Privacy is an issue that has caught many users of social media and social networks unawares. Heck, it’s probably an active issue for 99% of us, whether we’re aware of it or not.

The challenge of online privacy starts with the terms of reference that we “read” when we’re signing up for a new service. How many of us actually read through the pages of legalese that stand between us and the shiny new service or app that we want to try out? Very few, I’d say.

The problem is compounded by changes to privacy policies we didn’t understand in the first place.

Remember, if you are not paying for a service, then you yourself are probably the product. And some advertiser or other third party is probably paying to access the data you’ve willingly and perhaps unwittingly provided to the shiny new app/service. It’s a case of User Beware.

Thankfully, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner have both taken an active, intelligent interest in online privacy. For several years, they’ve researched issues related to our online privacy and shared their findings and observations in real life events and online. They’ve been effective advocates for our personal privacy even when we’ve given into the temptation to skip reading the privacy notices or not spent enough time considering the issues surrounding privacy. (Few of us do, including me. They are complex and layered. Tougher to get our minds around than the simple joy of “liking” or “friending”.)

So, I’m looking forward to an upcoming event staged by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. On May 2, they are convening a day-long research symposium: Pathways to Privacy: Privacy for Everyone with a top-notch line up of speakers from academe, government, and civil society. Topics and speakers include:

• Ms. Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada
• Ms. Patricia Kosseim, Senior General Counsel and Director General, Legal Services, Policy and Research Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

8:50 – 9:15 amOpening Keynote

• Ms. Valerie Steeves, Associate Professor, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa on the “eGirls” project

9:15 – 10:30 amPanel 1: The Changing Landscape for Youth

• Ms. Daphne Guerrero, Head, Public Education and Outreach, Office of the  Privacy Commissioner of Canada (moderator)
• Jane Tallim, Media Awareness Network on “Young Canadians in a Wired World”
• Ms. Sara Grimes, PhD Candidate with the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University on “Deconstructing the Cyberchild: children’s online play at the intersection of policy, technology and cultural industries”
• John Lawford, Counsel, Public Interest Advocacy Centre on “All in the Data Family? Databases, Children and Profiling”

10:45 – 12:00 pmPanel 2: Reaching Diverse Populations

• Mr. Michael Jenkin, Director General, Office of Consumer Affairs, Industry Canada(moderator)
• Linda Girard, Director General, Association sur l’Accès et la Protection de l’Information (AAPI) on various funded projects
• James Roots, Executive Director, Canadian Association for the Deaf on “Understanding Your Privacy Rights: The PIPEDA in Signs”
• Claire Harvey, Head of Media Relations, Options Consommateurs on credit rating and identify theft issues

1:00 – 1:25 pmAfternoon Keynote

• Dr. Lesley Jacobs, Director, York Centre for Public Policy and Law, York University, on “Privacy Rights Mobilization among Marginalized Groups: Fulfilling the Mandate of PIPEDA” and “Protecting Privacy Rights in the Emerging Digital Economy: Canada’s Regulatory Scheme, Its Adaptability, and Its Future”

1:25 – 2:45 pmPanel 3: Cultural Perspectives on Privacy

• Gisèle Yasmeen, Vice-President, Research, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (moderator)
• Dr. Jens Weber, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Adjunct Professor, School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria on “First Nations Privacy and EHR systems”
• Tonia Mori, Director General, CHOQ-FM on French Awareness Campaign on the Protection of Personal Information and Privacy.
• Mirjana Mandaric, Master of Arts Immigration and Settlement Studies, Ryerson University, Ryerson University on “Biometrics: Constructing ‘Ideal’ Subjects and ‘Aliens’ at the Canada-U.S. Border”

3:00 – 4:20 pmPanel 4: Frontiers of Surveillance and Identification among Different Populations

• Sue O’Sullivan, Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime (moderator)
• Dr. Ian Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, (“Building Better Humans: Health, enhancements and human rights”)
• Dr. David Lyon, Queen’s Research Chair in Surveillance Studies on the New Transparency Project
• Cynthia Fraser, Consultant on International Technology Safety,  National Network to End Domestic Violence on “The Impacts of Surveillance and Identification on Victims of Abuse”

4:20 – 4:30 pmClosing remarks

• Ms. Chantal Bernier, Assistant Privacy Commissioner of Canada

I’m planning to attend this symposium. And if I’m able, I’ll record interviews with the speakers who have the most impact and make the greatest contribution to thinking on privacy issues.

I think you’ll find many quotable nuggets here in both of these streams.

William Mougayar at Third Tuesday Toronto

William Mougayar, the founder of Engagio, spoke at Third Tuesday Toronto about how he came up with the idea for Engagio and how it is being developed as a startup. This storify captures the highlights of the tweet stream from attendees at William’s Third Tuesday presentation.

Storified by Joseph Thornley · Thu, Mar 29 2012 08:27:51

My favourite phase of a startup: Wiggles of hope #3TYYZKing Siu

What people said

Stephen Da Cambra: really enjoyed Jeff’s presentation. It appealed to me directly because of my own struggles with giving up my privacy on the web. Even high-profile guests can ramble on a bit – but Jeff was on point throughout, with enough short divergence to keep it interesting.

Rick Weiss: Jeff Jarvis was great. He’s an engaging speaker and presented a lot of food for thought around privacy in the digital age.

Aggie Fortier: The speaker was very engaging with interesting examples to support his position. More importantly, Jarvis opened the door to discussion on the implications of public versus private. He has raised the bar for future speakers who follow.

Martin Waxman: Jeff Jarvis speaks the way he writes and is entertaining, provocative and insightful. Really enjoyed the talk; looking forward to reading the book.

Dave Fleet: Fascinating subject and a phenomenal speaker. One of the best presentations I’ve been to in a while.

Jim Courtney: Really excellent introduction to and perspective on privacy issues. Loved the stories and historical perspective.

Nigel Newton: Jeff Jarvis is an evangelist for societal change enabled by the net. His generosity of spirit and his belief that we, the users of the net, are capable of respecting the ethics of privacy and public sharing is persuasive. If fear of technology is the primary emotion holding back the natural evolution of the net and its influence on society, then Jeff’s well-crafted perspectives will be a source of courage for the faint-hearted.

Eden Spodek: Jeff Jarvis is a fantastic speaker and I would attend a Third Tuesday anytime he’s invited here – even if he’s not launching a new book. He brings the online privacy discussion to a whole new level and I enjoyed his insights on cultural differences and privacy. I can’t wait to devour Public Parts.

Zach Klein: Great session. Super smart dude.

Mark Blevis: Jeff is an engaging and animated speaker. I really enjoyed this event. It was of high caliber. I could have happily listened for another two hours.

Alfred Coates: I really enjoyed how Mr. Jarvis’s message of openness and sharing felt like a mix of opportunity and challenge to those in attendance. Mr. Jarvis speaks with passion and conviction and a healthy dose of humor. I will be reading public parts this weekend and working my way through Buzzmachine in the foreseeable future.

Karen Runtz: While many speakers may be entertaining at the time, what they say won’t stick with you. That’s not the case with Jeff Jarvis. I have his book for reinforcement! No, seriously, I did find his presentation memorable. It brought me in mind of the excitement I felt at a conference some 15 to 20 years ago hearing and Ithaca U prof talk about the changing nature of communications. She was encouraging us to think of our “products” as workable clay, instead of finished polished pieces sent on their way. That resonated with me, just as Jeff’s words about the Internet did last night.

Read all the reviews

That’s just a selection of the rave reviews for Jeff Jarvis’s Public Parts presentation at third Tuesday. If you want to read the full set of reviews, you can find them at the Third Tuesday Ottawa and Third Tuesday Toronto event sites.

We are hoping that Jeff will be able to come back to Canada for third Tuesday Calgary and third Tuesday Vancouver in either January or February. And if you’re in another city and are looking for a great speaker with thought-provoking content, Jeff Jarvis won’t disappoint.

What others thought

Melanie Coulson, the online editor at the Ottawa Citizen blogged her impressions of Jeff’s presentation.

Don Butler of the Ottawa Citizen also interviewed Jeff for an article which appeared in Saturday’s edition of the newspaper.

Were you there?

If you were at the event and wrote about it, please leave a comment and post the link to your coverage.

Thank you Jeff for having come to both Ottawa and Toronto to share your insights with us. And thank you to Third Tuesday’s sponsors. You make it possible for us to bring speakers of Jeff’s calibre to Third Tuesday’s across Canada.

The organizers of meshmarketing have offered to make two registrations available to the Third Tuesday community. That means that two lucky Third Tuesday attendees will go to one of the best marketing conferences to take place this year – without having to pay the $589 registration fee.

How does it work?

Register to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa or attend Third Tuesday Toronto with Jeff Jarvis by noon on Friday. Then tweet one of the following messages:

If you’re attending Third Tuesday Ottawa, tweet: “I’m attending Third Tuesday Ottawa #3TYOW and I want to attend mesh marketing #mm11 too.”

If you’re attending Third Tuesday Toronto, tweet: ”I’m attending Third Tuesday Toronto #3TYYZ and I want to attend mesh marketing #mm11 too.”

At noon on Friday, one Tweet containing the hash tag #3TYYZ and one Tweet containing the hash tag #3TYOW will be randomly selected and the author of each tweet will receive a free registration to meshmarketing. You can tweet as often as you’d like, but only people registered to attend Third Tuesday Ottawa or Third Tuesday Toronto will be eligible to win the free registration.

Winners will be notified via twitter shortly after noon on Friday.

So is that a great offer or what? Attend third Tuesday, receive a copy of Jeff Jarvis’s new book Public Parts, have it autographed by the author and also have a chance to win free admission to meshmarketing.

Thank you to the folks behind meshmarketing for making this offer to us.

UPDATE:

We had a great response to the contest and we’ve selected two winners – the people who tweeted the magic phrase closest to 19:39 on November 10. The winners: Tanya Bosman and Hardeep Gosal.

Congratulations to Tanya and Hardeep. You will have a chance to attend Toronto best digital marketing conference. And thank you to everyone who participated.

First, I want to meet in real life the people who share my interests and whom I follow online. I get to know them well online. But still there’s no substitute for real life, in-the-flesh contact. So, I always consider who else will be attending a conference when I’m deciding whether to invest the time and effort to attend.

Second, I want to be exposed to new ideas that I can think about and learn from. I consider a presentation worthwhile if I get at least one thought-provoking idea from it. So, at a great conference, I might take away four or five great ideas for each day I attend.

I discussed this in a short video interview with Johna Burke from Burrelle’s Luce when we bumped into one another at the recent PRSA Counselors Academy Conference in Las Vegas.

Yes, you read that right. Radian6 is fashioning its newest product as a platform. In doing so, it is eschewing the temptation to try to develop its own proprietary best solution. Instead, Radian6 Insights users will be able to integrate into Radian6 data from measurement apps that they judge are the best and are already using. This is a bold solution. One that I haven’t seen before in the social media measurement space.

In doing this, the folks at Radian6 are acknowledging that, as good as they are and as rapidly as they’ve grown, there are other smart people working on their own innovations. By partnering and integrating with these other innovative services, Radian6 can accelerate its own innovation and grow much more rapidly than it could if it tried to develop its own proprietary solution.

Initially, they are launching with partners that include Klout, OpenAmplify and OpenCalais. And they promise other partners soon.

One more reason I like this. Not only does it promise to add something totally new to the social media analytics mix, but it also signals that Marcel LeBrun and the Radian6 team aren’t folding up their tents and disappearing inside Salesforce. They’re keeping the company intact and continuing to innovate on what they’ve already built.

What’s next?

When he announced Radian6 Insights this morning, LeBrun also indicated that we should expect announcements about the integration of Radian6 with Salesforce at the Dreamforce conference in August. As I said in my post about the acquisition of Radian6 by Salesforce, I’m hoping for big things from that announcement.

Now you can hear about what really mattered at SXSW from three social media leaders who were there. Keith McArthur, Dave Fleet, and Karen Geier have just returned from SXSW. And they’ve come back with stories to tell. What were the most promising and intriguing ideas they heard? What were the biggest fails? Where is social media going? What are the top trends we we should be looking for over the next year? What’s hot? What’s not?

Keith, Dave and Karen will share what they heard and learned at SXSW at the next Third Tuesday Toronto on March 29.

Register online to attend

If you’re interested in participating, click over to the Third Tuesday Toronto meetup site and register online to attend.

Acknowledging Third Tuesday’s sponsors

As always, I want to thank the sponsors of Third Tuesday: CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Thanks to these sponsors, we are able to program great speakers in cities across Canada, including Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Ottawa.

But will it stay that way? If there is one constant on the Internet, it is the inevitability of change. And that’s not just change in technology. That’s change in how we use it, how we relate to one another, how we see institutions and our expectations of them. What we find useful today we might not find useful tomorrow.

Our next speaker at Third Tuesday Ottawa will be Jacob Glick, Senior Policy Counsel at Google. This role at Google gives him a unique perspective on many of the most important issues that will shape the continuing evolution of the Internet and how Google itself is evolving to maintain its relevance and to live up to its slogan, “Don’t be evil.”

I’m very much looking forward to the discussion that I know Jacob will prompt. It should be a good one.

Register online to attend

If you’re interested in participating, click over to the Third Tuesday Ottawa meetup site and register online to attend.

Acknowledging Third Tuesday’s sponsors

As always, I want to thank the sponsors of Third Tuesday: CNW Group, Rogers Communications, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Thanks to these sponsors, we are able to program great speakers in cities across Canada, including Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Ottawa.

The shut down of the Internet in Egypt underlined for me just how lucky we are in Canada and how we take our free, open Internet for granted. But we shouldn’t take it for granted. If we care about something, we should take an active interest in it. And we should participate when the opportunity comes up for us to have a say.

Next week, we will have an opportunity to have a voice in a discussion of the issues relating to the governance of the Internet. The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (Disclosure: CIRA is a client of Thornley Follis and 76 design) will be hosting the Canadian Internet Forum to discuss issues surrounding Internet governance in Canada and globally.

I recorded a brief interview with Byron Holland, CIRA’s President and CEO, to ask him what’s at stake, why people like you and I should participate, whether we’ll have an opportunity to be heard and what this consultation will lead to.

This national forum follows six regional consultations that were held late last year. If you’re interested in learning more, you can download the background papers on digital literacy and the digital economy.

The Canadian Internet Forum is open to public participation. If you want to participate, you can register online to attend in person. If you can’t make it to Ottawa on Feb. 25, you will also be able to participate via Webcast.

The Internet in Canada. It matters to all of us. And we can all have our say.