Unless you have been living under a rock the last few days you will be aware of Google’s new social networking product – Google Buzz.

Unfortunately it would seem that some assumptions made by the designers and the automatic opt-in nature of the service has lead to some serious issues.

For me it underlines some of the problems with entrusting your personal data to the cloud. That is not to say of course that it is a user’s fault that their data gets shared in such a way – everything in the day to day usage of these tools gives the user a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The trouble is, that this expectation is largely an illusion. When using cloud services, you are entrusting them and you hope that they will exercise the same care when dealing with your data as you would – but unfortunately this is rarely the case.

Whether through carelessness or malicious action information has a tendency to leak. Assumptions made by the design team can be proved poor. So in short, never put anything on the internet that you wouldn’t be happy to see on a billboard.

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Yesterday, all the hard work we put in to getting Barcamp Transparency 2009 ready paid off, and I have to admit I am really pleased with how it went!

Judging by the feedback I’ve been getting throughout the day you guys enjoyed it as well, but please let me know if there’s anything that we could do better next year!

Of course the event wouldn’t have been possible without our sponsors… Google who were kind enough to cover the cost of the venue (and thanks to the Oxford Club for being so good to us on the day!). Thanks to our other sponsors – 1000 heads, Proactive, Outmap, Moo and TerminateTheRate.org as well.

Also, thanks to our media sponsors: Global voices, Mashable and JackFM.

Most of all, thanks to all of you who came!

There were plenty of interesting conversations had, and we’ve already spawned a couple of interesting projects – do write in and tell me about yours, we’d love to do a followup!

Check out our flick group, and if you have any photos feel free to upload them to the group pool.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on…see you next year!

I am absolutely delighted to be able to announce that I have managed to confirm the venue for Barcamp Transparency. Barcamp Transparency will be held at the Oxford University Club on the 26th July!

This is a fabulous venue (the same one as Barcamp Apache Oxford), directions and other details can be found on our website.

I am also delighted to announce that Google has agreed to be the main sponsor for the event and will be covering the cost of the venue for us! Big thanks to all at Google and our other sponsors for making this event possible!

See you there on the 26th July!