conference

Culture numérique, les signaux faible de notre futur.

Il y a quelques semaines, TheCamp recevait Nicolas Nova. Un anthropologue dont le sujet de prédilection est la technologie. Dans un amphi réunissant startuper et fan du bonhomme, Nicolas nous a donné un aperçu de ce que pourrait être notre futur numérique. Son credo ? Les signaux faibles, tirés d’usages innovants d’artistes numériques pourraient être un indicateur de ce que le monde pourrait être demain.

 

nicolas nova at the camp

Culture numérique. Nicolas Nova étudie les technologies, et son dada du moment est l’étude de la culture numérique. Culture, au sens création artistique. Numérique, au sens logiciel, algorithme, code, outils. Voici quelques exemples de créations d’œuvres culturelles triées sur le volet que Nicolas partage en introduction de sa présentation.

La création originale. Mais que se passe-t-il lorsque les machines génèrent des œuvres d’un style nouveau, par association, recombinaison, mélange. On peut se laisser aller à cette réflexion en observant le résultat des artistes suivants :

  • Greg Borenstein a codé un logiciel qui créée une bande dessinée en associant des passages de romans policiers, avec des photos trouvées sur Flickr, qu’il assemble après un travail graphique noir et blanc. Le résultat ressemble à une bande dessinée, qui a du sens, une esthétique et une cohérence pour nous, humains. http://gregborenstein.com/comics/generated_detective/1/
  • Darius Kazemi aime mélanger les contenus et joue avec des bots, notamment sur Twitter. par exempele, il crée des headlines de journaux fantaisistes, qui parfois ressemblent comme deux gouttes d’eau à nos actualités (ou pas). Mais moi, j’aime bien celui-là. Évidemment, toutes ces œuvres sont disponibles sur github en open source.
  • Bernard Bauch fait partie des ghost writers, un artiste qui ordonne aux machines de générer du contenu automatiquement à partir de commentaires aspirés sur YouTube. Le livre est packagé et publié sur Amazon, qui a du mal à distinguer un vrai livre d’un faux. https://www.amazon.in/This-fuck-Matooli-Rkotm-ebook/dp/B008UCCWGK
  • La tête tourne un peu lorsque Nicolas explique qu’un artiste génère avec des robots de la musique, destinée à être écoutée par des robots, postée sur Spotify, créant un trafic réel entre robots, et alimentant la machine à monétiser de ce genre de plateforme.

Mixer, métisser, c’est prêt. Nicolas Nova nous rappelle néanmoins que cette façon de mixer, mélanger, reprendre et tordre n’est pas nouvelle. C’est peut être nouveau dans les cultures numériques, au sens artistiques, mais ceci est un procédé que les adeptes du métissage, mélange, et inspirations multiples utilisent depuis longtemps (par exemple, le Reggae). Il souligne également que ce niveau de manipulation de données, de mixage, n’est possible que parce que nos outils numériques, les formats des données sont standards, ont atteint une certaine maturité. Par ailleurs, ce jeu artistique sur l’automatisation (de la génération de contenu, à la publication, en passant par la monétisation) est extrêmement précieux puisqu’il met à nu les limites de la mécanique de nos outils et plateformes numériques, nous explique Nicolas Nova.

So what ! Que se passe-t-il quand ces procédés de génération d’œuvre ou de contenu atterrissent dans la vraie vie, pour servir des entreprises ? On tombe sur des articles de journaux générés automatiquement dans Forbes grâce à Narrative Science. On tombe cette notion de centaure , association pour le meilleur de l’homme et de la machine,  répandue dans le milieu des échecs.

Qu’en conclue notre anthropologue ? Premièrement. Les hommes ont effectivement intégré la technologie, ils ont une relation avec les machines, mais le niveau de maîtrise et de compréhension est plus élevé que ce qu’on le croit. Néanmoins, il reste des études à conduire pour comprendre notre relation aux outils numériques, automatisés, ou non. Deuxièmement. Il existe des pistes où l’homme et la machine, peuvent faire des choses positives, collaborer pour créer quelque chose de nouveau. Troisièmement. Ignorer la puissance des machines, n’aidera pas à empêcher la possibilité qu’elles remplacent l’homme dans des domaines.

 

Note : je recommande cette présentation faisant le point sur la collaboration homme machine, en type Centaure, par Amy Kruse « Human 2.0: How to Build a Centaur & Why It’s Going to Change the World” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4AvEgoS2cs

** Picture by Ecochard Claude‏

 

La #blockchain expliquée simplement, avec monsieur patate

Cette semaine j’étais à #shake16 – oui, je sais, j’en ai beaucoup parlé sur twitter et sur ce blog. J’étais invitée par les organisateurs Hervé et Jacques pour exposer les enjeux de la blockchain. Un exercice difficile puisque la blockchain: on a tous envie d’en parler, on en mange tous les jours dans nos revues de presse et activité de veille technologique, mais on ne possède pas forcément les clés pour comprendre son potentiel.

J’ai donc fait l’exercice de présenter les principes de la blockchain de manière très simple et accessible. Et il semblerait que l’atelier ait été apprecié !

Je partage donc avec vous le support. Evidemment il vous manquera les explications live, et mon habile jeu de jambes et de mains devant le public, mais les principes sont là. C’est par ici –>  Blockchain for all

S’il vous fallait retenir une seule chose sur la blockchain, ce serait le fait que c’est une technologie qui offre un moyen de modéliser et suivre n’importe quel type de transaction entre deux personnes (ou robots). Et que l’ensemble de ces transactions constitue une chaine, publiée, transparente, distribuée, construite collaborativement.Et ça, c’est le début d’une révolution…

En espérant que ce support vous aidera à engager votre reflexion sur les possibles de la blockchain  🙂

# une chaine de bisous sur vous !

 

 

Speakeuse à #shake16 : une expérience !

TL;DR – cette semaine, j’ai passé deux jours à Aix en Provence à l’occasion de #shake16, et c’était cool.

shake16

La conférence Shake c’est un rendez-vous pour les professionnels du e-commerce. La formule est excellente : un mixte de conférences plénières avec les grands du business sur le web (la Poste, Price Minister, Facebook, nan, mais il y en a trop, regardez la liste); des ateliers pointus avec les pro; des stands pour les éditeurs, asso et gens créatifs; des  podium de startups; et des rendez-vous d’affaire (pas moins de 500, de quoi signer des deals ou nouer de belles relations).

Le thème du e-commerce est évidemment passionnant et propice à se décliner sous différents angles : la transformation numérique, la transformation du travail, le rôle de la technologie dans nos vies, les problèmes de logistique, de magasin physique, virtuel, de cross-canal et omni-client (ou l’inverse). Cette année l’accent était mis sur le Pourquoi (pourquoi est-on entrepreneur, e-commercant …) et la relation client, qui se doit au XXIème siècle, d’être bienveillante, bichonnée, respectueuse, pertinente. Bref, #shake16 était une belle promesse pour les visiteurs et les visiteuses.

Et cette année, j’étais speakeuse. Ouaip, la classe (merci à Hervé Bourdon et Jacques Froissant de m’avoir fait confiance). Mais être speakeuse à Shake cette annnée, c’était pas *que* la classe. C’était aussi une expérience toute particulière. Pourquoi ? Parceque l’esprit de Shake (entre autres choses) et de donner et partager, de rouler sur l’énergie de la communauté. Et la team de Shake a fait le choix de traiter les personnes présentes sur les stands (help sémantique, des standistes ?) et les speakers comme des *utilisateurs* de l’événément. Nous étions donc des accompagnés, avec bienveillance. Et ça a fonctionné du tonnerre.

Pourquoi c’était si spécial ? Parceque les speakers et les standistes, en plus des petit fours et de la salle de repos, avaient accès à un boostcamp d’une demi-journée, organisée par Marie Aurélie, avec l’aide de gentils accompagnateurs avec un programme très enrichissant. Voyez-donc.

Dans un premier temps, assemblés par groupe de 6, nous avons eu la chance de nous détendre avec un escape game taillé sur mesure (le code pour sortir, c’etait 176, sachez-le).

Ensuite nous avons passé du temps avec des professionnels de la relation, de l’entreprise et du corps. L’équipe 5, la mienne, encadrée par la fantastique Delphine Foviaux, a suivi le programme suivant  :

  • un atelier sur le marketing emotionnel avec Patrice Laubignat. Absolument éclairant pour revisiter sa relation à l’autre, le regard que l’on porte sur soi et sur ses interlocuteurs, pour enterrer les peurs qui freinent les échanges libres et fructueux.
  •  une dose d’entreprise libéré avec Nicolas Trossat. Ici, on apprenait les clés pour penser autrement le travail, avec des notions de  responsabilité collective, de transparence et de confiance. Un shoot d’utopie qui permettait de repenser sa relation au travail.
  • et pour finir, avec Daria Kucevalova, nous avons chanté (mal, mais on s’en foutait, c’était harmonieux). On a joué de la voix et du corps. Il s’agissait donc d’un exercice, ancré dans le présent et le sol, et qui permettait indéniablement de libérer quelques tensions.

A la fin de la journée de préparation, nous étions détendus, un peu soudés, un peu amis, et prêts à donner le meilleur de nous même sur les stands et la scène. Voilà, ça n’était pas que de l’amusement. Shake nous a donné les moyens d’être plus à l’aise et meilleur, de tirer profit de notre présence et de participer à l’énergie (déjà impressionnante) de cet événement. C’était sympa et généreux, suffisament rare pour le soulignere, et le faire savoir au reste du monde.

D’année en année, Shake grandit, et on a grande hâte d’assister à la prochaine édition #shake17.

Note : d’autres que moi disent que shake16 était fantastique, visitez donc

  • le blog du coach Will Roy là,
  • ou celui de biz200 pour un rapport business ici ,
  • ou encore chez Patrice Laubignat pour une vue émotionnelle là ,
  • chez Annie Lichtner et My Digital Week pour un point de vu pro du e-commerce
  • ou enfin sur le blog de Shake ou Marie Aurélie partage sa vision du boostcamp
  • du côté de chez Henri Kaufman pour grappiller les bonnes idées en deux épisodes : un, deux
  • la vision de Pierre, qui était aussi dans l’équipe 5, de chez Web et Solution, sponsor de l’événement ici
  • et l’angle de Mélanie Pin, de Primasee, en charge de la mise en scène et des vidéo là
  • Marie Aurélie, encore, mais cette fois avec sa casquette de psy, qui explore la question du pourquoi ici
  • le tour photo et impression rapide de Seb là
  • et pour vous donner envie d’y aller l’année prochaine, la vidéo sumup de primasee
  • ou encore la story de #shake par ses deux fondateurs là

 

About girls, tech and innovation

GITLast week, I visited The Familly offices in Paris for the Ladies Pitch Night, organized in collaboration with Girls In Tech Paris @GITParis. The pitch exercise is something that has always been attractive to me, combining the effort of form and  content, with emphasis on acting and innovation, two of my favorite topics. Not to mention that girls in tech is also an important society topic for me, that event was just tailor made for me.

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What is GIT ? Before listening to the candidates, we had a chance to realize how GIT network was powerful. The founder of GIT, Adrianna Gascoigne @afgascoigne, came on stage to remind us the rationale that lead to the creation of Girls In Tech @GirlsinTech. Her story which started in 2007 was nice, it was about making the technical and entrepreneur world more keen to welcome girls, and she used her energy to create a program focusing on girls education, engagement, solidarity, friendship and fun. That nice story was similar for most of the other female speakers supporting that event, on stage Joanna Shields , Digital Advisor to the Prime Minister of the UK, on the video with kind messages to the ladies : Nellie Kroes VP of the European Commission, leading the digital agenda @NeelieKroes, and Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook @sherylsandberg. Last but not least, Roxanne Varza @roxannevarza was representing Girls In Tech Paris, together with The french governement was supposed to be represented by Axelle Lemaire, but regrets were duly sent.

To complete the demonstration that Girls In Tech had a worldwide coverage, kind messages from some of the 42 GIT chapters all around the world were shared. It happened that some of them were represented, among the 200 attendees , together with some funding companies, some girls in tech, some boys in tech, and a lots of enthusiastic people. Yes, the nice and large The Familly lounge, located under a glass dome, was fully packed! All got the message that a study related to female entrepreneurship demonstrated that women, when setting up a business and making money, are superior in the following area, compared to male entrepreneurship : investing in education and familly, innovating, and job creation, thus creating more wealth. I felt strange that this business argument had to be stated clearly, and that emphasis on gender equity was not mentioned, but this evening was about innovative economy.

 

Then, the startup pitch. Five girls went on stage to pitch, in front of a jury made of prestigious people.  

The pitches were 6 minutes long – which actually made them long enough to allow the audience to get the style and character of each presenter. Most of them were following the fil rouge ‘I wanna a tell you something personnal, i/we/she/the world has a problem, here is how to solve it, here is the way I’ll make money out of it, look at our nice team, thanks I love you’, the all with nice slides. Well, a standard pitch.  

Easy Size @EasySize. The system allowing online clothes shops to make life easier to customers. When ordering a trouser, no need anymore to give your size, to measure the length of your leg or the tour de taille. You just indicate another item (from any brand) that you have already bought and worn with success, and the prediction algorithm will calculate the translation into the item you are willing to buy. 79 % of the predictions are correct. See more http://www.easysize.me/

Cocofarm. An application allowing farmers to manage their eggs and follow their production and productivity. The energy of the lady pitching impressed all people, specially when she cracked an egg on the floor… That little business target seems to be just a beginning for that startup, willing to make life easier to country side small businesses.

Cortechs @cortechs_ab. That solution aims to help kids with light mental disorder related to concentration. It requires an headset, to measure brain activity of the patient, together with an application offering games. Objectibe being here to bring back patient into a focused and quite mood. That presentation while looking like a research topic was really intereting and demonstrated some real business potential. See more here http://cortechs.ie/

Fojo.me. A mobile application, allowing to take picture (sounds regular), make some nice effects on it (looks normal) and develop with your vintage old dark room. Yes, the idea is to ntegrate your mobile phone into the process of the actual picture development. Niche market, but a smart way to bring back digital photos into paper pictures on your wall. See more here : http://fojo.me/

Gemmyo @gemmyoParis. A online shop, where jewels can be ordered, and will be 3D printed, at a price which will make luxury jewellery affordable. Well, that’s the promise. You will find the same quality, similar design, but will avoid the sometime uncomfortable situation where you just dont believe the little ring you want to buy is soo expensive. More here : https://www.gemmyo.com/

Five girls, five characters, five positioning, five countries. The jury rewarded EasySize startup, and everyone went to the nice buffet. One should anyway keep from that event that girls are not special entrepreneur, they have great ideas, impressive willpower, but they found here an amazing network to put them on good tracks !

Keep track of it, by supporting Girls In Tech whatever your town or country ! GIT Paris or GIT everywhere.

French local note: girls from Marseille, please be aware that Girls in Tech Marseille has now an ambassador

Shaking Marseille e-commerce !

shake14

pharo

Last week, Marseille made a great digital move: the first e-commerce conference was held in one of the most amazing place of this harbor ‘Le Pharo’ (picture coming soon). That one day conference was organized by Hervé Bourdon @valvert and Jacques Froissant @Altaide_JF under the name of SHAKE14. It gathered actors from different perspectives, solution providers, consulting, retailers, merchants, investors… and some shining names of the digital intelligentsia (@catbarba, @momboisse, @HerveKabla, @carlosdiaz, @manueldiaz, @oliviermathiot , …). That event had some remarkable merits, such as, high quality speaker, relevant content (from technical to marketing), constructive spirit (avoiding complain, promoting solutions and positive attitude), innovation oriented. And I probably missed some others, provided the smile that all participants had during the entire day. What did I learn on e-commerce ? Well, a lot !

 

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Shake your soul
What is behind e-commerce ? Well, surprisingly, 9 times out of 10, a merchant – with shops and physical goods. Most of the e-commerce revenue is operated by traditional players and not pure digital players. During that conference, the message was clear : merchants should come back to the basics. What makes your bakery your best friend ? he has what you expect (e.g. all sort of breads, plus cakes, plus little sweets and sandwiches), he welcomes you with a smile, he knows you take usually one baguette during the week and two on Saturday, with 4 croissants, he follows you, years after years. Why would not an e-merchant duplicate that behavior ? Digital should not be a barrier to be a merchant. How to make your customer forget he is not (yet) in your nice shop, but over his screen in our crazy word ? By offering a large catalog (and maintaining it). By communicating with empathy (key words for Catherine Barba), energy and kind words (yes, even in invoice e-mail). By suggesting your customers some relevant items, based on history, location and current basket (yeap, up selling or cross selling are the e-merchants best friends). Looking at what  @digimood and @nuukik are saying about it.

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Shake your shop
Who said that e-commerce and commerce in a shop were exclusives? One should benefit from the other. Off course this is not natural. In big corporation, digital activities are often developed aside, in dedicated organization. I learned that one of the major question there was : who gets the income when the deal is done on line, who to reward in the company for that deal ? the shop which will serve the order, the digital office, the IT (I’m not trolling here). That question is about big companies and networks. But whatever is your size, as a natural consequence of web and shop co-existence, rethinking the customer experience is strategic major question. The web to store notion (or how to make sure your customer go to a store, where margins can be higher, and gets benefit of the web and vice versa) should be dealt at high level, and should be serious enough to force corporation to : i) work transversally and break silos, ii) organize training to change culture, iii) spray some agility inside the company. In other words, change your habits, your organization say @emakina. Promote shops on web site homepage, and instead of fearing the web in shops, give to vendors and customers some tablets – this would make your customer’s life easier as he would not have to hide in the toilets or changing room to check prices on his smartphone.

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Shake your brand
Who are you on the web ? A wonderful merchant, yes. But technically, you are an IP node that needs traffic. How to find you ? Via Google, most of the time. So, don’t make your website a labyrinth. Google algorithms will not index it correctly. And by the way, we are in 2014, so if you want to be considered, you cannot afford not to be responsive design (able to be read on a mobile, a tablet, a computer) and connectivity agnostic (wifi, 3G, 4G, same experience, but keep in mind that data rate may be different and you have to save your customer’s data subscription on the last ones). If you have lots of competitors, and want to make sure you are visible and accessible to customers, play the brand and identity advantage. This is a way to make your customer finding you in one click, because they want precisely your product, your nice story, your unique value proposition. They will look for you specifically, typing your brand name in their browser, and not vague key words. In addition to develop a real identity that makes you unique in the web, you can manage a customer community, to have direct communication with them independently from Google (and we fall here into the community management, that allows also to have ‘ real life events’, strengthening the customer relationship, but this should deserve another post).
Use market places. If you cannot afford to maintain a website, make sure you are anyway referenced. Yes, there are Amazon, Rakuten, EBay, LaFnac, Carrefour or Cdiscount to help your customer to place orders on your valuable goods and services. But there are some dedicated market places, by theme or category, and one should consider the idea to multiply its presence on the web.

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Shake your money
In e-commerce, pleasure, fun, cool are important, but e-payment is really the point where you want to bring your customer. And actually only 2% of visitors do buy, in France. Don’t miss them. First, payment must be seamless for the customer and risk-less for the merchant. The presentation from @be2bill was interesting on that point. Demonstrating their capability to evaluate risk (based on customer profiles, including habits, localization, score) and provide appropriate payment means to the customer (no payment possible, banking card, with or without 3D secure, …) with a wide technical coverage. And what if you lose your customer during payment ? Well, you can always track that failure and re-offer him later an easy payment mean, or contact him smartly to understand what happened. Re-target, don’t lose the tiny 2% that do buy… Second, reconciliate payment and advertising. Are you sure that you have the appropriate KPI to measure your advertising investments? While being the most natural, well marketed ones, google suite with adword is not the only way deliver and measure advertising. Try to think other means and channels : social media, TV, print (yes, print advert has prices decreasing, and specialized press will welcome your budget). Third. Eveyone deserves some kindness, one day. If you have a good idea, get funded. Here or elsewhere. Some interesting conversations were held about the way to get money from venture capitalist and business angels. From the discussion on stage, one could understand that it is also a matter of network and faith, but also critical mass –if your reach is low (understand how many potential users do you have), or if your revenue is negative don’t even think about it.

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Shake your network and innovation
Bringing local and national speakers one day to share their knowledge, improve your network is important. But promoting the local associations and making sure the dialog facilitated here gets prolonged is another challenge. SHAKE14 offered the various associations to be on stage, to promote their objective and recruit members. Several associations were present : ecom provence gathering e-merchants (including the super heros @valvert), ShakinProvence to promote all innovative initiative that would strengthen Provence dynamic, Medinsoft gathering 150 local integrators and software editors.
In the same spirit, in order to value innovation, SHAKE organized a competition for e-commerce innovative idea and web to store categories, the so called Marius as oposed to Cesar, a famous provence character). After pitching in front of a jury, the winners were selected : Roaming by me (to roam mobile everywhere at best prices) (https://www.roamingbyme.com/roaming/travel-connected.php) and Tap Value (http://www.tapvalue.com/) to suport e-merchant communication.

 

That event was rich, and positive, hoping the team will make us the gift to have a 2015 edition… Marseille deserves that energy. E-commerce deserves that attention.

marseille_view-from-pharo

Digital art exists, there is a trading place for that

Interesting conference this week in Mozilla office in Paris. Chris Messina @chrismessina stopped by, invited by FivebyFive, to share his current hobby. Digital art.

He discussed several aspects of digital art : what is it, what does it look like, how could it be tomorrow, provided that the technology evolve. And the essential question behind : in the era of pixels and beats being multiplied in one click at no (visible) cost, how could digital artist survive and get paid for their creations.

Well. First it is a matter of faith and value. Either you don’t care, and you copy like hell. Or you believe that artists have a special role to play in our society, and deserve your support. Second, you need to have a place where digital artists are offering their work to a public. Reproducing the principles of commercial gallery. Third, to refrain the hacking, you may enable a versioning of the art pieces. Versioning will create scarcity, which is a fundamental for value creation for art.

Let’s say. I am a fan of unicorn drawing, I buy a digital drawing on the internet, I get a place to store it and a certificate. When I get bored owning it, I can sell it to another unicorn addict. Chris Messina presented to us a platform which enables that scenario. It is named Neonmob https://www.neonmob.com/ and is in beta version. With Neonmob, you acquire art piece, for free or for money, it comes with a certificate – limited editions are stamped, thanks to a bitcoin-like crypto operation. The platform allows you to track if your art piece is extremely rare, or very common, which helps you to define a value to your collection.

 

Note that @marklor reminded his friends that ‘deviant art’ http://www.deviantart.com/ is also a platform allowing to do more or less the same. I let you benchmarking both solutions.

That evening was really interesting cause it covered at the same time the question of what is digital art (a drawing, an animated GIF, a programmable image, a piece of music created with movement sensors, an image animated via wind sensor, …), why is it necessary to create scarcity in digital art, how to collect and enjoy your digital art… This is certainly just the beginning of the questions technologist and art lovers will have to think about and share.

About the very simple question of identity, security and privacy in Web Payment

w3c web Payment_small.jpg

Again, about the W3C Web Payment Workshop in Paris. Two weeks ago, discussion went on the definition of payment, the notion of user experience, the architecture of back end systems and the end to end picture. The main objective for such workshop was to identify web related topics on which all parties (merchants, banks, payment schemes, regulating government, payment service processors, ….) would agree to get more standard. This will take time as I already mentionned in a previous post. The conversation was structured, but it happened that for each of the scheduled sessions, after one hour of talk, the questions related to identity, security was systematically raised. How can you garantee that the payee is the one he pretends to be ? How can you you garantee that the money is safely transferred, stored ?  As moderator of the Identity, Security and Privacy, I felt like my panel would be an interesting piece of the workshop.

Throwing the question ‘how can you garantee your system is secure ?’ is a little bit unfair.  Obviously, no one can garantee a system to be 100% secure (at a certain point of time, someone will break it), so you have to think about risk evaluation, tools to help implementing security, indicators to monitor trust… And this is what the poeple from the panel shared : good practices, feedbacks and valuable advices to build a common solution to bring with payment some notion of identity, security and privacy. Here is my take away from the discussions.

Identity, what is it ? With Louise from British Computer Science and Tim from Microsoft, we explored the notion of identity with two different perspective. Tim, involved in the e-commerce platform of Microsoft shared with the participants a notion of commerce identity, that would encompass our usual personal information, but also our friend, our relatives, our payment means, our interactions, our reputation. The idea suggested here was to build one identity, based on the principle of aggregating our identities and make it available to services providers via APIs. The direct consumers of this meta-identity could be banks, merchants, but also anti fraud banking system,  government, locally or international. Obviously the question of user control and privacy was raised. And this is where Louise made a great speech about the way identity, privacy, anonymity, traceability were major topics that companies, citizen and regulation should take care of. The rationale for this special care was the coming explosion of peer to peer financial transaction enabled by the web. This use case would multiply the needs to protect peers, regulates fraud and balance privacy aspects.

Identity, who should manage it ? Several participants gave a view on that notion of handling identity. Natasha Rooney, from GSMA mentioned in her  contribution that they had a program named GSMA Mobile Connect, which would allow service providers to use mobile network operators users database and trust the identify of those users. This offer completed with a strategy of direct billing on subscribers bills would position them as ideal identity providers in mobile commerce. Another view, Ripple Labs, the ones maintaining Ripple Network, mentioned that identity should be managed in a decentralized way. What does it mean ? Ripple Network is a network payment solution, which relies on a network of Ripple Gateways. Those gateways are disseminated all around the world, and this is where each user willing to transfer money should register, providing with email and banking details. Choosing a gateway suiting his constraints in terms of currency, transaction operation … Each Ripple Gateway implements the Ripple Transaction Protocol which allows to transfer money from any currency from one user to another, provided that this one owns a Ripple Wallet. In that case, identity is managed by registering to Gateways. The case of Facebook and Google managing the user’s identity was not directly discussed but raised on a regular basis. One could conclude that several identity provider profiles could be defined, from traditional kinda official (MNO) to decentralized email based (Ripple network).

Identity, how to convey it ? Lets say you are an identity provider. You need to offer services to consume your user’s identity to service providers. The next questions you would have to answer would be : which protocol should support exchange of identity related information? which piece of the identity should be shared ? how to make sure that the user agrees with sharing his identity ? Most of the presenters mentioned the recently published Open ID Connect as the technology that makes the job. First, it relies on the recent version of OAuth, an authorization protocol that Hannes Tschofenif, co-chair or IETF OAuth WG exposed to the audience. Hannes concluded saying that OAuth was a good enabler for identity scheme, provided that security recommendations were implemented and that proprietary plug-in were not killing the interoperable nature of it. Second, Open ID Connect includes an flexible authentication mechanism (how do you make sure the user authorizing access is the right user). Stefan from Ripple Labs confirmed, adding that Ripple Network was using it, allowing a good granularity in rights and flexibility in user authentication. Ripple made password and game with cryptography, but one could imagine to have the FIDO Alliance UAF technology used for such authentication.

Payment, identity and security, what promise ? About the actual enablers for security in web payment, we heard several voices promoting different types of perspectives. On the device side, Giri from Qualcom said that mobile payment security scheme could get benefit of user’s contextual information, combined with trusted enablers, listing technologies the web payment could benefit from : geolocalization, multiple factor authentication, hardware token and fingerprinting. On the protocol side, Hannes recalled the audience that state of the art in security as promoted in IETF should be implemented to avoid failure. There was a consensus on the fact that cryptography was a great enablers of trust and security (trusting someone could be translated as sharing a cryptography secret with him). This is what Harry Halpin from W3C promoted the recent Web Crypto API (that my readers all know went to Last Call last week). This API will allow developers to manage and use keys in their web applications. Last but not least, Gregory from Lyra Network among other good feedbacks for promoting a decentralized web traffic to increase trust, reminded that users were to be educated in order to have a better control on their identity data and data in general. He also highlighted the idea of building identity of users on multiple devices, including the ones belonging to the wearable IoT wave, feeding the *what you have* factor to authenticate users.

This session did not bring any direct conclusion on the complex problem of identity, security and privacy, but drove the audience on different perspectives. The excellent minutes and presentations from that session are available on http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/minutes/2014-03-25-s6/ . All the web community is now waiting for the W3C report on that workshop, which will sum up and prioritize the possible actions that could happen in W3C.

 

Two days of W3C workshop about web and payment

w3c web Payment_small.jpgThis week W3C Web Payment workshop was amazing: one hundred registered people, representing all the chain of web payment. From merchants to banks, including payment system providers, from established financial institutions to challenging startupers, from browser makers to mobile network operators. All those delegates agreed to spend 2 days in Palais Brongniard in Paris, to discuss how standardization should be driven in W3C, to improve the integration of web payment in the open web platform. During two days, the audience tried to identify the minimum common agreement to ease end user experience when buying something on the web, and imagine how payment systems could be more efficiently integrated in the the web. In addition to the usual suspects (Google, Mozilla, GSMA, Yandex), the lucky attendees could hear opinion from less talkative companies such as : PCI (payment security certification), BPCE (french bank), SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), Federal US Reserve (the big us wallet), BCS, Rabobank, EU delegate, Ripple Labs, HubCulture pomoting Ven, NACS US merchants. New faces giving their opinion, to usual suspects from W3C.

What can we expect from such event ?
First. Build a tribe. And I think that the workshop was a success. Interaction was key, breaks and dinner also helped people to meet and understand each other. Second. Decide where the tribe wants to go. This is less straightforward. Once everyone understood that it was quite complex to find the right balance between standard and competition, the key mission that became natural to everyone was to understand the roles and concepts handled in the story of a payment transaction. Questions : what is the ideal user experience, what are merchant roles and boundaries, what characteristics define a payment service provider, do intermediaries count, is payment a single service, or does it include quotation management… Understanding the payment steps and splitting that journey into a reliable description. This is for the business and flow side. Another domain identified to be explored collaboratively was related to the technology. When one asked ‘what is a token for you’, depending where you come from, the token answer could have different taste (actualy four different definitions were found). Same for the wallet… So in the end, it was obvious that the tribe needed to build a common understanding.

The necessary consensus.
Lets be clear. Any payment standardization work will not happen if disruptive Ripple Labs promoting decentralized network, does not understand mobile network operators, if Microsoft promoting an e-commerce identity does not listen to EU on privacy, or if merchants are not making their mind clear on virtualized money advantages (a la bitcoin). Off course the matrix of mutual understanding is infinite. But one should note that extreme should carefully listen each other. And this will be a challenge that may take some time. At the same time, it was highlighted that neither Visa or Mastercard or MCX merchants were present, and their voice should definitely be heard, there.

The coming battles.
When covering such a large topic as the payment is, involving so much actors, and when you increase the complexity by taking into account new comers such as bitcoin promoters, decentralized network designers, you can easily identify the big, big, blockers on which this community may fight. The following words sound to me like burning the brains: system interconnection and fee harmonization (right, this could be kept away from W3C landscape), user convenience versus security, user data owner (ouch, that one is the business basement, right ?), privacy by design, identity scheme (fragmented and contradictory visions here).

Where could the tribe start ? small pieces of technology.
During the discussion, it appeared that it would not be possible to build a complete standard solution, to leave a room to existing models and integrate the disruptive ones. So the opposite view was considered: why not designing very small pieces of enablers, such as transaction definition, a transaction flow and related states, a simple intent to pay framework, some auto-filling functions, … This primary list are just ideas, and will definitely enrich during the coming discussions.

Where do we meet next ?
That recently born web payment tribe must follow up. It could gather again either re-using the Web payment community group chaired by Manu Sporny, attached to (but not belonging to) W3C. Or a new group could be created. That plan will be made in the coming weeks, once all the W3C staff had brainstormed on the minutes of the workshop (slides and minutes). Lets wait the official take away from W3C.

 

You can also read my post related to the Identity, Security and Privacy session, that i moderated here : https://poulpita.com/2014/04/04/about-the-very-simple-question-of-identity-security-and-privacy-in-web-payment/

 

 

Talking with the architects of the web

Meet the tag by Romain Huet

I was in London this week, and attended the Meet The TAG session in Google campus, closed to the Silicon Roundabout. This was an opportunity to have a conversation happening between the architects of the web and some londonien developers. On stage were present Tim Berners Lee @timberners_lee, Yehuda Katz @wycats, Alex Russel @slightlylate, Dan Appelquist @torgo, Anne van Kesteren @annevk and hidden in the crowd were Jeni Tennison @jeniT, Peter Linss @plinss, Sergey Konstantinov and Henry Thomson.

Anne started with a short presentation of TAG prerogative, in duo with Tim – the old school and the new generation, hand in hand. It was explained that the major difficulty in the TAG task was to synchronize between the different W3C working groups deliverable, making sure appropriate technologies were harmoniously available to web developers. Tim even mentioned that the objective of W3C was to make all platform features available to developers. (more…)