is always my top priority. I fit the digital legacy work in around that schedule and makes for some long days.

In my limited time for digital legacy, I’ve given nine different presentations this past year, including speaking at the mesh Conference and webcom Montreal.

I was sponsored to attend SXSW Interactive to gather information on the developments in the area and attend sessions that were related. Of note were two stand out core conversations,  Your Online Identity After Death and Digital Wills given by Corvida Raven and Become Immortal: Understanding the Digital Afterlife presented by Evan Carroll and John Romano from The Digital Beyond, which was received the 12th highest feedback rating out of all the SXSW Interactive sessions this year.

With the rise of online social networks, mainstream media have picked up interest in what happens to our data when we pass away. In the last 12-months I was fortunate to receive quite a bit of media attention through interviews and speaking coverage. I’ve been quoted in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and on the IFC. Nationally, I have been featured in pieces in the Canadian Press, CanWest Global newspapers, the Financial Post, and GetConnected, a nationally syndicated technology radio show. There’s been lots of other mainstream media coverage, as well as legal, financial, technology and college blogs. (More clippings are listed here and here.)

I offer my sincerest thanks to everyone who has shared their stories with me and took the time over the last year for me to interview them about their experiences or expertise. You’ve given the fuel for my research. And my thanks to the media, bloggers and conference producers who’ve taken an interest, and especially to everyone who has come to my presentations – you’ve given me so much encouragement to continue.

Yesterday I submitted a proposal to speak at next year’s SXSW Interactive entitled,  Avoiding Extinction in a Digital Dark Age, and focuses on the archival and preservation of personal digital files, whether online or stored on hard drives and other media. This session is geared towards content creators and addresses individuals who are looking at ways to ensure their digital legacy survives file format obsolescence and storage media degredation. Voting, which accounts for 30%, will begin on August 9th. I’ll keep you posted and hope that you’ll help out by casting a vote my way.

I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished in this field in the last year and look forward to another year of exciting developments. My challenges will be to take the research and interviews that I’ve done and synthesize them into writing and presentations on a variety of aspects and approaches to the topic, while still keeping things hopping on the marketing consulting side.

I hope that you’ll come along for the ride.

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