Imagine adding a person’s contact to your calendar because you have an upcoming meeting with them. You’ve never met them before, this will be your first time sitting down together.
Imagine now that an app on your phone, synced to your calendar, can deliver you a customized, comprehensive dossier on that person half an hour before your meeting. This is the reality that Paul Tyma, cofounder of Refresh, is helping to build.
Tyma participated with Jenny Stoltenow, Post-it(R) Brand Marketing Communications Manager at 3M and Krystine Batcho, Professor at Le Moyne College, on a panel moderated by AJ Scherbring, Associate Creative Director at Digitaria, called #nofilter: Pros and Cons of Constant Connection.
During the panel Tyma talked about the reactions many have to the amount of information he and his team are able to gather on people. People have contacted the team requesting the deletion of everything stored on them, to which Tyma said a canned email responds:
“We don’t have any information stored on you.”
Tyma explained that everything used to create these dossiers is gathered through easily accessible social media profiles and accounts. There’s no hacking and no sleuthing involved.
"Unless you don't touch the Internet, you are giving data away. Day by day." @paultyma #nofilter #sxsw #sxtxstate
— Rebecca Larson (@beckslarson) March 13, 2015
Finding a balance between a level of detail that people find useful and appreciate and a level that becomes worrisome and even creepy has been one of the challenges the company has faced, Tyma told the panel audience.
SXTX State spoke with Tyma after the panel to ask if he believed privacy was the cost of participation in the new digital landscape.