Project VRM - User contributions [en]

User talk:Mamoon

2025-01-03T22:37:18Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

'''Grid Computing Research Group'''
== Grid Computing Research Group==

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[http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/amoon Dr. '''''Mohammed Amoon'''''] is an ass. prof. at computer science dept., Community College in Riyadh, King Saud University.

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His Research Interests include:

â¢Artificial Intelligence, Multiagent Systems, Mobile Agent Systems, agent communication languages and protocols.

â¢Web services, semantic and transactional aspects of information management in open environment systems, and service science management and engineering.

â¢Distributed and multiprocessor computing systems, Grid Computing Systems, Resource scheduling techniques for parallel and distributed systems, and High Performance Computers.

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Now, he is the PI of a grid computing research group at the computer science department.
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Grid is a system for management and aggregation of autonomous, heterogeneous computational and storage resources across geographical boundaries. Grid technologies have enabled the development of new applications that require close and potentially sophisticated interaction and data sharing between resources that may belong to different organizations. As network speeds grow, it is possible to imagine global Grids that contain multiple heterogeneous resources, and allow users to submit jobs from anywhere in the world to these Grids.

Members of the group are:

1) Dr. Torki Altameem

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2) Dr. Mohammed Amoon

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3) Eng. Mohammed Mowafey

User talk:RealEstateCafe

2025-01-03T22:36:48Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

Doc,

Thanks for launching real estate as a session topic at VRooM Boston 2009. Iâd like to use this comment to get some ideas started in response to your question, sent to me privately, about consumer-centric real estate business models.

Based on my limited understanding of fourth party vs user-driven services, my response is that the âideal real estate business, at least for buyers,â is not a business but a network of âfourth partyâ organizations, or home buyer clubs both public / non-profit and private / for profit. Think of an AARP or AAA model but with LOCAL home buyer clubs that aggregate âuser-drivenâ services and savings opportunities by local housing market, from both local and national vendors.

After the meltdown of the housing market, mortgage requirements have tightened and home buyers once again have to save real money, up to 20% down for their first home or condo. That has contributed to the slowdown in the housing market. Home buyer clubs could expedite that time frame by reducing transaction costs and delivering savings from four or five segments of the marketplace:

1. Lenders,

2. Developers / sellers,

3. Brokers, and

4. Product and service vendors.

5. Optional: Government subsidies and incentives, local and national

Trends at a recent real estate technology conference in San Francisco lead me to believe that home buyer clubs and an MLS of buyers could emerge as new players in the housing marketplace. Some of us have talked about those ideas for years, drafted business plans, even experimented with local organizations, like the Mass. Homebuyers Club (1990-1995).

If you google âhome buyers club,â you will see that there are already a variety of initiatives across the country. My goal would be to create a digital tool chest so that local organizations, public and private, can assemble their own home buyer clubs to enable real estate consumers to save billions of dollars annually. (In 1998, McKinsey & Co. first estimated that home buyers and sellers could save $30 billion annually by harnessing the money-saving power of the internet.)

Where should we start? Can we inventory best of breed new consumer centric businesses and VRM tools, and update this old business plan to co-author a real estate and VRM manifesto (or something else)?

HomeSearchID: Executive Summary (2000-2002ish)
https://realestatecafe.pbworks.com/HomeSearchID

Key VRM-like pull quote from link above:

How can HomeSearchID make money doing this? HomeSearchID has two major revenue streams:

1. A ladder of referrals, beginning with a $50 match fee from buyers and sellers to a 20 percent referral fee to traditional listing agents and buyer brokers (see Exhibit X); and

2. Micro-payments or affiliate marketing payments from product and service vendors using a distributed transaction manager â¦

Substitute âVRM platformâ in sentence above for âtransaction manager,â and continue to conversation online before we get to the VRooM Session Monday?

ââ

âThe next major revolution in real estate will be fee based services replacing the blanket commission pricing that has dominated the industry for so long.â
Former Chief Economist, National Association of Realtors

Bill Wendel

The Real Estate Cafe

Serving a menu of money-saving services since 1995

97a Garden St.

Cambridge, MA 02138

617-661-4046 office / cell

realestatecafe@gmail.com

http://twitter.com/realestatecafe

http://www.realestatecafe.squarespace.com

Privacy issues

2025-01-03T22:32:43Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

Hereâs a possible VRM privacy model for discussion, based on [http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/eas/anonymous/ existing tools that I work with at IBM]

As a real-world example, Iâm planning on switching cell-phone carriers in February this year, and I also need a new cell phone. In this case, I could enter my needs into a VRM system, which would anonymously store them (in a centralized database via a Web site/Web service, or locally to some kind of P2P client.).

As for how to store the info and identify needsâ¦. Somehow we have to be able to identify the cell phone needed. I suppose that UPC codes could be used or some other identifier, translated from a master list of products offered. The cell phone plan entry is a little more nebulous. Not sure how that one would be identified, other than needs based on a customer formâ¦.minutes needed, family plan, coverage, etcâ¦.(Iâll just skip over this little part for nowâ¦..:)

After the needs are recorded, they would be anonymized via a one-way hash (we currently use the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1 SHA-1] algorithm). The original data is still in its original state, but only accessible to the person who created it. Other customers can not see any data but their own.

Hashed entries are stored separately and available for querying by Vendors. Vendors would have to register to receive a shared hash key. That key would allow Vendors to query customer needs, but only for products that they provide, via unique, shared codes.

Vendors can not see customer data. They can only query data with products that they have on offer, via a unique shared ID. The VRM system notifies the customer when a match is found, not the Vendor.

The VRM system could optionally notify the vendor when a match is found, for statistical purposes (comparing hits to products sold, for example), but this binary hit/no hit value is all the vendor would have. The customer remains anonymous until they choose to purchase a product or service.

Customers that are notified when a match is found would be anonymously directed to a Web page or Web Service with an offer for the specific product that they are looking for. It is then up to the customer to decide if they want to pursue the product with that vendor (take the relationship to the next level).

If the offers are all Web Service based, tools could be built to aggregate and compare offers that are returned when needs are recorded. Going even further, the tools could be built to link to product and service reviews, and complete the transaction once a decision is made.

In my real-world example, I would shop for a cell phone and service options online, anonymously, and decide on one or more products that Iâm interested in, pretty much the same way I do now. I would then record my cell phone preferences and service needs in the VRM system. My needs would be hashed and added to the hash values that are accessible to Vendors (via a centralized or P2P-style decentralized system). Registered cell phone vendor A can query the hashed data using the same unique IDs (UPCs or other value) that I entered when I recorded my need. If thereâs a match, I would be notified of an offer from that Vendor by the VRM system. At the same time, Cell phone service provider B could query my plan needs via shared plan IDs or via plan parameters, and offer me a cell phone and cell phone service bundle in conjunction with a cell phone provider.

I would review these offers anonymously and decide which is best for me. Once I have made a decision, I would contact the vendor (via the VRM system, or directly) and proceed with the purchase. The purchase would be my first direct, non-anonymous contact with the vendor.

Once a decision is reached and a purchase has been made, I would remove the record of my needs from the VRM system, and no longer receive offers for that specific product or service.

Things that need more thought, more discussion:
This model only works assuming multiple vendors are trying to sell you the same, somewhat easily identified product or service. For vague items that donât easily fit into this model (video service providers, holiday travel, catering, many other services), more thought is neededâ¦

VRMcompanies

2025-01-03T22:32:30Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

* [http://www.elance.com E-Lance]

One of the first companies to offer buyers the ability to post a project and have vendors bid for it

* [http://www.lendingtree.com/ Lending Tree]

Allows banks to bid for customer's loans

* [http://www.clickshare.com/aboutus Clickshare Service Corp.]
System for federated authentication of users across multiple independent sites where users can register with any of a plurality of participating service provider and selectively control amount and type of information about them provided to a vending website; includes capability to log and aggregate transactions. Attention data owned by the service-providing site where user has home registration -- not Clickshare or the vending site. Clickshare's role is limited to authentication and logging and does not own any customer relationships itself. (posted by [http://newshare.typepad.com/about Bill Densmore])

* [http://www.attentiontrust.org AttentionTrust] / [http://www.rootmarkets.com Root Markets]
Challenging the (implicit on most of the Web) assumption that attention data is the property of the vendor. Sets this (valuable to vendors) information as a tool that individuals can selectively share with vendors, in order to get the best response from those trusted vendors.

* Vendor/Product Comparison Sites
Sites like [http://froogle.google.com/ Froogle], [http://reviews.cnet.com/ CNET's reviews] and others that aggregate product pricing/availability information are conceptual ancestors of VRM. By implicitly forcing vendors to compete more directly on price and service (all vendors' prices, and often vendor rankings, are displayed together for the person seeking the item or service to evaluate), these sites offer seekers a first, crude tool for Vendor Relationship Management.

* [http://www.farecast.com FareCast]

<s>(Can anyone point to the site that recommends the optimal time to purchase airline tickets, or other examples?)</s> 
done. -cfc

* [http://connect4growth.com/ Connect4Growth] works in the corporate environment. Uses the term VRM, too.

* [http://www.ebay.com/ eBay]
eBay is a VRM platform ante litteram (perhaps VRM is an eBaynomicsâ extension).
eBay "help(s) make markets work for both vendors and customers â in ways that don't require the former to "lock in" the latter" Through an auction system, price is not fixed by Vendors, instead Vendors let Customers fix it.

Process

2025-01-03T22:32:15Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

This page is a draft proposal. Please send any comments to [mailto:joe@andrieu.net] or to the Project VRM [[mailing list]].

(On 19 May 2008, [http://www.mediainfluencer.net/2008/05/from-misapprehensions-to-alternatives/ Adriana Lukas suggested] that the process described here is "identity-based VRM", and should be distinguisted from "[http://docs.google.com/View?docid=df9dfsgj_1ghhqgjfq feeds-based VRM]". So, a note to selves: these should be distinguised in this wiki as well. - Doc)

==VRM Process==
One thing that Iâve been noodling lately is how we, as a community, can organize our efforts around VRM.

===Microformats Inspiration===
In a recent [http://bankwatch.wordpress.com/2007/01/05/microformats-as-information-brokers-revisited/ exchange] with [http://bankwatch.wordpress.com/about/ Colin Henderson] at [http://bankwatch.wordpress.com/ BankWatch], he asked about [http://microformats.org microformats] and VRM. I [http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2007/01/19/vrm-microformats/ replied] that I think there is a lot to learn from their efforts. In particular, microformats has a great ironclad process, established in the early days, that continues to serve as a corral and assembly line for new microformats proposal. It is the foundation for how they forge community consensus. Along with the principle of paving the cowpaths, the process severely cuts down on distracting hypothetical conversations and assures a wiki-documented evolution towards a community consensus. Many newbie questions have been productively answered by a link to the process page and a polite invitation to read it and start working their ideas through it.

===A Standard Process===
Establishing such a standard process could have a great positive influence on VRM, especially as Project VRM has the potential to become a clearinghouse for different approaches in different domains, each requiring independent investment, development, and consensus. For example, VRM solutions for vendor selection are likely different from those for Personal Health Records and those for Banking.

Early community norms about how we go from âA great ideaâ to something people can start implementing, would, I believe, help more ideas reach critical success more quickly, as people spend more time doing the work rather than debating hypothetical design points and process issues. A good process would also let people know how to contribute and assure that good ideas are fully fleshed out as they develop. Of course, concrete design issues, grounded in context, goals, and constraints, are good topics for conversation.

This actually dovetails, nicely I think, with Chrisâs [http://www.socialcustomer.com/2007/01/more_on_vendor_.html comments] earlier on putting the cart before the horse in VRM development. As he said so concisely:
<blockquote>
Before diving into creating a new technical spec, step outside and look around a bit.
</blockquote>

So, here is a strawman proposal for how we might, as a community, organize a process for developing VRM systems. The idea is that each of these steps helps elucidate the details of a problem that could be solved by VRM. Each step is itself straightforward, building upon the steps before hand, and once complete, moving to interoperable implementations should be fairly simple. *grin*

===Scenarios===
It turns out that Usage Scenarios could be an important part of this process, meaning Scenarios in the context of Use Cases and user-driven development. Chris Carfi has started an excellent thread about future [[VRM Scenarios]], using a subtly different meaning of the word. Iâll generally stick with Usage Scenarios to clarify my use.

Usage Scenarios are, for me, a simple, short, narrative description of one or more specific and detailed interactions with the current or proposed system. The idea is to keep it real, to keep it colloquial, and to capture the essence of the situation rather than a detailed list of all possible variants. In my projects, Usage Scenarios have proven to be a great bridge between the problem domain and a technical specification. And when kept to just a paragraph or so, they are easy to write, too.

==='''''Protocol''''' as VRM Output===
In writing this, it became clear that we might benefit from having a specific noun for describing the output of our work. Microformats produces microformats. Pretty straight forward. What does VRM produce? Perhaps '''''Protocol''''' would be appropriate:

* To develop a new VRM Protocol, one would shephard it through the VRM process on the Project VRM wiki.
* To implement a component of, or software that connects with, a VRM Protocol, one would implement the interfaces and protocols of that Interchange.
* The VRM Loan Protocol currently supports mortgage applications.
* The VRM pRFP Protocol allows for the secure, identity-controlled digital requests-for-proposals in an open marketspace.

Protocal seems to work. However, I would definitely appreciate feedback and alternative suggestions for such a term.

==Draft VRM Process==
The proposed process follows. The idea is that each section would have its own wiki page, preceeded by the name of the Interchange. Eg. http://projectvrm.org/Interchanges/pRFP/Domain and http://projectvrm.org/Interchanges/pRFP/Current_usage_scenarios

#'''Problem Domain''' A discussion of the problem domain, in the nature of a real-world problem that is containable, i.e., a specific solvable problem. This becomes the charter for this particular Interchange.
#'''Current Scenarios''' Brief prose descriptions of actual instances of the problem.
#'''Desired Scenarios''' Brief prose descriptions about how it might all be made better.
#'''Existing Efforts''' A review of what has already been done in this area and who (organizationally) is still working on this problem. This will serve both to incorporate existing efforts and to learn from past mistakes.
##'''Software'''
##'''Protocols'''
##'''Formats'''
##'''Initiatives'''
##'''Organizations'''
#'''Users''' A quick run down of who the system must support at various different levels. This should list both categories of users and some specific examples in each category. There may be many subcategories under each of the following major categories. The idea here is not to build the system to be perfect for each of these users, but to make sure we have all the stakeholders in context as we flesh out the design. Ultimately just a handful of target users will be the focus.
##'''End users'''
##'''Vendor users'''
##'''Supporting Users'''(retailers? regulators?)
##'''Implementors'''
#'''Use Cases''' These are specific, complete transactions between users and the system. All critical use cases should be listed, along with various incidental or support cases that could influence overall design. Ultimately, a handful of defining use cases will drive system design.
##'''Abstract, High-Level Use Cases''' Single sentences describing a use case. When done well, they become the name of the use case. For an ATM, you might have âWithdraw Cashâ or âTransfer Fundsâ as abstract high-level use cases.
##'''Concrete Detailed Use Cases''' Detailed use cases describe the chronological back & forth (action/reaction) between users and the system to realize a particular transaction. Concrete use cases are free to use specific design and implementation choices. This is useful either at the very beginning when transcribing scenarios (when the specifics help you understand what is actually happening) and at the very end (when the specifics represent design decisions).
##'''Abstract, Detailed Use Cases''' Abstract use cases are stripped of the design decisions to more completely and accurately describe the critical steps while also freeing up the design process to innovate. For example, a concrete use case for the ATM might include the concrete steps of inserting a bankcard, prompting for a PIN, entering pin on keypad, and verifying PIN. And abstract version of that same use case could be âidentify user, authenticate user.â Itâs easy to see how the abstract version allows for alternative implementations where the first one presumed a bankcard, keypad and PIN.
#'''Brainstorming''' Free-form inspirations and ideas about how to realize one or more of those use cases.
#'''Draft''' After some brainstorming, a basic system design will emerge, either meeting all the use cases or accepting the loss of some use cases as part of the design choices in the draft.
##'''Entities'''
##'''Communications'''
###'''Protocols'''
###'''Formats'''
###'''Transactions'''
#'''Proposal''' Once the draft is bandied about and improved on by the community, the group who has taken stewardship of the domain can propose it to the entire VRM community as a standard VRM Interchange. This would expose it to more feedback and improvements and engage the entire VRM universe in the final stages of development.
#'''Published Standard''' After the community as a whole has had a chance to contribute, the Interchange would eventually either be approved and published as a standard or disbanded. I donât see any reason for a specific timeframe for any of these steps in the process, but there may be efforts that get proposed that ultimately are better served by other means or by breaking them into smaller Interchanges. It is at the publication stage that a standard becomes âofficialâ and earns a version number. Amendments or revisions to the standard would go through some related process and be published with a later version.
#'''Reference Implementation''' Create a reference implementation of the standard, to provide a sandbox against which implementers can test their implementations, and to provide a baseline for interoperability.
#'''Implementation Directory''' The standard is added to a directory of the different people and/or services who claim support for the standard. (This could also include external points-of-view/reviews of how well that person/service supported the standard.)

Feedback is definitely welcome.
[[User:Joe.andrieu|Joe.andrieu]] 09:28, 23 January 2007 (EST)

Initiative Brainstorming

2025-01-03T22:32:08Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

This page is a draft proposal. Please send any comments to [mailto:joe@andrieu.net] or to the Project VRM [[mailing list]].

==Initiative Brainstorming==
Anyone may add or expand on current ideas for VRM. Simply add to this page and start filling in elements to fully describe the idea. Feel free to start small. Time and other people's contributions can turn even a short headline into something we can work with.

If you have an idea? Copy the template and start filling it in. Brainstorming rules apply:
*Everything is ok, as long as it is a viable VRM idea, inline with VRM [[Principles]].
*If you don't like an idea, improve it or suggest an alternative.

As ideas develop, flesh out the details. Eventually you will probably want to address the "standard" questions, such as
*What's the problem?
*Where does the problem occur?
*Who participates?
*How might we fix it?

Then leave room for discussion. In the discussion area, please sign your comments. And remember, anyone can update the entry itself, but if you aren't sure your idea fits or if you have concerns about a particular element, add it to the discussion.

Once an idea is concrete enough to receive the blessing of the community and has gathered one or more champions, it begins the VRM [[Process]] and is removed from this list. During the Process, the champions see that each step in the process is completed thoroughly enough to advance to the next step and that the Initiative advances at an acceptable pace. Some initiatives will take longer than others. Many will spawn multiple protocols. It is the champions job to facilitate the advancement of an Initiative from a good idea to a working Protocol.

Multiple ideas may be merged into one or one split into multiple. Discussion is probably most effective on the mailing list, with suggestions and thoughts eventually finding their way here after getting fleshed out in email.

Here's a strawman example:
===Digital Receipts===
====Introduction====
Today, we can automatically get our credit card transactions imported into Quicken or QuickBooks or Excel or whatever application we want to use for managing our finances. Why not the line items from the receipts?
====Problem====
I can't get the line items from my purchase receipt on my credit card report. Sure, I can get the credit card data into Quicken, but I'd like to have the line item information so I can more accurately track my spending.
====Where/Context====
In retail and online when I download my transaction history.
====Who====
Retailers, credit card companies, consumers, and business consumers. In fact, this may be even more valuable for small businesses that need to put the line items into different accounts in QuickBooks!
====How====
The line-item data is there, on my receipt! Can't this go online or be sent to my credit card company? I'd like for it to automagically be incorporated when possible when I put the credit card history into Quicken. I have no idea how this might actually be implemented. Perhaps just with my loyalty card and I can download it online, but there would need to be a way to link the line-item report with the credit card history. Otherwise, I might get duplicates.
====Discussion====

==Brainstorm==

===Operation 20%===

====Introduction====
The goal here is to double the contribution rate by listeners and viewers to their public radio and television stations.
*a more detailed introduction by Doc Searls: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000231

====Problem====
Public radio has been around since the turn of the Sixties. Originally called "listener sponsored radio" (primarily by the Pacifica stations), public broadcasting has grown steadily since the advent of National Public Radio (NPR) in the early 1970s. Today NPR is the leading radio network in the U.S. and a solid national institution. Other suppliers of programming PRI, APM, PRX, et. al. have enlarged the variety and depth of programming available over public radio. Through the same time-frame, public television has also grown and thrived.

====Where/Context====
Both forms of public media, however, face the same financial challenge: only about 10% of listeners and viewers contribute to the stations they hear or watch. Put in more blunt financial terms, the customer-to-consumer ratio is 1-to-10.

In both formal and informal surveys, listeners and viewers who don't pay say they would be far more likely to pay if the process were easier.

Making that process easier is the challenge of Operation 20%. Our goal is to double the payment rate, and double the amount of money contributed by viewers and listeners. And our strategy is to provide tools on the listeners' and viewers' side that make contributions easier, and that support improvede relationships between those customers (no longer just consumers) and the stations, networks and producers who bring them the goods. These may end up being the first VRM Vendor Relationship Management tools.

====Who====
In meetings at NPR, and in discussions at both the IMA public media and Berkman-led Beyond Broadcast conferences in February 2007, Doc Searls vetted ProjectVRM's interest in helping relieve this long-standing problem. The response was entirely positive.

Then in early March 2007, the [http://www.loc.gov/crb/ Copyright Royalty Board] of the Library of Congress released [http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/030207/index.shtml new royalty rates and requirements] for both commercial and noncommercial stations webcasting online, erasing a distinction between the two that had stood since public broadcasters worked a "carve-out" from the commercial rates in 2002. Unless Congress (which created the CRB in 2004) makes changes in the ruling, or otherwise changes the game, noncommercial radio will face higher (and escalating) costs for using RIAA-licensed music. This adds urgency on the need to go forward with systems that increase the participation rate of listeners to public radio. (And, for that matter, to commercial online radio in as well, since the higher rates are [http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000196 a death-sentence for U.S.-based online radio] in general unless ways can be found for listeners to raise their contribution rates.)

====How====
"Operation 20%" is a place-holder name for this initiative. Some other names are under consideration, but not yet disclosed because the domain names associated with them have not been purchased. Anybody is also free to recommend names. A good place to do that is on the ProjectVRM [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Mailing_list mailing list].

The [http://www.beyondbroadcast.net/wiki07/index.php?title=Working_Groups#Public_Radio_and_Open_Source.3B_Facilitating_Technology_Collaboration_-_Held_in_The_Landau_Building_.28Bldg._66.29.2C_Room_156Public radio and Open Source] working group at Beyond Broadcast, and its organization, [http://www.beyondbroadcast.net/wiki07/index.php?title=Pubforge.org PubForge], are allied efforts that need to be coordinated as well.

====Discussion====
This initiative, along with others, will be on the front-burner both at Berkman Center meeting(s) in the first week of April (when Doc is in Cambridge), and at the [http://www.windley.com/events/iiw2007a/ Internet Identity Workshop] in Mountain View, California (Bay Area, between San Francisco and San Jose), on May 14-16.

===SYO Share Your OPML Project===
====Introduction====
Dave Winer has three posts that outline the Share Your OPML (SYO) project, and progress in developing it:
* [http://www.scripting.com/2006/11.html#opportunityKnocks Opportunity Knocks]
* [http://www.scripting.com/2007/01/04.html#opportunityKnocksTry2 Opportunity Knocks Try #2]
* [http://www.scripting.com/2007/01/05.html#opportunityKnocksTry3 Opportunity Knocks Try #3]
* I've deployed a first pass at what Dave proposes in #3. This is for testing and feedback purposes only. Any uploaded data to this development site will possibly and most likely be swept clean during future development phases. Here at [http://dev.glistn.com http://dev.glistn.com]
====Problem====
====Where/Context====
====Who====
====How====
====Discussion====

===Upside-down buyer's guide===
====Introduction====
[http://zgp.org/~dmarti/blosxom/business/upside-down-bg.html Don Marti writes],

''Doc has been contemplating business, identity and vendor lock-in, and makes me think about an interesting experiment -- use links, tags, and a microformat to help people buy a "commodity" IT product, the 1U or 2U rack-mount Linux server.''
====Problem====
====Where/Context====
====Who====
====How====
''First step would be to come up with a microformat for a "server RFQ". At the beginning of the experiment, these could be relatively loose -- just a bunch of "ol"s with "id"s such as "required-parts" "preferred-parts", "disliked-parts", "forbidden-parts", "required-features" and so on.''

''There would also be a section for "status", which would be time until buying decision, "deferred" "cancelled" or "ordered". If and when the idea got more popular, the RFQ could be more detailed, and sites and apps could offer server RFQ construction wizards. The nice thing about using a microformat is that (1) it's human-readable in a browser and (2) you can add free-form commentary on what you like or don't like in a server.''

''So you want to buy a server? Write your server RFQ, put it up with a rel="tag" link to a Technorati tags page for "server RFQs". and another tag link to a new, unique tags page just for that one, such as "joe@example.com-2005-07-09".''

''Along come the vendors who want to sell you a box, and are naturally watching the "server RFQs" tag like hawks, I mean like some animal that doesn't want to eat you. Like Easter Bunnies? Vendor sales person checks your RFQ, makes a page for you with links to matching products and a rel=tag link to "joe@example.com-2005-07-09". This is highly automatable, but careful, vendors -- don't spam. A future web-based product configurator should be able to crawl a server RFQ page and come up with a good quotation in response.''

''Now, you, the buyer, just watch the RSS feed for joe@example.com-2005-07-09 -- hey presto, it turns into your own personalized Server Buyers' Guide! When you buy the server, you change the "status" field on the RFP to "ordered", and add a link to the vendor you bought from. This is to (1) give the good vendors Google Juice and (2) let vendors know you're serious in the future so they'll pay attention to your RFQs. ''
====Discussion====

===Setting terms of service===
====Introduction====
In [http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2006-12-15-card-fees-usat_x.htm Credit card fees can suck you in Consumers pay high price for increasingly complex policies], in USA Today, Kathy Chu reports,

''Remember when most of us paid only an annual fee on credit cards? Today, late fees and over-the-limit fees are replacing that annual fee. Add in a dizzying array of extra charges: for phone payments, "expedited" online payments, credit card use overseas and balance transfers from other cards.''

''At a time when Americans wield more plastic than ever â 692 million credit cards, with $711 billion of debt â fees and policies have grown so complex that even regulators struggle to grasp them.''

''In the holiday shopping frenzy, consumers are especially vulnerable to card fees, because more of them are likely to pay late or exceed their credit limit, according to industry consultants Nilson Report and Moebs Services.''

''Lots of card issuers offer low initial interest rates these days. But once they've pulled you in, they often replace "fixed" rates with floating rates â which can rise â and impose penalty rates of up to 30% even on those with good credit.''

''"It's like economic Darwinism," says Chi Chi Wu of the National Consumer Law Center, an advocacy group. "The business model has changed from one rate and annual fee to all these different tiers and fees designed to make money."''

This is a perfect example of what CRM does without the benefit of VRM.
====Problem====
====Where/Context====
====Who====
====How====
We need something on the customers' side that directly tells vendors and the whole credit card marketplace "Either give me the terms I want (e.g. 30 day grace period, X% or lower fixed interest rate, $X cap on annual fees) or I'll take my business elsewhere."
====Discussion====
Wouldn't it be great for customers to operate in a bloc on this kind of thing? I'd love to see an organized group of consumers that organize themselves and deal as one with major organlzations- much the way labor unions negotiate on behalf of workers. This could work in a number of industries, but the credit industry is screaming for this kind of reform. Say, for instance, a group of several thousand cardholders organized themselves and they're dissatisfied with the way a bank reprices consumer accounts after a single late payment. The bloc could contact the bank and competitors, and either choose a better vendor or force the bank to change their policy for the bloc or lose a sizeable amount of customers.

Banks and many other institutions ''compete'', but it seems there is little competition. An average consumer might switch to an account with a better interest rate, and find much later on that the change was a horrible mistake because of fine print they didn't have the time, education, knowledge or wherewithal to learn about. For this to work, members of the bloc (or whatever you call it) would have to agree to make changes with the bloc, and the bloc would need to be run by independent, intelligent managers- sort of a mutual fund for consumer services.

===Educators vs. Cold Callers===
====Introduction====
Russ, [http://www.russdev.com/wp-blog/about-me/ a network manager at a UK high school], [http://www.russdev.com/wp-blog/2006/12/16/suppliers-vendors-vrm-is-future/ writes],

''We have the technology already, itâs called blogs. I am currently setting up a blog so suppliers at work can subscribe to an RSS feed and it provides them with information on what I want.''

''But not everyone uses RSS so the fact that most blogs have the function to view posts as web pages, plus the ability to email out new posts to people means you have that angle covered. The more I read on this concept the more it addresses some of the major problems we as customers have and suppliers have with customers.''
====Problem====
====Where/Context====
====Who====
====How====
====Discussion====

===Personal Health Records===

====Introduction====
Today, medical information is locked in cabinets and largely isolated behind doctor's and institutional barriers. Much of this arrangement is about protecting our rights to privacy. Kudos for that. However, the primary need in the realm of medical information, is quality health and health services... the secrecy is a solution to a constraint, not a requirement of the underlying need.
====Problem====
This unfortunate silo nature of the existing medical data system results in a loss of transparency and choice when individuals want to work with different providers. This lack of access and control leaves patients with restricted vendor management options.
====Who====
At the Internet Identity Workshop (iiw2006b), Doc brought this to light in the context of Johnson & Johnson's interest in providing enhanced drug packaging services, such as custom daily packets for people with complicated drug regimens. Unfortunately, J&J can't offer this service because of a systemic inability to access customer information effectively--even when the customer wants them too.

In a December 2007 [http://www.google.com/press/podium/markle.html speach], Google's Vice President Adam Bosworth echoed this need:

<blockquote>
Google can find all the most relevant answers to any query you submit across the entire web in less than a one-third of a second and yet, in general, your physician cannot get the lab results from your last specialist without paper and fax. (...)
Your physician cannot always reliably and optimally treat you without a comprehensive knowledge of what has been wrong with you in the past, how you were treated, and how you responded to the treatment. The lack of easily accessible, comprehensive medical records results in people being in more pain for longer than they should be. (...)

We should not accept this. We should not accept that the institutional barriers of the system cause tens of thousands to die unnecessarily and hundreds of thousands at the very least to suffer without cause while we pay an enormous bill.

So what can be done? We should start at the beginning. Letâs put the patients in charge of their health and medical information. Letâs build a system which puts the people who are sick in control. For every single medical and health-related event, letâs make sure that patients can effortlessly retrieve and share their information in its totality and then use it to ensure that they get the best quality of care possible. It is their health.
</blockquote>

Thanks to Philipp Lenssen of [http://blog.outer-court.com/ Blogoscoped] for the [http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-01-12-n25.html quote].
====How====
====Where/Context====
====Discussion====
There is an active development effort around "Personal Health Records," with "Dossia" as one significant umbrella project. Google provides a significant amount of information on Dossia and PHRs.

===Personal Knowledge Banks===

====Introduction====

For many years, organizations have gathered and used information on the parties with whom they interact (customers, partners or suppliers etc). This underpins much of what they do. Two specific types of information systems have emerged as being necessary and of value for effective deployment:

- Operational systems that âget the job doneâ (e.g. CRM applications, procurement systems, billing engines, fulfillment systems etc.)
- Analytical systems that underpin longer term knowledge gathering, planning and decision-making (e.g. enterprise data warehouse, single/ complete customer view, business intelligence)

The cost of putting such capabilities in place is falling dramtically, and personal need/ ability to fund their own equivalents is rising â so a new requirement is emerging, that of professional-grade information management and use services for individuals. VRM has much to gain from this development.

====Problem====

As daily life increasingly relies on digital technologies and data, individuals increasingly become dependent on data silos that are run by organizations they interact with. These organizations, by their nature, do not necessarily have the best interests of the individual as their raison dâetre. For example, the individual now has to âsign onâ and leave personal information trails in many more places than ever before. In turn, privacy-invading marketing practices leverage these information trails to target individuals with communications. The combination of more targeting data being available and less expensive communications channels means that the individual are spending more time being exposed to messages; when the vast majority of these messages are based on relatively poor quality data input then the time of these individuals is being abused by suppliers.
Public sector organizations have less to gain in terms of gathering information for marketing purposes â but data gathering and use by large, public sector bodies has its own âbig-brotherâ related downsides.

In parallel, existing approaches individuals are able to take to managing personal âlifeâ information are inadequate. The shoebox full of important documents is no longer relevant when those documents are digital. The PDA/ cell-phone/ PC address book combos do some basic tasks well, but are limited by their relatively narrow architectures. The various personal finance/ personal health/ lifestyle management applications have many upsides, but are based on locking in the customer to a proprietary architectures and a seller-centric business model.

====Where/Context====

An individual, on average, has 50 â 100 suppliers of some significant to them (some have many more). Each of these suppliers will typically be running or building some equivalent of their âsingle customer viewââ, and each will typically also store personal information on that individual in 4-5 operational systems. This issue applies across most aspects of life, and the vast majority of industry sectors.

The logic for this data gathering is that a) data has value to the organization, and b) that there is nowhere else to get it from.

The spend on âsingle customer viewâ across organizations and sectors amounts to many billions per annum, with considerable growth forecast for the foreseeable future.

The Personal Knowledge Bank offers an alternate option â enabling suppliers to âgo to the sourceâ rather than maintain a copy, especially when the source contains richer, deeper, more accurate data than is available elsewhere. It also enables much more besides (for now we shall focus on the enabling VRM aspectsâ).

====Who====

Personal Knowledge Banks are most likely to be run as a service that an individual outsources to one or more agent(s) who have built the architecture and technology environment to run such services professionally and cost-effectively (as organizations do around credit rating etc).

These services could theoretically be run by existing organizations that manage personal information well â with the killer proviso that a truly functional Personal Knowledge Bank can only be run by buyer-centric organization, i.e. those architected to support the buyer. In doing so they may also support the seller, but their primary orientation must be buyer-centric.

====How====

Some of the key components of a Personal Knowledge Bank are:

- A rich, deep (preferably open) data architecture recognizing both analytical and operational requirements

- An identity layer (person-centric and ideally interoperable with top down identity protocols)

- Security

- Front-end applications

- Information hygiene and management processes

Above all else, there should be a recognition that such tools and the processes around them will evolve rather than appear in âbig bangâ mode. Organizations began their information management and usage journeys 30 to 40 years ago â and they continue to become âbigger/ better/ fasterâ each year. The individual equivalents will also be a journey rather than a destination.

====Discussion====

We must get beyond thinking of Personal Knowledge Banks (or however they come to be named) as technology projects. Yes, they are â but in practice there are far wider/ higher barriers to be addressed around process, data gathering and âcultureâ. That said, the return on investment for an individual that will emerge will make a compelling case for over-coming these barriers.

==Initiative Template==
To add an Initiative, click on the edit link directly to the right. That will bring up a wiki editor with the following sections and this paragraph.

Copy the list of sections, including "Initiative Name" and paste them '''above''' the "Initiative Template" section header. Then fill in the details. Replace "Initiative Name" with the name of your initiative and add a few sentences (or more) for each section.

Once you save the page, you will be able to edit each section individually, using its own edit link.

===Initiative Name===
====Introduction====
====Problem====
====Where/Context====
====Who====
====How====
====Discussion====

==Draft==
This is a draft proposal. I'm particularly interested in both real Initiative Ideas and improvements to the template.

Random Notes from Jan 25th VRM Developers Meeting

2025-01-03T22:32:06Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

Note: ''these are my notes from our meeting in Redwood City at the Sofitel, jotted onto the laptop during the day â emphasis and interpretations mine. Often Iâve put the speakerâs name in front of a statement or comments. Please feel free to add, change, correct ,edit, enhance, expand and expound.''
--Dean Landsman

'''Jan 25 2007 VRM Meeting - Sofitel, Redwood City CA'''

This is the relationship market
User-centric identity
Relating through federating? (NB: tantamount to large companies having safe sex w each other using each others data)

The Giving up of Competition (or, Competition As We Know It) (â¦as They Know It)

Markets: 3 levels â transaction conversation relationship --- this is the totality of negotiation (no order required for these to prosper)

Markets can grow and thrive at any of three levels: '''transaction''', '''conversation''' and '''relationship'''.

Conversation â learn -- perceive value (buy or sell) via relationship

Markets as relationships (conversations morph into relationships)

''' Problem w/ CRM = vendor solely owns/determines the relationship '''

This meeting, this initiative: It is a development project, not just research

Populate the wiki with more stuff â coherence re whatâs going on â input from those of us here â add experience of group (developers, etc) to move concept forward

Are large sums of money fighting VRM? Room says perhaps, maybe not yet, perhaps VRM not engaged yet at monolith level . . . . Doc: none fight User-Centric ID

VRM tools = instruments of independence and identity â to enable engagement (w/ vendors). Customer becomes voluntary participant in a relationship, not a categorized objectified statistic.

Does ''relationship'' transcend ''fear'' & ''greed'' (as motivators for corporations)?

Brands & relationship increase profit â how to express relationship? Kaliyah: What are the protocols involved? Method of engagement?

Value for vendors -- visibility leads to better management

Price less relevant than relationship

Commodity goods ... Passion goods

Avery: Language â legal (liability) identity, contract relationships

**3 Tracks: 1.technical 2.Market 3. Language/Law

**Is there a DNS for VRM?

Joe: 1.relationship â 2. process & principles (a la microformats) 3. single entity or different solutions (personal health different from personal RFP) (Johannes: arenât they the same thing? The essence of functionality is the same)

Joe: Vendor discovery different from personal RFP, or *as* personal RFP. We need to enable around different domains

Doc: Necessity is the mother of invention; invention mother of necessity

Kevin: Microformats puts data in structure of html -- converge schemas, not like XML, not use this arbitrary schema â no need for import export scripts. â Re-use names of things in other microformats (name, address, these fields are the same, allows for consistency, a uniform set of terms, designations, etc.)

Drummond: relationships persist beyond transaction (brand = recall + relationship or perception) if relationship is about perception, then personal RFP is a small aspect. XRI is about another layer of indentifiers, standard of ID above DNS
XRI are to Uri as _________________ (''note: I missed this, couldnât hear'')
Persistent Identity === XRI can help â¦ FOCUS on advantages of cross references â semantics â markup identifiers XRIs are nanoformats --- synonym mgmt - XRI dictionaries to solve mapping problem

turns mapping into a service ---

Joe: ''mentioned domain name, redacted in the event Joe has not gone public with this yet'' (not populated yet)

Doc re search â can a VRM be the pony â¦ that which helps search? â package intentionality for results not for ad medium optimization

Can VRM improve the search experience?

Web: born w/o a directory â chaos requires glue (needles, haystacks) or specificityâ¦coherence
Self organizing?

Chris Carfi: vendor-customer --- relationship levels â control -- vendor driven or customer driven â purely transactional in nature (see Chrisâs matrix)

Lower left: push/vendor induced/consumer has no power/vendor managed predictive if/then bombardment

Joe : if a relationship is not expressed or expressable, then it is NOT a relationship

DFL: do not confuse relationship w/ perception

ChrisCarfi: âMeVilleâ reputable anonymity // personal RFP // payment systems // pure transaction in MeVille: vendor orgs maintain transaction history â how is this done in MeVille? Is it necessary? Control, not ownership â of data â who is responsible for maintaining this info? Access to records . . .

General discussion of credit card transactions as an example â¦ individual owning and/or having access to this data â the receipt and the charge card record
Joe: not just the charge, but the receipt with the line charges. Gabe: image transmission difficult

Drummond: xRDI = xri data interchange
Transaction summary w/ receipt â can be transited
XRI rcpt + dictionary service = properly coded data

ChrisCarfi: global village â customer interested in longer term relationshuip â about process, convenience, what it means, external issues --- passion, local merchant, PREFERENCES where price becomes a smaller component of the [purchase] decision.

CC: I want to offer a loyalty program to my vendors

CC: many facets to personal or professional identity

'''NOTES FROM NPR BREAKOUT DISCUSSION GROUP'''

Upcoming NPR meeting: âDoc as emissary from The Netâ public non commercial broadcasting

Doc: what are the mechanisms for making something work?
Net as inventory of progams
Aka Podcasts
K: Build an attention payerâ¦create a norm around giving â¦. A donation should go to the music and the program. On your listening device tracking exists, to record what user has downloaded -- aggregate this data, on a monthly basis distribute this to the artistsâ¦paid via the program producer to the artists, et al designate an amount, pay it out pro rata based on attn (listening) paid to programming

DL: all sorts of time/attention intent issues cloud this model â time is not a proper measure of attention, this is a failure of the basic ratings system as it presently exists, and may increase with the PPM

Soundexchange internet radio stations â metrics â repetitionâ

NPR Stations â need to increase revenues, increase communications backânâforth with their listeners ***and thus, the VRM model ***

Jake Shapiro Public Radio Exchange PRX â
Music brains K spoke with them about i-tags Robert Kaye
Microformat for media === metadata
Itags: generic tagging for rich media

Kaliyah: âI want to hang out with the TAL communityâ (TAL = This American Life)

radiolab.org

Kevinâs Mediagora (side discussion, relevant although ancillary)

----

Iain: Info in a shoebox â connected personal info service

1. Privacy preference service (like Do Not Call,across all channels)

2. RFP service -- 2 buckets of XML : I wish to buy, I wish to sell

3. iBroker NY & London â build an identity on the site of the individual that has some sense of identity

append existing âclub cardsâ to each other

----

Joeâs group â relationships & expressions â see Wiki [http://tinyurl.com/38ldr8]

'''TASKS, PLANS'''
Set up regular '''bi-weekly conference call''' (''note to self: take care of this'')
1:30 eastern Thursdays Feb 8th
'''Bold text'''
Growth Topics and areas of concentration:
Policy technology marketing
Use cases
Policy
Tracks

Derive policy requirements out of Cluetrain Manifesto

Desired outcome of VRM will become clear through use cases

David & Kaliya work on Open ID involvement
Group blog w/ RSS via Venus ( via David)
Define â Project VRM Definition VRM on wiki page (all contribute, group effort)
Domain brainstorm page (by domain we mean categories, not URLs!)
Brainstorm domains
Use case scenarios
Brett â use case process

Develop commonalities among umbrella categories from the use cases (technical and policy requirements, et al)

Joe domain = the main point â¦..I wanna work on that â letâs develop boundaries, specifics, etc.

--[[User:DeanLand|deanland]] 19:53, 7 February 2007 (EST)

Notes from VRM

2025-01-03T22:31:32Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

''Notes from the notetaker: There was so much covered and so much discussed on this day - I did not attempt to scribe the event. Alas, below are merely my own self-directed thoughts that emerged. Please add your own if you were present.'' -[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/?title=User:Khopper Keith Hopper]

'''Objective:'''

How can the public broadcasting audience member take greater control of their relationship with public media? (â¦and as the audience becomes the former audience, how does this relationship change?)

'''Background Thoughts:'''

* Relationship does not equal transaction â in envisioning a vendor relationship tool, we need to think beyond just financial transactions (e.g. donation software)
* Incremental, internal change is not what weâre looking for here. Instead, letâs identify new ideas for experimentation on the fringes of the industry. These ideas should allow individuals to flex their creative consumer muscles in this new participatory landscape. Existing public media, broadcasters, shows, and distributors will serve as the relationships, platform, and ethos to leverage
* Letâs not attempt to address or work inside the existing public broadcasting infrastructure â a better strategy might be to 'end-run' a solution that imagines new ideas from a variety of committed individuals and asks for permission from the stations, shows, and distributors to explore these ideas. If the ideas get traction, the existing players can get involved to their level of comfort and in the ways they see valuable
* There seems to be an overlap between what's going on in participatory culture and what exists in public broadcasting. The potential exists to tap a whole new generation of creative consumers who will 'discover' public broadcasting and want to adopt it for its potential as a non-commercial, open network designed explicitly to serve the public. Can we stimulate this adoption?
[[Image:public-radio-participation.jpg]]

* Can we reduce the friction of listener giving? Perhaps provide a capacity to donate directly to shows/programs?
* Project VRM shouldnât code software, but rather lay out ideas, standards, and support for others who can
* What's the device that will eventually replace the radio? How will this impact public radio and the relationship with the (former) listeners?
* What does the long tail of public media look like?
** Leverages democratized tools of production and redistributable media
** Leverages the cheap, fast, and widespread distribution of end-to-end environments and the benefits of aggregation
** Uses filter technology to drive demand down the tail
* If we were to reinvent public radio in an end-to-end environment like the internet, what would it look like? How would it compare to what exists, and what important differences might emerge? Can we fill those gaps?

'''Ideas for action:'''

* Make public radio the 'test project' for a vendor relationship management tool
* Provide a capacity for end-users to publish their iTunes playlists of public radio podcasts â provide a tool or environment that aggregates and features listener playlists
* Is there stuff we can do with RDS (or HD, PAD, etc.), such as publish texting codes for listeners to use in providing feedback or funding linked to specific stations, programs, and times?
* Use the existing NPR podcast directory as a platform for additional capability â specifically, experimentation with an online donation linked to podcasts
* Get a conversation or survey going with the end-users, mashup folks, or those formally known as the audience to get a better idea of needs/desires and to brainstorm ideas for creative production/control over public media
** As a creative consumer, what is it that I want to do with public media? What are my 'lego blocks'?
* Investigate a new model for a public radio station ''not'' centered on broadcast
** Embrace end-user control over programming, funding, content creation, and overall relationship
** Incorporate participatory programming direction (e.g. guest programmers, vote programs into timeslots, etc.)
** Incorporate online-only shows; act as test market for new shows
** Re-invent the traditional show model (ala Radio Open Source) to be truly conversational and participatory (What might this look like?)
** Use financial models like fundable.org to collect threshold capital to fund desired programming
** Use a small terrestrial station to carry stream and get CPB certification and permit audio use in podcasts (whatâs the secret, here?)
* Build a configurable and redistributable âuser-as-public-radio-stationâ model, integrating various streams and podcasts from around the web into a cohesive and personalized internet public radio station (e.g. KPR = Keith Public Radio)

VRM Hacker Session

2025-01-03T22:30:27Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

'''VRM Hacker Session in London, November 9th'''
Attendees: ''Doc Searls, Ben Laurie, Duncan Cragg, Alec Muffett, Alan Patrick, Alan Mitchell, Iain Henderson, Dave Shaw, Adriana Lukas''

the minimum requirement - flexible enough to built on top of it

* structured goop,
* two way links, and
* access control

-> that's the infrastructure level

access management

underpinning of vrm is structured goop, two way links, access control

Alec's comments in italics throughout the document:

what is the minimum technical requirement that we can specify to create one or many different VRM tools?

we suspect that we will need:

an ontology to describe purchases, objects, anything ... (slang: "structured goop", existing in "blobs" - probably XML)

a syntax and means to describe bidirectional links between objects (so that B knows it is a child of A, and A knows it is a parent of B)
access control of some sort

where do you draw line, single ownership objects and then what we will see is a construct made of lots of single ownership objects

there is an open issue of object ownership; whether a data object ("blob of goop") can/should have multiple owners at a given time

what you do â make any progress- ontology

I want wifi on the plane, how do say that â has to be machine readable

does it have to be machine readable from the start?

the ontology challenge could be huge; for instance if you want to describe that a particular airplane journey provided wifi, how are you going to define that in a machine-readable manner? it would seem impractical to expect some committee to create a series of pre-ordained flags to be create which can describe everything the user wishes to describe. can we / should we ignore the issue of machine-readability at the outset, or might it be better to leave the matter of description open, eg: by designing space for a folksonomy of tags, or some other open-ended means of description?

Next question â how do you express what you want? Objects, data

smaller subdivisions â what's in it

structure â tools UI stuff, it has to produce something

make the UI unstructured but the underlying data structured

some data should have meta data â book has ISBN

QR codes â idea

agree piece of structure,

suck this info into my database

support rich data structures â will arrive by consensus, book author, date of publication, ISBN

when it comes to absolute description of objects, or (more concisely) "binding" a blob of goop to a specific object, then the obvious thing to do is leverage ISBN codes, UPC/Barcodes, and other unique identifiers like those which exist in the real world; referencing them either directly, or in some coded format (XRI?) in the blobs of goop.

click on a page of restaurant and see who from my network commented on it â I want a handle on what they are saying, filter - meta data that says stuff about the data, so I can look at it and context

we imagine that VRM tools will be able to draw together the many blobs of goop which reference the same objects, eg: the many reviews (each, a blob) which refer to a specific restaurant; the tools will provide the ability to search and collate, aggregate and present these blobs in an accessible manner.

* two-way links: protocol for referencing data â http or something â micro web

highly rigid two ways links to stick, URI vs URL

freenet, mutual pointers between pieces data, common information about things, Doc's fave example travel, hotel - my representation of the hotel links to Adriana's representation of the hotel.

The price we pay for distributed information/data not platforms?

the "blobs of goop" are an atomic data format, they should be able to be exchanged and manipulated without dependency upon other larger data structures; however there will likely still be a need to represent hierarchical relatiopnships between blobs; since the objects are atomic, their parent/child hierarchical relations need to be cited in both objects, ie: bidirecionally; a parent cites its children, and a child knows its parent.

Open APIs don't solve the cross-system links? Duncan's point about presentation at google on 8th November

We are taking data away from the silos but the same issues will be there â distributed access

OpenID â works on multiple sites, profile level,

selective disclosure â trusted entities, two proofs are linked together

* structured goop: ontology (Dewey decimal system) [is an example of] how we talk about any subject (eg: wine), assuming creation of an agreement, common understanding or framework for the data, less than language, way of dividing and classifying data, so we can communicate â machine readable => we have to agree that how to express data/facts about a thing

cloud of all variables generated by centralised system but by users

in other words there is an easy way to create a "blob of goop" without requiring some committee to create a DTD which describes the comfort of an airline flight; instead the "blob of goop" is just a container that is described by a bunch of tags which evolve under a folksonomy, ie: are neither pre-defined nor bounded. An interesting concept which arose during the meeting was that a blob could - in addition to the tags which describe it - could contain a "payload" of data held in whatever microformat is most convenient and popular to contain the pertinent, object-specific data. "Blobs" would thus become ubiquitous wrappers for exchange of data payloads (in arbitrary formats) whilst tagging them for indexing, retrieval and to cite authorship, etc.

XRI guys will be at the event in california

extra layer of problem, we are going to define this system of categories, we'll do is pass around tokens and someone else will define it for you â meta data

categories for various objects/data

humans can deal with multiple frames of reference â but computers need a more unified frame of reference

too many things to describe

ontology will emerge? [ie: folksonomy]

Personal RFP? Number â looking it up on the website, I want that

here's a verbal description, clunky

looking for video camera on ebay â different spellings, hyphen

As ever, the challenge to finding what you want on google, ebay, etc, is to work out how someone else will have typed the name of the thing you want - TRV900, TRV/900, TRV-900, TRV900E, ... are all the same video camera, but only if you are a human being who can weave your way through the ambiguity of different naming; some means of disambiguating product lookup would be really beneficial to online purchasers...

something very discrete â looking for something specific, not search query

if a vague search query marketers will crowd in and promise to find you something like this and all your friends will recommend!

Start with specifics â car parts that deal with it, centralise info and email you back

[ie: the story about companies which exist and add value by presenting a single point of contact to a bunch of junkyards; the company will forward your request for (some specific auto-part) to a bunch of junkyards, and let you know who can supply it for you; the junkyards benefit because they get specific queries phrased in terms they can understand, the buyers benefit from saving time; this also happens in the secondhand book market ]

Harvard business schools â MBA students who came back to school â remake the car industry from customers side

social web thing â I don't want to enter what I know about hotels, cross-silo standardisation

no federation across silos

point of integration, the patient is the best side

at the dispersal side â multiple providers, any personal information, that needs to be formalised

is it pull or push?

Define VRM as a social network?

Creator of Jabber â Jeremy, approach to search â distributed way

DTD â template, name, location, price, tagged

CRM it's minimisation of information

high speed internet or not in hotels â tags that orbitz can pick up

four airlines got together â competed with travelocity and expedia

every hotel has its own CRM system â communications are very screwy

different things about connectivity

turn obsessives into search â architect a data system

in long run we need is a common practice, community of practice â mini-communities

how we do routinise, the activities of individuals coalescing about specific activities

first order is you contributing to order and find the hotel I want, how that finds its way into a formal system, that's big enough to call market place and how to change CRM systems to give you more granular information

Open social â trying to do the same thing, sneak that stuff into VRM

the architecture â I belong to many things or want to relate, doesn't have to be linkedIn, Facebook or MySpace but it can be Doc's space or Adriana space

Facebook is evil, facebook mark up language â the old silo, lock-in trick

Proof-Of-Concept Thought-Experiment: create a human-readable microformat to describe a (for instance) hotel stay; get lots of people to post their review (using this microformat) to their existing blogs as standalone articles (blobs of goop) ensuring they tag the postings appropriately, including the tag HOTELVRM. Use Technorati/Google to access, aggregate and search all HOTELVRM postings in the entire world, and a custom AJAX application to present the microformat data in a more attractive manner. Object interrelationships would be implemented via "trackbacks" and comments could be added to the original posting. You would never want to /do/ it like this, of course, but the above gedanken demonstrates the some of the desirable traits - sharing, syndication, aggregation, search, tagging folksonomy (SHERATON, HILTON, SMELLYROOM, BADFOOD, GOODSERVICE) etc... You are mostly missing access control.

the moment you control your personal data â how you get the data shared, how to get ben and alec excited, we have to talk about how to stop it from being shared

the best way to predict the future is to prevent it [Doc quoting someone else]

we are not codifying beer or wine or car part, we won't see wars like around RSS

what are we going to talk about â if the market is going to do that, what's the easier way to do that

answer â reuse shit

Micro Web

P2P, microformats, people, reviews, calendars

user at the centre of the whole thing

if you want to leave it to the market?

Bottom up, people know stuff already you are getting them try to describe it

how about using micro-format for a car part website

nuggets of informations, micro-formats?

Don't sit down with OASIS

viable conversation between Alec, Alan P and Duncan â ask about later!!!

encoded blobs â can you stop that working?

blobelicious

Alec: I think there are three major ways to address the matter of "blobs" ontology - what they should look like, and what they contain:
1) throw the whole thing over to committee, to come up with new DTDs to describe each and every thing VRM might ever want to describe. <object class=teaspoon metal=silver style=baroque,ornate />
2) create a "container" format which exists mostly to provide structure to tags which are created by the users, pure folksonomy (<tag>spoon teaspoon silver pretty spooooon baroquespoon</tag>)

3) as for 2) but make space to employ pertinent microformats.

<blob>

<email>adriana@bigblog.net</email>

<comment>i really like this spoon, i am heartbroken to sell it</comment>

<payload format="uSpoon(Antique)1.0" encoding=raw>

=spoon,value/1000,baroque/47,metal/silver,tarnish+coefficent=42,TZ/UTC+1=

</payload>

</blob>

...my personal bet is that the answer lies between numbers 2 and 3, and that number 1 is impractical. If microformats exist, then reusing them makes sense as the communities of interest will see VRM as a way of querying, swapping and discussing their favourite things.

Doc likes the fact that "long get" is involved in Micro Web â two stage transaction

medical records â form I get as a copy, scan it, card that points to a database

trusted places, surgery, hospital â health authority â custody

disclosure â allow not for profit social enterprises

nobody will trust a profit company

standardised or common way of gather data â this is what you bring to the hospital

product IB â patient needs to be the point of integration for multiple treatments, devices and product

they are siloed in diabetes â take a disease

create the receiving end of VRM organisation â couple of employees tasked with creating with interface

integration â reasonable set of variables facing a patients, list of all things that are JNJ and that are not JNJ

helping the patient formalise to be at the centre

inclusive of doctor-patient relationship

geriatric medicine some VRM mechanism that makes it easier for patient and his doctors to integrate all that records and data

having the patient at the point of integration â from one department to another without any communication â that's happens all the time

triangulation of multiple specialities

they clicked and somebody said, that might be something or other

patients cross fertilise different communities of practice

House series â interesting show because you have doctor who can puzzle things because he is a cross-specialist

can turn every doctor into a House guy

from J&J perspective:
1. look for areas of business where customer data and shared access to it would make a difference to the business itself and its operations, product development, distribution etc
2. look for areas of business where there already is access to data and how it can be enhanced by VRM, what business benefits that would have
3. look for communities related to 1. & 2.
4. familiarise yourself with new approaches and the net dynamics - open source, long tail, attention economy, identity, VRM etc
5.

Doctors might hate the idea â response might be there is too much info to patients, self-diagnoses

you can only help by informing them

Security requirements for VRM include the standard model

1) authentication: the ability to establish an 'identity' for each user of the system
2) authoristion: the ability to establish capabilities/privileges which are strongly bound to an each identity, eg: ability to read, write, or delete blobs...
3) integrity: the ability to protect blobs against modification/forgery/amendments, eg: by use of digital signatures bound to identities
4) secrecy/privacy: the implementation of access controls of data at rest or in motion, so that blobs cannot be read by those without authorisation

Two architectures for implementation of the security model were suggested:
a 'fortress' model, where those who desire access to data must successfully authenticate themselves to the data repository before retrieval.
a 'broadcast' model, where data is broadcast, unicast or published but under encryption, where only those with authorisation possess keys for access

distributed just coz it's sexy? It's a necessary because it's more resilient

Alec: basically the discussion was about: should we consider making a VRM pilot and simplify our lives by making the assumption that the database would be wholly centralised; the answer to that was an emphatic NO; the reason being that working from a perspective of "the data is centralised in a fortress" will lead to thinking that will never be able to accommodate a distributed architecture; whereas there is nothing to prevent an architecture which is capable of distribution in a wholly or partly centralised matter, as a convenience. In short: the web-browser would never have been invented had someone elected to ignore the distributed nature of the Web; instead, they would have merely yet again reinvented the file-browser. So: DESIGN IT DISTRIBUTED, TEST IT DISTRIBUTED, BUT IMPLEMENT IT HOWEVER YOU CHOOSE.

personal data stores â data objects

design it around one big machine everyone will talk to â you are predetermining design

if you design breakable because then it doesn't matter because there are enough distributed machines, VRM lifestyle â approach â embracing distributed model will save a lot of pain in the long run

client- server? Duncan's reminder

P2P solution?

Virgin not trusted because private company, social enterprises trusted more

regulated

trusted storage â telcos, banks, private, public?

QUANGO

where do you stick the data?

credit boom started â CRM was started by financial industry handling a number of customers due to increased demand

flacking â helping to sell something via third party â use and abuse of trust

who would you trust as a company to held your keys?

March 05 2008 Conference Call

2025-01-03T22:29:26Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

==Conference Call Notes==
Drafted by Christopher Carfi, March 5, 2008 
Added to by Adriana Lukas, March 5, 2008 
Edited ever so sightly by Dean Landsman, March 5, 2008

==IRC==
#vrm at chat.freenode.net

==Other Calls==
[[Category:conference call]]
[[:Category:conference call]]

==Attendees==
* Dean Landsman
* Adriana Lukas
* Bart Stevens
* Charles Andres
* Iain Henderson
* Christopher Carfi
* Keith Hopper
* Brett McDowell
* Joe Andrieu
* Drummond Reed

==Previous Action Items==
#Send query on email list about use of main list. Is that working better? - Joe - By Friday Feb 22, 2008
#First draft position paper - Dean - By Friday Feb 29, 2008.

==Notes==

===Vision Committee (Dean)===

*Ven diagram of individual and enterprise perspectives - the overlap should be larger that than the spare space; much should be shared although different angles
*Chris joined that group (visions committee) as he understands CRM and its beginnings
*how code would end up coming into or out of the vision
*next Wednesday afternoon (12th March) a meeting with, Doc, Keith, Chris and Sean in Cambridge â incorporating user and the enterprise â coding something very vaguely,
*at the moment too many definitions, bunch of discussions in lots of places
*need to have some degree of definition otherwise VRM becomes kind of where CRM is i.e. fragmented.

Bart: flagged up a paper about next level of CRM by O'Reilly, which mentions VRM and Doc Searls, business values for a consumer and a value for a vendor
Dean: VRM is not just business

===Standards Committee (Joe)===

* Drummond and Joe have looked at multiple ways to "name" the users of VRM for the first use case
* Challenge: Who is the "user" and the conflict with "user-centrism"
* Resolved -- Broken out to "actors" (people or systems, eg. vendor or individual) and "roles" (e.g. "adressee," who manages his address in the system)
* Will be looking at the specific Use Cases for the Personal Address Manager service.

===Organization Committee (Doc)===
* Dean will wheedle.

===Usage Committee (Adriana)===
* Trying to organize people to get together F2F - regular monthly [http://vrmhub.pbwiki.com/ VRM Hub meetings]
* Doing monthly get-togethers in London
* Organizing a smaller gathering on 15April in London (goal: identify problems that VRM can address for real people)
* "I don't talk to companies, I talk to people within companies" - connecting people who might be interested in the concepts of VRM
* Goal - open doors

===Compliance Committee (Iain)===
* One option on table to outsource compliance to Liberty Alliance, but more discussion needed.

===Events===
* European Meeting last week - part of monthly VRM Hub social meetings in London. [http://vrmhub.pbwiki.com/March+meeting+sign+up Next one] is on 27th March, 2008.

* [http://vrmhub.pbwiki.com/Scratch+your+VRM+itch Scratch your VRM Itch], '''15-April-2008''' in London - Adriana
** For those who have been following VRM for a while
** For those who want to make VRM work
** For users, no agenda, user-driven
** Sort of like IIW, but without presentations
** Most attendees will already know each other
** Approximately 35 attendees

* Upcoming EU Identity Conference in Munich
** 22April to 25April
** "VRM day" will likely be 22April

* June Workshop - still trying to set dates, likely in Boston

===Open Discussion===

* Dean is looking for examples of VRM or things that are like VRM, even if those examples predate the term VRM itself in order to start a file of these examples.
** [http://eventful.com/demand Eventful Demand ] - aggregate user demand to find enough value to have performers show up

* IT and such
** Dean spoke with Kevin Marks re the right team of Google people looking at Google Groups (our difficulties may be a test case for Google to repair some of the errors and mishaps that seem to plague ours, and perhaps others', group functions)
** It appears people are signed/signed up, but can't sign in; sometimes those already signed up just disappear; e-mail seems to be haphazard in reaching some but never the entirety of a subgroup

* Overlap with [http://www.dataportability.org Data Portability]
** Both need to start with user
** Adriana and Joe have had interactions with the DP group

===Action Items===
* Dean to connect with Doc regarding date for VRM June Workshop
** Note: Last year, there was much VRM interest at the Supernova conference. Supernova this year runs 16-Jun through 18-Jun in San Francisco

==Next Meeting==
[[March 19 2008 Conference Call]]

VRM vision

2025-01-03T22:29:25Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_Relationship_Management Customer Relationship Management]. VRM describes a set of tools, technologies and services that help individuals go to market and manage relationships with vendors. In turn, vendors who align themselves to these tools, technologies and services will have the opportunity to build better relationships with their customers.

The goal of VRM is to improve the relationship between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to relate to the latter. In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders and not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace.

== Principles ==

VRM recognizes a series of principles <ref>[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2008/07/09/because-principles-are-good-to-have/ "Because principles are good to have"], ProjectVRM Blog, 2008-07-16</ref>
. These are:
# VRM provides tools for customers to manage relationships with vendors. These tools are personal. They can also be social, but they are personal first.
# VRM tools are are customer tools. They are driven by the customer, and not under vendor control. Nor to they work only inside any one vendorâs exclusive relationship environment.
# VRM tools relate. This means they engage vendorsâ systems (e.g. CRM) in ways that work for both sides.
# VRM tools support transaction and conversation as well as relationship.
# With VRM, customers are the central âpoints of integrationâ for their own data.
# With VRM, customers control their own data. They control the data they share, and the terms on which that data is shared.
# With VRM, customers can assert many things. Among these are requests for products or services, preferences, memberships, transaction histories and terms of service.
# There is no limit on the variety of data and data types customers can hold â and choose to share with vendors and others on grounds that the customer controls.
# VRM turns the customer, and productive customer-vendor relationships, into platforms for many kinds of businesses.
# VRM is based on open standards, open APIs and open code. This will support a rising tide of activity that will lift an infinite variety of business boats, and other social goods.

== History ==
CRM systems for the duration have borne the full burden of relating with customers. VRM will provide customers with the means to bear some of that weight, and to help make markets work for ''both'' vendors and customers in ways that don't require the former to "lock in" the latter.

''TODO â details for this section:
* Where name came from
* Where idea came from (relationship with the Cluetrain Manifesto)
** Core concepts & shifting landscape: Internet increasing alienation between consumer and vendor, etc.
* How VRM has helped leverage (and tries to see ahead of) ideas being worked on in the identity space, etc.
''

== Problems With CRM ==
CRM, as originally envisaged, was a reasonably attractive proposition to the end customer. The idea was that an organisation would build a more complete view of the customer across their many touchpoints (retail, phone, email, events, etc.), and then, via investing in software, changing culture, and integrating marketing, sales and service, the organization would be able to be more responsive to the customers needs and provide more satisfying sales and service.

However, more often than not, organisations underestimated the cost of the cultural change â or decided (wrongly) they could do without it. Many also tended to focus more on the cost saving potential of the new technologies than the relationship improvement potential. But one structural problem emerged to surpass all the tactical issues with the vision or how it was deployed: ''it is impossible for any one organisation to build a comprehensive view of their customer''. Some, with great effort, can build a complete view of THEIR OWN relationship with a customer; but they will still be largely unaware of the many other supply relationships that the customer typically maintains (over 100 would not be unusual).

Only the individual, when given access to the necessary tools and processes, can create anything approaching a complete view of their supply requirements.

== Project VRM ==

''TODO â details for this section:
* Berkman Center - Steering Committee
* Doc Searls, Champion
* Objectives
''

== Challenges for VRM ==
For VRM to work, vendors must have a reason to value it, and customers must have reasons to invest the necessary time, effort and attention to making it work. Solving this "chicken-and-egg" problem for both sides is the primary challenge for VRM.

''TODO â details for this section:
* Iconoclastic anti-vendor perception
* Need killer apps
''

== VRM Capabilities & Standards ==

Following are some of the generic capabilities listed at the [http://projectvrm.org Project VRM website] that are anticipated to emerge as part of VRM adoption.

=== Personal Data Stores ===

This is a generic term for one or more services that help individuals gather, store, protect, analyze, share and use information describing themselves, their relationships, their transactions, and their intentions.

VRM envisions that personal data stores will become the means by which individuals plan, administer and organize many aspects of their daily lives as well as conduct interactions and transactions with vendors. With personal data stores, individuals will be able to pull together their own:

* Administrative records and details
* Contact databases: friends, family, colleagues etc.
* Transaction histories: products and services purchases, etc.
* Interaction histories: records of correspondence
* Supplier data ('my doctor', 'my plumber', etc.)
* Personal preferences e.g. 'favored' brands and organizations vs 'blacklisted' brands and organizations
* Plans for life projects (trips, moving home etc)
* Information gathered and collected to help inform decisions and actions about all the above.

=== Personal Data Analytics ===

Just as vendors mine and analyse the data in their CRM systems to better understand their customers, individuals will be able to mine and analyse the VRM data in their own personal data stores to better understand their needs and make better buying decisions. Personal data analytics can help users:

* Track trends such as personal spending, calorie intake, household energy usage, car mileage, etc.
* Use 'people like you' comparisons to highlight areas where their resources could be better managed.
* Anticipate and understand spending changes after major life events, such as marriage, having children, getting divorced, etc.

=== Request for Proposal (RFP) ===

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a message sent from an individual to a company, set of companies, or marketplace declaring the individual's need for a product or service. RFPs are a "reverse market" where customers publish their needs/requirements/specifications and vendors can respond with their offer/price/terms. This creates an environment where the consumer has a direct the product or solution, as opposed to accepting a solution that by it's very nature is advantageous to the vendor.

RFPs can range from simple commodity requests (e.g. insurance renewal, new lawnmower, laptop computer) to specifications for products or services that do not even exist yet. They can take many forms:

* ''One-to-one'', where a named individual sends his request directly to one or more named companies
* ''Aggregated'', where multiple individuals' requests are collated and passed on to companies by an intermediary. Companies then respond to these RFPs either on an individual or collective basis.
* ''Anonymized'', where an intermediary informs a company or set of companies that a specific number of customers are seeking out a particular product or service, but access is only provided through the intermediary until a transaction is closed.

=== Permissions Management and Reverse Messaging ===

Though "permission marketing" has become a buzzword, in practice it has not lived up to its hype. True permission management must put the individual fully in control, allowing them to specify the "rules of engagement" for marketing relationships and to maintain that control over time.

Permissions management covers both receiving information and releasing information on a timely and relevant basis. In the former case, for example, an individual may be planning to buy a new car in June. He could specify his willingness to receive messages about new cars, in a specific price bracket, from specific brands/dealers, in the months of April and May, but be assured that all such communications will cease June 1. This is also called "reverse messaging", and its success hinges completely on the individual's confidence that they have 100% control over the reverse messaging channel, i.e., they can fine tune it or shut it off just as they can with their TV. This can be accomplished using specially-generated addresses (such as a custom email or instant messaging address) whose lifespan is controlled by the user.

Individuals can also choose what data to release to what vendors, for what purposes, on what terms and conditions. For example, a person may want to release information about:

* Medical history and lifestyle, to health researchers, on an anonymous basis, for free, for the purposes of cancer research.
* Their current inventory of hardware and software, to a specialist retailer/reseller, on a named but once-only use basis, for the purposes of advice on solving a computing problem or buying a new peripheral.
* Clothing and cosmetic brand preferences, on an anonymous basis, to marketing companies, in return for a fee.

=== Power of Attorney Services ===

Many aspects of managing a supply relationship are tedious and time-consuming, such as renewing insurance or performing scheduled maintainance on a vehicle. As a result many buyers settle for something far from the best value just to avoid the hassle.

With power of attorney services, individuals can give buying agents permission to act on their behalf, within certain parameters, without the need for specific detailed negotiation. For example, the individual may give power of attorney to the agent to sweep the market for best prices for insurance contracts with equivalent terms, one month before their current contract is due to come to an end.

=== Problem Solving Communities (PSCs) ===

Before purchasing a product or service, individuals often need to answer a long series of questions, such as:

* What are the available options?
* What things do I need to do achieve my desired outcome?
* How do I do x or y?
* What are the hidden pitfalls that I ought to be aware of?
* Who can I trust?
* Which is better for somebody in my circumstances, option A or option B?

Although online and offline services exist to help individuals in some cases, often the best source of information is other individuals facing the same decision. Problem solving communities tap this potential by collecting answers other people have discovered and making them available, avoiding the need for each new individual to reinvent the wheel.

VRM has the potential to bring real economies of scale to this process.
If it costs $100 to research and formulate a good answer to a certain question, then it adds $100 to the cost of the product or service in question. But if the same answer is used 1000 times over, the unit cost falls from $100 to $0.1: a productivity boost of 99.9%.

=== Personal Scenario Planning ===

Lastly, there are some events in our lives which few of us encounter often enough to become expert at handling them: getting married or divorced, moving, organizing a trip round the world, coping with a life threatening illness or accident, surviving the death of partner, etc.

Scenario Planning is like a specialized type of problem solving community. It identifies best practices, pitfalls to watch out for, and other essential knowledge about a key life event. For example, if you are getting married, a scenario planning service can help you organize details such as venue, ceremony, invites, attire, presents, catering, travel, honeymoon, etc.

Since many of these decisions involve vendor relationships, scenario planning can integrates many of the other components of VRM systems, bringing them all to bear to simplify what can otherwise be an overwhelming set of choices in a short period of time.

== Related Initiatives ==

=== Internet Identity ===
VRM is closely related to Internet identity for the simple reason that in order to control their own data and relationships across vendors, users must be able to assert their identity independent from any particular vendor relationship.

Widely known as "user-centric identity", this field includes technologies such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID OpenID], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-cards information cards (i-cards)], the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgins_project Higgins Project], and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDI XDI]. All of these technologies seek to provide users with a way to control their identity, data, and relationships without dependence on any one vendor or service provider.

=== Data Portability (DP) ===

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataPortability Data portability] seeks to do for all forms of data what [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number_portability telephone number portability] has done for phone numbers. DP promotes the ability for users to move and share their identity, contacts, photos, videos, or any other form of personal data from one website or web service to another. Like Internet identity, data portability is essential to VRM because without it, users can be "locked in" to vendor relatioships and restricted from full freedom-of-choice.

=== Relationship Cards (R-Cards) ===

Relationship cards, commonly called r-cards, are a new type of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-cards information card (i-card)] developed by the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgins_project Higgins Project] that enable automated data sharing relationships. R-cards can instantiate any type of relationship â person-to-person, person-to-vendor, or vendor-to-vendor â and can be used to share and automatically synchronize changes to any type of data, from an email address to an loyalty points balance to a wedding gift registry.

See the details under the Wikipedia [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-cards i-card] entry.

== VRM Example Uses ==

''TODO â details of this section.''
List practical, leading examples of best proposed uses for VRM. Link to Use Cases (if any)
* Personal Address Manager
''

== VRM Companies ==

''TODO â details of this section.''
Companies, sellers, vendors all may have existing examples of VRM. Please post them here.
''

== Additional Links ==
* [[VRM FAQ]]

== References ==
<references />

Standards Committee Teleconference 2008 05 21

2025-01-03T22:29:06Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

==Standards Committee Teleconference Call Notes==
Drafted by Joe Andrieu, May 21, 2008

==Other Calls==
[[Category:Standards Committee Teleconferences]]
[[:Category:Standards Committee Teleconferences]]

==Attendees==
* Joe Andrieu
* Iain Henderson
* Asa Hardcastle

==Previous Action Items==
None.

==Notes==

===IIW===
# Session on PAM w/ Asa
## Language
### AddressOwner instead of Addressee
## Diagrams
# Asaâs Change of Address implementation
## Authorization points
### Login
### Check attributes they want (authorize)
#### Visibility to required data
#### http://www.cryp18.com
#### Ideally spoofable/customizable
#### Always provide?
## Identity Governance (permissions & rights)
### Trust Index (from Iain)
#### European privacy laws
#### 12 items
# r-card
## udi as dereferenceable claim
## selector as point of authorization for multiple cards

===PAM===
Next steps:
# Scenarios
# Customer Journey
# Asa & Diagrams

==Action Items==
# AddressOwner change on PAM Site â Joe by Monday 5/26
# Customer Journey on Wiki â Iain by Monday 5/26
#F irst draft diagram â Asa by Monday 5/26

==Next Meeting==
[[Standards Committee Teleconference 2008 06 04]]

Standards Committee Teleconference 2008 06 04

2025-01-03T22:28:53Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

==Standards Committee Teleconference Call Notes==
Drafted by Joe Andrieu, June 4, 2008

==Other Calls==
[[Category:Standards Committee Teleconferences]]
[[:Category:Standards Committee Teleconferences]]

==Attendees==
* Joe Andrieu
* Iain Henderson
* Asa Hardcastle
* Eva Maler

==Previous Action Items==
# AddressOwner change on PAM Site â Joe by Monday 5/26
# Customer Journey on Wiki â Iain by Monday 5/26
#F irst draft diagram â Asa by Monday 5/26

==Agenda==
#Set Agenda
#Review Action Items
#Asa's diagrams
#R-card
#PAM Next Steps (especially re: July)
#Action Items

==Notes==
===Action Items===
Asa got his done real quick. Joe's was a bit late (late last night). Iain hopes to get his done this week. Will be an action item this week.

===Asa's Diagrams===
Asa set out to map out the roles fit together and reduced and simplified to clarify the core architecture.

The UPS delivery use case is enabled by a /different/ delivery service. So that a vendor requesting "an address" may be really asking "how do I deliver to you?", which is really discovery of the delivery service.

===R-Card===
Identity mash up with r-card creation as permission provisioning within selector?

Multiple end-points at the claim level is a design goal.

Also need to provide an explicit interface for managing permissions and data at times other than login. Login is conceptually an easy point for a service provider to ask for claims, but it isn't really the ideal place to manage claims. You don't want to have to log in to all of your vendors to manage their permissions. Note that the Liberty People Service is exactly that: an interface for managing permissions at the individual /and/ group level.

==Action Items==
# Customer journey for PAM on wiki -- Iain -- by next Friday
# Queue up email post on r-card blog -- Joe -- by Friday
# Blog post follow on -- Eve -- by Monday
# PAM review & diagram integration meeting -- Asa -- by next Friday

==Next Meeting==
[[Standards Committee Teleconference 2008 06 18]]

Link to Drummond Reed explanation of each R-button state

2025-01-03T22:26:36Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

5Nov2008

On todayâs VRM Standards call, Joe and Asa explained to me the conclusion reached on the last R-Button call that an r-button should be tri-state:

1) Nothing lit up: open (off/completely greyed out)

2) Lit up: open

3) Lit up: closed

Having missed the end of last weekâs R-Button call and not knowing that tri-state was the conclusion, I had posted yesterday an endorsement of the idea that the Left-Side (User) and Right-Side (Vendor) halves of the button should be able to be lit up independently. That reflects the initial five-state conception:

1) Nothing lit up: open (off/completely greyed out)

2) Only left side lit up: open

3) Only right side lit up: open

4) Both sides lit up: open

5) Both sides lit up: closed

So I went into todayâs call thinking that five-state was still an option. Furthermore, one good use case for state #3 (right side lit up: open) was when a user wanted to initiate a relationship with a vendor but the vendor was not âin the systemâ yet, so the userâs only option was to initiate a âproxyâ relationship via a relationship service provider that could subsequently be âdiscoveredâ by the vendor.

However after talking it over with Joe and Asa, I now see why tri-state was the conclusion last week (and why we should stick with it). I volunteered to send this email to the list just to save others from having to run through the same analysis time after time.

What it comes down to is the question of âaffordanceâ: what does the button actually indicate to you, the user, what you can do? In the tri-state model, itâs very simple:

1) Nothing lit up: open ==> no relationship actions are available

2) Lit up: open ==> relationship actions are available but none have been taken yet

3) Lit up: closed ==> at least one relationship action has been taken

When you ask the same affordance question of the five-state model, the mental model gets much more complicated:

1) Nothing lit up: open ==> no relationship actions are available from either side

2) Only left side lit up: open ==> user-defined relationship actions are available but none have been taken yet

3) Only right side lit up: open ==> vendor-defined relationship actions are available but none have been taken yet

4) Both sides lit up: open ==> both user- and vendor-defined relationship actions are available but none have been taken yet

5) Both sides lit up: closed ==> at least one relationship action has been taken

Not only does this require the user to understand the conceptual difference between user-defined relationship actions and vendor-defined relationship actions, but the problem remains that once the user takes ANY action, the button closes and the user has no way of knowing whether it was a user-defined action or a vendor-defined action.

Net net: Joe, Asa, and I agreed that it would be much simpler to stick to the tri-state model for the r-button itself, and then present the range of actions â which may vary anywhere from simple user-defined options (âopen a proxyâ) to simple vendor-defined options (âbuy thisâ) to extremely rich options (an entire right-button menu) via a context-sensitive menu displayed by the local relationship agent.

Hope this helps,

=Drummond

User Driven Services

2025-01-03T22:25:36Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

User Driven Services â Joe Andrieu

Introduced a series of blog posts for user driven services
See blog: [http://blog.joeandrieu.com/]

Issues that arose that led to the idea of user driven services to tackle the general issues of interactions between individuals and a system

See blog for definitions

But in general â a System is something built for a particular goal

User is an individual â not a computer an actual individual

Services is an interaction that creates value

User driven service definition

âServices that maximize value creation by maximizing user control and authority.â

There are a spectrum of possibilities

And there is a continuum of âuser driven servicesâ

You could argue that Google, for instance, is very user drivenâ¦ on a first order level

But they donât conform to many of the characteristics

# impulse form the User
# Control
# Transparcncy
# Data portability
# Service endpoint portability
# Self hosting
# User generativity
# Improvability
# Self-managed identity
# Duty of Care

Question - what do you see as the value of adding all these criteria over the relatively random stuff thatâs going on

Answer from Joe â this is the basis for many conversations. And the conversation regarding VRM was always future. User-driven gives a way to ground it in specific instancesâ¦ like whether a mobile app to tie into a company internet, he wanted to make it more user-driven.

Weâre part of a huge transformation of our society, started with The Enlightenmentâ¦ just figuring out what it means on the internet

Doc: the problem comes up even since Ben Franklinâ¦

Added it includes time travelâ¦ The pace of correspondence is so much faster

Added 4th party discussion makes it more easy to define crisply and clearly

Now we need to define what âfouth party isâ because âvrm is not about user-driven, itâs about how the end-statement changes everything.â Itâs transformational if you can address the end-state

User-driven has instances. Whereas Fourth-party is a category of participant or service provider (not always acting on behalf of the user)

Google figures that they would win in the âopenâ game with their semantic labeling and they expose their APIs to let them

Joe â for Switchbook, we think our algorithms are better.

Issue raised â âUser driven works for some ?? and not othersâ¦

Doc says â the characteristics define a number of bullets that dictate how you let people in without locking them in and locking them down.

Joe â like Umar Haque (phonetic)â¦

He has some this and shares the core tenet that, weâre not doing a moral argument. Weâre coming from the idea that thereâs money left on the table because of faster response time and less waste.

Itâs economically stupid to do it the old way.

Service enpoint portability â you can change service provider without anyting falling apart

Self-hosting = you control the dagt

User-generative = means that the user should be able to add value

Improvability is the âAâ in NEAâ¦

Self managed ID â to be dealt with

Duty of care

Docâs question â who does this apply to? Different users may attach more or less importance to each one

But the service provider has to do them all and be responsive to all requirements and maintain sustainable advantageâ¦ But not locking people in.

1) reprise: Impulse of user - this is not about data miningâ¦ it is about the system responding to a gesture of intent.

The internet is really good at this.

Q: is this really targeting individualsâ¦ The service needs to be at the architectural level and this is about an individual interacting with a service (that could be a 4th party interacting with a 2nd party on behalf of the first party)

E.g. that will come up is a personal RFPâ¦ but it might benefit from group interaction because it could be group buying

e.g. might be eBay because it aggregates a whole lot of sellers.

Alan Mitchell â says that your describing a cell that interacts with a larger organismâ¦

A: This is the pattern of behaviors that make the cell survivable for the organism to live. Itâs that system level that Iâm trying to describe

Doc: a distinction is that we start with the individual (cell) how do we give it the right nutrients to support VRM, not just consumer â like Consumer Reports. Thatâs not are starting point.

Joe: itâs part of our Jui Jitsuâ¦ where we shift the weight.

Don Marti talks about the upside down buyers guide â putting the buyers in control

2) control â Users control the servicesâ¦ E.g. can

Control is not a great word â but the gang put that down. Users should have control

Also comment that service provider should respect the directives of the user.

Issue is whether this expects too much of the user. You could also grant it to tohers.

Doc â we are pouring all sort of responsibility on the usersâ¦ BUT SO ARE VENDORS â with self-service and all. But then again, we can make control as simple as possible.

The issue is whether there is a âstandard default arrangementâ (policies) which is how the things are all the time.

The fact is that if people donât voteâ¦ Theyâre happy.

Itâs something you tackle at the policy levelâ¦ it is distributable, but fluid. Bo said âepisodicâ you care to control what you care about it.

Next up (not discussed ) is âterms of serviceâ that VRM assertsâ¦

â¨Transparency is straightforward â people let you know what they want you to knowâ¦ Alain asked does it apply to all the discounts and incentives etcâ¦

A: this is about increasing value by maximizing control and authority

Q2: this is a principle of design â so it has to do with how the service is designed.

A: well the system does require design..

Q3- therefore the user is not in control and itâs not transparent.

A: the people who design the system define reality. Because weâre using Web technology and thatâs already defvined. But the term âtransparencyâ has a waterâs edge.

But the question is, âWhere do you draw the line?â like motives, margins and incentives are a big part of transparency.

Allainâs answer is that âfor a fourth party serviceâ transpareny has to include motives and incentives.

Is transparency âfull disclosureâ

A: there are five categories of transparencyâ¦

This is a new dimension of the Caveat Emptor akin to the FDA having all the

Transparency is not a âdictateâ it is something that user driven services will need to be survivableâ¦ and it means clear understanding of policy.

Alain â weâre getting to the heart of the organizational world where the vendor needs to assert what it does not intend to be transparent.

Darius â in the real world, the service provider will publish service agreements and people will operate under it and it will either work or it wonât.

It is not the primary place where people make a decision.

Q: is there a registry where people could log on and check

Bill Washburn â there should be a dialogue around a quantitative approach to transparency to a qualitative view regarding âwhat should be the major areas of concern.â

So this will be rescheduled to tomorrow.

Suggestion is to talk about âdefining 4th party services in a way that would have a ârulebookâ with criteria that should be conformed toâ

Joe was wondering whether you could apply these criteria to Web based activityâ¦ like SMTP or Web Hosting.

Health VRM

2025-01-03T22:25:35Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

Mike Kirkwood. â Healthcare discussion
Mike@polka.com

Focusing on the space of a âMe serviceâ for the healthcare industry

Includes âHealth Journalingâ app for itunes

Thereâs personal health records

Took engine that was user focused, and offered it to the providers.

Kaiser
Healthnet

Weâre training them to figure out how, rather them having to open up a personâs file, putting it into a record repository that the patient controls.

Finding that the record doesnât change that often

CFP2 â Robert Wood Johnson released as a way to share observations âacross the wallâ in a clinical setting and have them integrated into other test results and validated

Itâs a big deal

Sean Bohan â says that the big things are conformance (using your meds right)

40% of the problems is adherence

and 10% is fatal combination.

Sean â the other side is disease managementâ¦ Healthcare providers will offload patient management to small companies that would outcall

Payer is struggling with bad disease management because too many people are ending up in the ER which is the most expensive way to do disease management.

So the providers and payers want to incent people to take care of themselves so they donât end up in the critical phase.

Project Health Design â has a call to papers. Told clinical teams that if they can get a system to log daily livings, they will a system that will work.

This system would be part of the service delivery solution.

Can put HealthVault or Google Health in the middle.

So there are other players in the mix.. like the hospital or the doctor.

They would solicit the patient maintained data

HIPAA and HL7 data privacy issues had prevented this stuff from happening before.

Can add glucose monitor, heartbeat monitor (an Observation Engine) will then publish to the provider

Mike asserts that this sort of system should adhere to the 10 points that Joe brought up in the User Controled User session.

How is it secured. How is the data disposed of.

E.g. What does Blue Cross want?
(not necessarily the clinician)

Once you collect it, you can assign filters (provider view, Payer view, my view) Realistically, the way data is exchanged betweenthe participants is hopeless. They just donât sync.

So the payer might foot the bill for the solution just to know whether someone is adhering to the drug administration requirements.

Adherence might be a little dicierâ¦ âCan it answer âdid he take his medsââ

Sean talks about the Persistence Curveâ¦ in terms of the revenue to the Pharma companyâ¦ People who take their meds all the time have fewer incidence of medical treatment

Sean â you still need the education.

Observation â 70% of the pills advertised directly on TV are prescribed.

What weâve learned in the past few months is that the Apple App Store has broken the back of the monitoring business. There are lots of apps for people to monitor their activity

Jim Morris says â the medical profession feels like they are controlling us with the ânon-complianceâ issues.

If there was ever a case where user empowerment this is it

Joe asks â have you looked at the data rights issues especially when it gets to âin aggregateâ reporting.

A: in the Polka view, you should be in control of both your data and âin aggregateâ.

If you can get 50 people to go into the T-test and get 10 of these. Then we will have 30-50 people to prove out. They think they can get statistically valid results with this population.

The control should be imposed for both individual and aggregated data

Clinical team can say what they want from the person.

Give them an iPhone and the app for monitoring their activity.

De-identivcation needs to take place right behind the Observation Engine.

Q: who would this be targeted at. Everybody out there to monitor both healthy and unhealthy activity so you can judge what to sell them and what to charge. Also figure out whether the rest of the family is involved.

Then there are people in the Disease management group who wouldnât want the data to be made available.

Then thereâs the idea of monitoring peopleâs behavior or whatever on Twitter or Facebook in order to determine what they would want to market to them.

The Use case is to validate the heart teamâs protocol. To prove that the tools that are out there and fun to use. âObservations or daily livingâ Also have them call on the phone in order to measure str

Asa- You can set up the stream to determine that âyou pay this side and charge that sideâ.

The incentive is you might get an iPhone and a Watch to get people to participate.

The real dividing line is between the collection of the info and then having control over how it is disseminated and who âknows itâs me.â

Insurance companies already say that they give you a better rate.

The weakness is that âpeople donât input data consistentlyâ

A: Beckton Dickinson has added Bluetooth to the devices that collect blood samples and all that

Joe â you would set this up so people would do it because they are doing something else â a point of sale dynamic

Mike â we had tracking on an iPhone (if people put in the data)â¦ So we added a public/private Twitter like microblog (140 characters)

Added a Type and in-depth object
Added location

The Tweet describes the situtation

Then can add tags with Diet info and it gets mapped to the diet tool or whatever.

Sean â need a perpetual carrot.

Can also package it as a game.

Itâs not the game device. Itâs the game dynamics and the participatory nature

Thereâs a tweet-what-you-eat service

Q: does this scale. Or what percentage of the population will be tweeting or not.

Mike: You get monetized by the providers who will share the savings and they will publish a list of what apps are covered by a pyement provider.

Info will go through the observation engine where it will become part of the aggregate.

Then they will start to incentivize users in ways that make it âcompulsoryâ

Joe â thereâs an insane need to understand the 5% of the people who bother to tag. But youâre going to want to reach people when they are fully engaged. And when youâre fully engaged youâre not tweeting.

Sean â this idea of journaling (tracking) you do when youâre training for a marathon.

Thereâs a book called âFlowâ where they gave people pagers, and you have to write down what youâre doing. The pager prompted them to âtweet nowâ at specific intervals.

The system must be hardened against going down. E.g. when you put the healthcare in the middle (like when someone has a needle in a vein)â¦

One of the things we started implementing, included location (named, address or lat/long)

We learned that âhealth is untouchableâ because of HIPAA and that sort of thing.

Location is the same thing. People want to protect it. âI donât want people to know my health status (until I do) or my location (til I do). Health emergencies break that mold.

Joe recommends watching âSubsidized Fateâ â¦

Because people that want to use our data will use game design to add the dynamics and participation that we require.

Personal Data Stores

2025-01-03T22:25:34Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

Drummond Reedâs â Personal Data Store
With Iain Henderson to address as well

On Board:

PDS:

What should be in it? (at a minimum) and (ideally)
Whatâs it for?

What is its essential characteristics/components

Where does it reside?

Where does it fit in the overall OSI Model and the VRM architecture

Why is it important?

When is it deployed?

How is it managed â what policies apply?

Does it have to be standard? Cabn there be many types?

What are the points of failure?

Drummond â the concept of PDS has been central to VRM

This is to talk about why? And to look specifically at the PDS

One starting point is âWhy is it importantâ/

Another is âwhat is essential?â

When we wrap up, we ask â On what points are we not in agreement?

Iain describes myDex though Slide show

Observation â Enterprise CRM architecture have multiple attributes but only store data for a year. If well designed, âimportant dataâ will be stored in Analytical System and data warehouse. Which holds the atomic level of data and stores it for the duration of a decisionmaking cycle.

Analytical systems tracks who bought what, where and why?==> to anticipate what to do next

First order concern is quality â meaning completeness, accuracy and several other attributesâ¦

Evidence is that âCRM Needs to be fixedâ â spending 200 bps is not enough to fulfill requirements. Okay at collecting info on customer. Not so good on tracking customer/product/outlet info in a usable fashion

Definition of âPersonal Data Store â (admittedly not a helpful term) A generic term to âsource, store, enhance and selectively disclose my personal informationâ

Needs to run on the same principles as the CRMâ¦ Systems will do the doingâ¦.

The personal data warehouse is the missing element.

In CRM the identity layer is at the top end
PDS resides on top. With the sources

Sees 3,500 attributes over 70 years (is what each individual has)

''(Thematic) Individuals have less tools, more attributes to control, fewer resources to monitor and track.''

Craig Burton â it is important and extensible as well.
A: So you need to identify the important attributes versos

To determine whatâs important, just identify what info you might need to get your life started again.

Next slide depicts Interactions and transactions with all sorts of businesses and govât entities. With the Identity Layer at the core.

*No CRM database can handle persona so you go about creating multiple ones to transact and interactx in the world.

Important â This is a logical design, not a physical designâ¦

It has been posited that Interactions are whatâs being monitored and that Transactions are a type of interaction.

Joe Andreiu â says we can get to the Model T version that does okay

Next slide â Current state of Who has what dataâ¦

Was My Data, Your data, Everybodyâs Data, âTheir Dataâ

Everybodyâs data = public domain â all sorts of data thatâs avaialbe.
âTheir Data (or parasitic tailings) â what Experian, Acxiom etc, collect about you

Your dat â include a vendors products /services, policies, pricesâ¦
And guesses regarding view of a customers preferences, requirementsâ¦

Our Data â identifiers, clams,/Assertions and transactionsâ¦

MY DATA â is stuff known only to meâ¦ Circumstances, Assets, Liabilities, preferencesâ¦

There are also back channels which are interactions between the parasites, vendors, and the publicly available stores.

At Liberty Alliance they have been discussing âVolunteered Informationâ

Finally, Thereâs the Target State

In 10 years time 80 percent of customer management prcesses will startywith âMYDATAâ (me)

So the customer will be in more control and overt interactions will be between the vendor

Toxic will be bad for both vendors and customers â they destroy trust.

''Drummond â 3 times Iâve heard that âThe customer is the point of integrationâ (which originated from Joe Andrieu)''

âCustomer as Point of Integrationâ

Joe says âAnalysis and Insightâ revolved around the vendor dataâ¦ It is the source of Googleâs competitive advantage â¦

Craig Burton â but Googleâs source of distrust was doing personal data storage for Google to tag and index

PDS has âroots in two placesâ

1) Doc Searls â personal experience with the medical treatment across several care givers and each introduced errors in their systems so that they could not reconcile or synchronizeâ¦ The conclusion is that it would have been more efficient and less dangerous if Doc had been the single repository providing to access to the data on an as needed basis.

2) The other side is âStymergyâ which is the general term for how ants find the shortest path to food. It is also the answer to a distribution problem for multiple trucks between warehouses. They send out ants randomly, the one that comes back first, his trail is doubled.

Balance between exploration and exploitation. They mark their environment. Joe articulates that the data should be stored centrally and when multiple companies or individuals want access, they should not seek out things from one another. They should get it from the individualâs data store

Stuart- Why wouldnât you just ask Amazon.com or Google to do a better job of making your information accessible to other apps. So I can assemble it at my command from the multiple sources.

Joeâs answer â youâre asking about data portability.
Iain says (itâs because youâd be operating under their terms and conditions)

Joe says it is because personal data store is not just âthe dataâ it is about setting up mechanisms for permissioning information in, out based behind your own front end (called identity)

And youâre going to have all sorts of front ends or âService Specificationsâ (Liberty calls them Service Interface Specification)

Status updates
Addresses
Music ratings
Search Activities
Personal RFPs
Personal Healthcare records
SMTP/POP

And itâs all under your control

Sop the question is whether the hub is about authentication (identity layer)
And permissioning

*** so there is a multi-billion battle raging over control of permissioning for status updates.

Iain â youâre still missing the link between doing data and planning data.

Doc sees the user as the point of integration and also origination.

Else â a problem solving thing which gets brought up.

That is the ossified way that existing systems work
In medical system, fârinstanceâ¦ there is a kiretsu of equipment providers, suppliers etc where it is hard to get data from individuals or companies. Incompatibility between media, age of PC, etc.

You are going to have this architecture work better in some cases rather than others.

Iain, where thereâs failure in ERP or CRM itâs because the system is trying to do too much and gets clogged up.

So you need to make the distinction between getting stuff done and when you have to do long-term planning.

Per Drummond â donât you end up answering the question by establishing the framework for these the service interfaces service provier (Facebook, Myspace, Plaxo)â¦. And those service providers would manage one or more of the service specification intervfaces.

Joe is saying that it is easier to solve and optimize the âshortest pathâ solution for specific tasks then to define the personal data store that does it all.

Iain is saying that it will have to do the analytics earlier and constantly.

Architecturally you sidestep it by providing a service thatâs operational and do it in a way that is consistent with doing the analytical and do it in a way thatâs consistent with identity based permissions.

So you donât have to do them all if you can solve one of them seamlessly.

Drummond will explain what XDI is all about as a protocol:

The idea of getting all sorts of schemas to talk to one another is a real probalem. HtML canât. XML cannot.

About trusted Data sharing. And itâs about permission

Craig says that XDI is not a protocol. It is a language structure

He wants to know âwhat does it resolve toâ if I write a command and it gets abstracted to something that then resolves to the data and its location. So if you want to share some of your data that resides elsewhere, like in multiple banksâ¦

''The Data doesnât have to live at the hubâ¦ But control does''

Craig â it resolves around a URL and then I can react to it based on a structured card

Card
Rule Set
Data set

Resolved to a URL and it gives permission to access to where that data can be found. And enable data set mashup.

E.g. iphone with a GPS Google Map moment. âTell me where the lone palms hotel is in relationship to meâ tell me where I am and where I go.

Itâs mashup that needs to include all that data.

CyberCrack!

Ad active rules to operate on your data store, and the mashup of all the services

I just want to get this group to define the architecture to put it into the hands of the developer community./

E.g. Amazon.comâs EC2 setting up all sort of things (like 30 years of census data)

Q: When you say ârule setsâ do you just mean permissions?

A: (using the MyDex example - ) as a proof of concept, no browser is required. Any program and any entity can subscribe to the other info an dlocation and all or part be âin the cloudâ

Switchbook has all the info distilled on the hard drive, there is a copy in the cloud for back up purposes. It doesnât have to be in the cloud. And thereâs code in the client to handle I/O

When you get to rulesâ¦ You put functionality in the cloud that handles services and can find them in the cloud.

Customer write the rules.

Stuartâ¦ Example is embedding a twitpics or a URL in a twitâ¦ Iâm publishing something that can then be seen by anyone or everyone. Or how do I add a âsmart URLâ to a tweet so that I can publish to everyone, but the URL has a set of criteria behind it or around it that is controlled by the higher order infrastructure.

Can use a medium like Twitter to infect the world with XDI and XRI

If all or portions of your data are addressable, it can be made accessible to the rest of the world. If you make it abstract. If itâs inside the âIdentity Layerâ it can be under the control of the user. One of the key purposes of the next step, which is XDIâ¦ The same format says that I can store the âpermissionsâ (sometimes called ârulesâ) so that I can access the Link contract. So that the read/write instructions can attached to another set of rules to do something like letting the gas company

Go To Wiki.kynetics.com (it explains the rules that Phil Wendly has developed)

Joe says that Grease Monkey does it as well. But Craig Burton says that kineticsâ¦ is what we should be interested in.

Joe says HTML 5 is being deployed now in browsers.

Craig: I would strongly recommend that we do this in a way that is somewhere between Wiki-based and Selecter-based that is Strong foundation for VRM.

Joe, part of this is about deploymentâ¦ âI hate JaSon because it is inherently insecureâ but they have ways to do secure parsing of Jasonâ¦ But it was adopted because it provided trivially easy way to do it insecurely and native to JAVAscript.

We want to play friendly with them.

Question, gas company needs employment data about me. 1 to 1 federation on their own terms. VRM way. Passport agency acts as a node and permissions allows Gas company to get info from passport agency.

Data liquidity is what itâs all about.

Read it as âpermissionedâ or âunpermissionedâ and the reason that there is so much unpermissioned is because âthereâs no technology in useâ to support permissioned. Which is an argument for Portable Permissioning.

Joe-looking at Switchbook in this context is that your identity is stringly around what you give permission for.

Switchbook defines you by your âsearch mapâ itâs a file that is orthogonal to all your other identifiers. Itâs Switchbox has a âSearchMapâ document at its core. It is the context where your current browsing shows where youâve been and what youâve done and all that.

Idea is that we shouldnât get hung up on the protocol right now. Just define how entities interact and figure out the mesh points.

In the IDWSF model, how you talk to the gas company is permissions based. They may send you an email or something and you set it up with your IDWSF model.

Drummond: Now we talk about our questions.

1) Why is it important?

Initial â The thing that will put the individual back in control of personal information. Meaning the information that is important to the person.

Itâs the store that you personally have control of, it could be anything.

Will allow us to be more promiscuous with our data because we know it will be stored in a trusted way.

It is a context for control.

Because if you abuse it, I know your pheromone trail?

Benefit is that it will improve my quality life, based on my decisions.

Itâs important because it is valuable? It can be bartered>

It is economically transformational>

Jim â Like credit cards, this lowered the friction and reduces guesswork and waste from the vendor side. Which increases value.

Best case you provide the best possible outcome for both parties.

It is more efficiently economically. (the economy will operate more efficiently)

It enables what weâre calling the fourth party services (what VRM is promising).

Markâs point â Itâs a way to organize VRM.

What weâre talking about as the personal data store is to create a better marketplace by providing the way the individuals are regarded by buyers/sellers/governments.

It helps people organize their lives. It enhances efficiency and productivity.

Framework for new use conventions that we donât foresee right now (think of browsingâ¦ or logging onto the bank)

Itâs implementable

Now letâs look to points of failure:

Adriana would say that there are point-to-point identity free interactions that donât require this.

Aside â Kim Cameron says that âIdentityâ is not an identifier. It is just a set of claims that require context. You can have a claimless set of claims in a container.

It is about 4 different identifiers:

Authentication
Presentation
Reference ID (how to be reached email address)
Internal ID

This is your identity online

Are there VRM-y things that donât have a personal data store as part of itâ¦ The answer is noâ¦

You need a place for your stuffâ¦

Q: Where does it have to resideâ¦ It could be anywhere as long as itâs accessible by the applications

Q: Isnât really a permission and control hub? Answer is ânoâ it is still about the data with rules established as to the permission and conditions under which

Weâve gone in circles around what is a relationship manager as opposed to a relation service.

Iain says, itâs all about how you operate around the dataâ¦ Need to clarify how to source, store, enhance and selectively disclose data.

Drummond â the other place the Identity comes in is that the idea of the role of the user in terms of control is akin to the control they have over their bank account. But the bank has authority.

The relationship someone has with Equifax, for instance, is Massively Passively

Another parallel is like the spam filter, where we have passive benefit but virtually no control.

Jim Morris asked what this would be like if it were Communist China and there was an argument for centralized â¦ Drummond, from the point of view of market (as opposed to moral), this is the mechanism for giving user control.

This is about distributed planning.

Has anyone looked at giving control of the personal ID store to a centralized trusted entityâ¦

Bullets for tomorrow:

Privacy:
*IP addresses are they trackedâ¦
*Iâm worried about Google tracking activity

User Experience
*complex
*could create opportunity for errors
*Mashing on toes

Conformance and compliance
(if I share data, how will I know if people abide)
a
Reputational authority (how do I know you are who you say you are)

Service dependability
Business dependability

Portability?
Inadequate choice of SPs

Data Breach and fear of data breach (Honey Pot)

Wrap-up Day 1

2025-01-03T22:25:33Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1734998400

Endnote:

Doc sez â time to share or summarizeâ¦

We uncharacteristically had some B-I-G sessions.

Jim Morris â Iâm extremely impressed with the knowledge in this room. We did talk about things with each other that reflected a lot of really new stuff, but in generally we knew our stuff.

E.g. thereâs a level of practice on using the Internet was impressive.

Impressed that the VRM ideal is becoming more and more real.. And that is implementing a systeem that helps ecommerce be created better

Sean â it creates a level playing field

So there is a book Rightside Up that was written in 2000 and foresaw this.

Thereâs a level of maturity with the architecture that made it seem extremely real.

William â We need to have a more inter-disciplinary dialogue to bring out the challenges. This is the sort of âeasyâ conversation. But this is just giving barely an inkling of how complex and confusing the conversations are going to be to bring all this about in the world at large.

Sean â compared to where we were last year

Glad to see that âadoptionâ was the last word, speaking as a marketing scumbag.

Craigâ¦ Impressed that Joe announced a product. Joe says that it is imminent.

Doc announced that a grant from the foundation is going to come through for ListenLog and PayChoice.

$50K so Doc can hire interns.

Bo-Now I know what Doc actually does. Acronyms are irksome, but I feel like this should already be. So itâs axiomatic that it will occur, just need to determine how.

GetSatisfaction is very similar to this idea. Whatâs interesting today, at the workshop is that how much of the theoretical, academic work can help extend our ideas as well as other companies doing this sort of stuff. Thereâs learning, captive audiences and others that will benefit from the personal data stores.

We also saw a very nice shift, and things are less confrontational. Our language has evolved. Weâve become more accurate and more flexible in how we talk about these things.

The community collective âyesâ that the PDS is an important element to all this stuff. Look itâs really clear. If we can capture it in a document â A White Paper on the PDS - Iâd point it out to so many people. Spending money on that would be a good idea.

Finding edge cases that arenât VRM yet but are getting there need to be pointed out. Prosper, ETSY etc.

Question from Docâ¦ Iâm interested in verticals, so Iâd like to ask Mike from Healthcare and Iâm wondering if you feel optimistic

A: Yes Iâm feeling optimistic. The language is getting clearer. The opportunity is getting more apparent. Weâre seeing some monetization opportunities. Plus I learned a lot from the group. So the next gen of PMRs will have all this to incorporate into their solutions.

Q: were there too many acronyms? Answer, âyesâ. But per Kaliya, itâs a way of sharing language. Weâve created the language so that we understand ourselves and now we need to open it up to other.

Judi Whereâs that lexiconâ¦ There is a glossary with now definition.

Paul says, I didnât have much problem with the jargon.

It would help to have a set of readings before the next meeting.

Larry â I would like to collect a nugget from each of you. So I donât have to do the writing.

Craig says, now the challenge is to make it stick. You have to get it down on paper.

Write it down, argue about it. And thatâs how we get out of the neutral position. Thatâs how we make it real. Get all that stuff on the Wiki and get it refined. Then he looked at Docâ¦.

We have to argue through âthe fourth partyâ example. Drummond found it a great organizing principle. âThereâs dynamite thereâ

It fits into the larger lexicon of the English language. Itâs like the piece of the jigsaw that connects to the rest.

Craig adds.. Be really rigorous in that each word has significance and weight.

Drummond â Deep Rigor around three words (Personal Data Store) and that deep rigor will cry out for more.

Q from Kaliya â What should we talk about tomorrow.

Two things â get some closure on the Identity Discussion

Also get closure on the Fourth Party discussion.

Dean- We want to hear thoughts on marketing and especially marketing to the enterprise. Especially your perceptions on how the enterprise will perceive this.

Drummond things Fourth Party will be of tremendous importance to the enterprise.Figure out how to use it in the enterprise message.

Aug 11, there will be a community day at the Moscone before Open Source World. Weâre talking about a VRM track there. People want it.

Could be a Launch there. TechCrunch 50 might be a good launch as well.

Another volunteer for working on the terminology â from Symbian foundation.

From Doc â re ListenLogâ¦. Also want to talk about emancipay or PayChoice.

Finally â need Iain to talk about Volunteered Personal Information.

Prototyping VRM Mobile Social, iPhone

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Stuart- Prototyping a mobile VRM that leverages Social Network fabric

iPhone is a good conduit

Phone
SMS
Email
3.0 notification
Bluetooth

Stuart says that we have all these ways to contact people

iPhone adds location

Adds time

Presence â and what Iâm doing

Things that recognize that âstate has changedâ

Relationships provide context regarding âWho are you?â

The questions revolve around access control

âWe have this thing in our pocket that provides all these things to us, but we have no controlâ¦

â¦on the other side, the people have no idea whatâs happening on this end.â

It doesnât have to do with calls necessarily, but when it âescalatesâ from a message

Rules for Pre-call Information

Recipient only knows phone number if the caller is not in the directory

The originator really has no control over what information is provided

Using the rideshare use caseâ¦ thereâs an issue surrounding the Buddylist

Using Google Voice you can treat each caller differently â¦

Right now Google Voice gives you a âflavorâ of all the rules you can attach to incoming calls

Ribbit could be a platform for all of these services

Voice mail treatment on an iPhone is an issue because the iPhone voice mail store is on the device, not on a shared host

Comment â originator may want to indicate a different originating phone

Originator may also want to send a pre-call alert â IM/SMS (the Can you talkâ message)

Caveat â you will pile all kinds of capabilities for the power users â but other people wonât use it.

So you need to monitor and analyze all that behavior and deliver

You can establish groups.

Another way to look at it is that you can have my GrandCentral # and it is related to all the ways that I can be reached and will be associated

Need to talk about the difference between synchronous/asynchronous

Is it that important to do a synchronous conversation.

So basically it gets down to hooking up a system where the caller is in control

âIn a VRM world, the phone owner is in controlâ and how you get there is to take away the possibility of the caller to control the terms and conditions

This could be the origination vehicle

The systemic smarts are much more interesting than the granular control

Because the granular stuff should be automated.

You can trick thisâ¦ just get a fictitious number and point it where you want

**Stuart has an idea for a Craigâs list for Twitter (called Twitmark) instead of a phone number and address you put a Twitter handle, but whatâs missing is the escalation to a phone number. The other thing thatâs missing is that you have to do an abbreviated link to (e.g. a Craigâs list ad)â¦

Another idea that was brought up is the Farley Fileâ¦ whereby you keep track of all the people that you meet.

The phone gets it backwards, inbound now might be able to relate it to a record in the phone infrastructureâ¦ But what if you have a âWhoâs this?â button to relate other stuff in the social graph and CRM space to figure out whoâs calling.

Observation â thereâs probably a latency issue. Unless you preload some set of most likely callers and their might be other premapping.

People can more accustomed to âpromiscuous messagingâ â that is basically adsâ¦ âI need xâ or âIâm selling Yâ then you can also use location awareness to figure out whoâs twittering nearbyâ¦

Observation â youâre social graph and list of people youâre in touch with

One of the premises for this discussion is that if VRM is going to work, it will be on a mobile device.

Observation â there are a lot of interesting initiatives underway and we have to figure out how they will bolt together.

Some compete
Some could augment each other.

Weâre talking a lot about the requester time. And not how you find relevant providers â¦ So you need to know âhow sees thisâ?

A: in the twitter exampleâ¦ Daycare companies might have a âbot monitoring peopleâs requests, determining where the person is. They can send a direct messageâ¦ And they may have their own filter

Narrowcast exchangesâ¦

Which Phil Wolff â calls âsearchâ

E.g Rent-a-Coder
O-Desk
E-lance

Where you have not a job offer but a short gig. So you craft a message

**Capability goes in seek of a need and vice versa***

Thereâs an aggregation function to be served.

If youâre looking specifically for a pair of tennis shoes specificallyâ¦ Itâs not readily apparent exactly how you get to there from here.

Angieâs list + ribbit exposes the latency issue

Stuart is saying that â as things âescalate toward a transactionâ and Darius is wondering how you get there from hereâ¦ Can you make this a âcheck boxâ item in their lsting that âfor an extra $2 to add a phone numberâ for the duration of the interest.

Phweet demonstrates that the identity layer can be set up independent of other services.

It will work anywhere and it is initiated on the basis of a text exchange. The contract is a URL for that exchange.

You probably have it in your headâ¦ Thatâs a feature, not a product.

How do you make a product
How do you build usage.

Phil â Talked to an eBay employee latelyâ¦ Asked why do you think eBay never embraced Skypeâ¦ He said that eBayâs attachment to keeping the conversation controlled so that they couldnât be cut out of the equation, so they made it harder

As market makers they are also getting a percentage of the transaction so they just put up barriers.

Buy in depends on âwhat their stake isâ if you think the transaction will go on outside their walled garden, they wonât buy in .

E.g. you can architect this so that an assigned, ephemeral URL can be a revenue opportunity for Twitter. The Tweet controls how long the thing stays nailed up. You can do it on Twitter or Identica or anywhere. You can set up a VRM like relationship. And thatâs what makes it interesting

Closingâ¦ align VRM with the core metrics of each of the service providers.

VRM Marketing

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Scumbag Marketers-

Dean lays down the law :

We need enterprise buy in for this to work. (meaning large companies, brick n mortar and online and have CRM)

Don has brought up there there are a lot of companies that might want to sell what looks like CRM and it might not be with the best intent.

Itâs all about money and they may say âwhatâs in it for me?â

We have a few candidates in mind â¦ we know the right person there. Itâs the highest of C persons because it has to come from the top or else weâre fighting our way through all the little fiefdomsâ¦ Because they have to be told

Pushback â Chris: look at Frank Eliason at ComcastCares who did grassroots, Twitterbased end-run.

Deb-Based on experience with P&G going to the top and pushing down even with smart big companies could be hard. So higher ups and infulentials

* Weâve agreed on Influentials and horizontal

Phil Wolff â another challenge, might be to understand the systems they are using and pull through with an existing vendors.

Sean, VRM isnât going to replace CRMâ¦ Itâs not a replacementâ¦ Think about Oracle/Sun for example, they may be incorporating VRM into part of their solution.

* So we have to take a multi-pronged approach
* We have to target each and speak in their language.

Gam â At sephora, they started at the top and were pushed progressively down to the group that was doing Facebook and they were only interested in their âthe Fan siteâ so then it got totally diffused and sent out.

Sean says weâre tight but we still donât talk in a way that has appeal horizontally among non-geeks

Doc says that there are a few people who get it the first time out. And now we (this group) needs to get out their with a set of stories that highlights the curb appeal

Weâve played down the marketing VRM until some code has been written and there are some examples out there.

Weâve been watching the best people rising and the people who really get it doing some cool stuff.

Now within 6mo to a year. Weâll have PublicRadio. Weâll have Gamâs thing andtcetera. And Debâs gonna have the one pager.

Debâs observation â there are all sorts of consultants saying âyou donât bet itâ and evangelizing around Searchi optimization and blogging.

Deb has community managers at CPG, that means they get that. The future of e-commerce is the next step and âthis is it.â

Dean is channeling Allan â he says that weâre making a statement and getting internal buy in. The mission now should be to get buy in from them and get them to pay something like $10K.

Deb says, they need a real story.

Chris says â We have two products nowâ¦ One was VRMâ¦ The next one is a very distinct product which is âa seat at the table to influence creation of VRMâ

It is Access, privilege and Influence and it should have a price attached to it.

Don â there is definitely value to them. We just have to bring it to their attention.

Chris is saying once again that it has value to them

There will be more of a story when the ClueTrain Manifesto update comes out it will clarify the connection.

Conceptual DNA exists.

Doc says also â by bureaucratizing what we do, some good things happened, but thereâs some organization issues.

* Joyce, Judi, Dean and Renee are going to blend things back together. Renee Lloyd has the best way to articulate this and get the organization.

Dean: Big Company buy in will get companies getting big and small companies interested.

Doc has confidence that the major CRM companies are going to buy into this. Doc is planning to have a combined CRM/VRM session and CRM will sponsor, attend and bring customers.

Q: is there going to be a certification process. And The 4th party concept will be baked in. And certification will protect the concept and clarify. There will be a VRM seal of approval.

Per Dean: VRM as a brand is not sexyâ¦ And itâs not our consumer brand.
Doc says that like the word ATM, people use them but necessarily use the term

Seanâs observation â the name isnât as important as the fact that we have more clay on the piece and, besides, the naming folks at McCann or whatever will âmake a hashâ of any name we might come from

Philâs idea â there are two sides that will make this work. Weâve been focusing on the plumbing sideâ¦ And not the moms and pops or the people that are using it.

Sean is saying that there are stories to be told
Deb says that we need the idiot CNN reporter can say the narrative

Jeff Schwartzâ¦ Agreed that itâs not ready,

Chris Anderson and Tim OâReilley are not sold on it. But some others might be.

Sean: need the manifesto, need the North Star,

Paul: thereâs not one user story, There are many orthogonal ones.

Deb: What we should do is have Sean, Doc or Dean give their elevator pitch.

And Whatâs your story to Mom.

Dean â Big go hears: These days we know that people have more communications platforms where you hear them speak. They are telling you what you had used as predictive, you can now get directly from them.

We enable this data to come in and we make it so you can use info from both sides.

Deb: weâve heard that this is social media stuff is happening. Does it help me sell more stuff.

Paul â said that thereâs a fourth party story for the shopper.

Doc: starts with a question:

Which do you hate more, loyalty cards or bad customer service? And dependeing on which one you go down that path.

Then the story is that the companies are already outsourcing their customer service to you. This is your chance to take better control of that.

Jeff asks: why would a vendor want you to give control to the customers?

Doc: Ask what do you hate most about your business
A: Guessworkâ¦ You can get rid of the waste that occurs because of guess work

* Weâre equipping pull as VRM turns push into pull.

Thereâs so much buzz about listening to your customer and enterprise âgets thatâ but theyâre using market research data, customer research, and market effectiveness studies.

We need to use âthe equippingâ wordâ¦ Ergo not the monitoring stuff

Don â the difference between marketing salesâ¦ Tell the marketing guy that VRM shortens the sales cycles, increases loyalty, costs lessâ¦

Sales guy â¦ you tell them that they gotta have it.

Jeff Schwartz â says the good thing is to say things

Cover Fear of loss and Desire for gain

Sean says â this levels the playing field between big companies and you. You can interact with them eye-to-eye, peer-to-peer. No more loyalty cards. Iâm doing it to GMâ¦

Leveling the playing field is the big deal.

Philâs asking whether we have a shopping list regarding the talent we need

Sean says that we need a grassroots movement sort of structure.

The role of social enterprises in VRM

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VRM and social enterprise

Led by William Heath, Mydex.

If we had an institution which got our interest in VRM going what would it look like?

In the UK, we created a Community Interest Company called Mydex. I'll explain what it is in more detail in a minute, but basically it is a new form of legal entity in the UK which allows for the establishment of profit-making companies, whose core purpose is a community benefit, where most of the profits it generates are reinvested into the community 'cause'.

One of our tasks is educating people around the core issues of personal information empowerment. We have to say it over and over again.

Under the current status quo of organisations centralised gathering and management of customer data, they are ending up with bad â inaccurate, partial, out of date data - while losing customer trust.
Customers meanwhile are having to dealing with many different silos, which they find frustrating and difficult.
The VRM Mydex process puts you in control, you can choose who you do business with. It can invoke independent assertions. Work with added value services.
When individuals are empowered to manage their own data in this way, companies benefit too because they are fed with accurate, timely quality data.
So Mydex is creating an interface which individuals feel they can trust and which is under their control.

Mydex's formal statement of social purpose is that it âlets individuals realise the value of their personal dataâ. Key characteristics of a CIC are:
it works in benefit of community
has the advantages of commercial company â it can take risks, make a profiit
but these profits have to reinvested into its purpose
transparency of operation
directors can be reasonably paid
regulated dividend
No tax advantages but relatively light touch regulation-

There are different types e.g. not for profit cooperative, vs limited by shares.

If a dedicated institution -
what is its scope: what's in it and what's not?
what characteristics âwhat does it need to do to earn its users' trust and love?
global v local; what is its global dimension, what is its local dimension. If it is global, what organisational structure should it adopt. Amex or Visa?

Points from ensuing discussion

It needs to be sustainable.

Reliable

What Governance would people actually trust? It needs to be open.

Immutability so that it can't metamorphose in front of your eyes, to become something other. By regulation; charter.

Alignment to purpose

Leavability â right to delete me. Exit.

Transparency of governance, process, finance.

No cabals (or do cabals sometimes exist only in the mind of the critic?).

Community should be able to kick out directors/accountability.

Open standards.- in a 'global' or local context?
.
All contracts should be public; all specifications for data etc should be public

Portable data.

More on Global vs local:
is it one single corporation; federated â a group of the willing. A coalition.
Clearly some aspects have to be local. Probably some aspects that have to be global.
e.g. language, local law.
Use global to avoid reinventing the wheel â good ideas can be globally accessed. Use the crowd sourcing to your advantage.

It should be the people's Google, (whatever that means

instead of creating global entity, create an entity that defines the community, and let them define their own extensions, and define their own versions.
That model should be chaoridc.

If global, what is our 'community'? Idea of a global definition/guidelines to make this work, is interesting. Technologies, resources, knowledge, influence, relationships.

Degree of proactivity. e.g can raise a war chest to tackle issues the community don't like. e.g to sue evil doers. Talking about compliance â need to protect interests.
Different means of of proactivity â campaigning, dealing with issues once, for all.

Want to be able to innovate â leadership, structure, incentives, On the other hand, don't want politbureau style.

Design things so that everybody can do it: a mental model

scalable, extensible, interoperable;

agnostic about technology

What are the metrics for Mydex to measure its service to the community?.

Money flows:
corporate fees
value added services
VPI fees
member/supporter contributions
membership subscription

The money flows must be aligned to the community interest.
Is Mydex sharing its revenues with me, or is the individual sharing some of its revenues with Mydex.?

Auditability/track how my data is being used. Very like banking: storing personal information so that it earns interest, being loaned to vendors.

Non-discriminatory pricing and access models.

A personal data union.

VRooM Boston 2009

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[[Image:vroomboston2009_small.png|200px|thumb|left]]VRooM Boston 2009 was hosted by ProjectVRM and the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu Berkman Center] in the John Chipman Gray Room in Pound Hall at [http://law.harvard.edu Harvard Law School], on Monday-Tuesday 12-13 October, 2009.

As with earlier workshops, the purpose was to bring people together and make progress on any number of VRM topics and projects. It was an "unconference" on the open space model, with session topics chosen by participants. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology Here is the Wikipedia page on open space.]) The one exception was [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/VRooM_Boston_2009#Panel:_Getting_Personal_With_Data:_How_Users_Get_Control_and_What_They_Do_With_It ''Getting Personal With Data: How Users Get Control and What They Do With It''], described below.

== Registration ==

The workshop was free. Participants registered through [http://vrmeastcoast2009.eventbrite.com/ this EventBrite link].

== Preliminary topics for sessions / discussion ==

* VRM and Health Care
* VRM hacks, so far
* User-initiated terms of service
* Where Personal informatics / self-tracking aligns with VRM (User control of data.)
* Existing technologies and protocols VRM can use
* [http://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/infosharing/Home Information Sharing Workgroup] (Kantara initiative) (Previously Volunteered Personal Information Workgroup)
* The Mine! Project
* MINT
* VRM and search
* Personal Data Stores
* VRM and open source
* Scanaroo (and turning loyalty cards inside-out)
* ListenLog
* Emancipay
* VRM and Identity (Information Cards, OpenID...)
* VRM and Mobile
* Personal RFPs
* VRM evangelism
* VRM and search
* VRM and Real Estate

== Open Space format ==

In open space workshops, topics are suggested by participants in the Agenda making session, which is attended by everybody. Participants write the title of their topic on a sheet of paper with a bold marker, add their name, then describe the topic to the group and post it on a large "spreadsheet" of times and session locations, which will be posted on the side of the room.

One person in each session took notes, either directly (or eventually) on the workshop wiki. At the end of each day somebody from each discussion session will report progress to the group. At the end of the second day everybody will discuss progress made and next steps.

== Schedule ==

=== Monday ===

==== Setup and Sessions ====

''''Greetings and VRM overview by Doc Searls''''

''''Suggesting and choosing the day's session topics''''

(Wiki note takers will fill in the sessions below.)

'''''Session 1'''''
* Issues in P2P Data Storage and Exchange
* 20,000 foot view of where VRM will thrive - What areas are ripe for VRM applications?

'''''Session 2'''''
* Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and anonymity (is it important?)
* Real estate - the need for buyer and seller-sided VRM apps

'''''Wrap-up'''''
''''' Reports from group sessions '''''

==== Dinner on Monday Night ====
Monday's dinner at at 6:30 at Daedalus in Harvard Sq. (http://www.daedalusharvardsquare.com/)

# Doc Searls
# Keith Hopper
# Dean Landsman
# Renee Lloyd
# John Eckman
# Mary Ruddy
# Andy Oram
# Alexander Torrenegra
# Charles Andres
# Sean Bohan
# Bill Wendell

=== Tuesday ===

==== Panel: Getting Personal With Data: How Users Get Control and What They Do With It ====
[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=self-tracking '''Self-tracking'''] and [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=personal+informatics '''personal informatics'''] are hot [http://www.selftracking.net/ new] new development categories, driven by the growing sense that primary responsibility for gathering personal data, integrating it, and putting it to use, belongs to individuals -- not to companies, governments or other organizations. Together these tools help individuals become both the [http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2007/06/14/vrm-the-user-as-point-of-integration/ ''point of integration''] for their own data, and the ''primary authority'' for what gets done with that data.

''Self-tracking'' is how individuals collect data about themselves, while ''personal informatics'' is how individuals organize that data and put it to use. Together these tools inform individuals' relationships with themselves, with their social networks, with the organizations to which they belong -- and with sellers of all kinds.

Tools for self-tracking and personal informatics are new, already becoming popular, and in need of much thinkig about how personal data is gathered, stored and shared -- concerns that are near and dear to those who follow VRM.

Each panelist is either developing tools in these categories or has experience with new tools and the issues involved. Doc Searls, of the Berkman Center and ProjectVRM, will moderate the panel, and we expect discussion with participants (there will be no "audience" here) to be lively and informative.

==== Moderator ====
'''Doc Searls''' - [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ Berkman Center]

==== Panelists & Their Projects ====
'''Ben Rubin''' - [http://myzeo.com Zeo]

Ben is the co-founder and CTO of Zeo Inc. Zeo has created and recently launched the world's first personal sleep coach.

'''Adriana Lukas''' - [http://themineproject.org/ The Mine! Project]

In addition to working on the Mine! project designed to turn individual user into a platform by helping him to capture, manage and share data on his own terms, she also runs [http://www.vrmhub.net/ VRM Hub] in London and disrupts companies [http://www.mediainfluencer.net/about/ for living].

'''Tim Hwang''' - [http://www.webecologyproject.org Web Ecology Project]

In addition to the Web Ecology Project, Tim Founded [http://roflcon.org ROFLCon] and [http://awesomefoundation.org The Awesome Foundation], and [http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2171174/ Information Superhighway]. He is working on a book on the mechanics of web culture and memes online.

'''Keith Hopper''' - [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/ListenLog ListenLog]

Keith works on digital product strategy for [http://npr.org NPR]. He is the creator of [http://keithhopper.com/blog/nprbackstory NPRbackstory], was a contributing author for the book [http://www.amazon.com/Collective-Intelligence-Creating-Prosperous-World/dp/097156616X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208206490&sr=8-4 Collective Intelligence], and has done some [http://keithhopper.com/about other fun stuff].

==== Sesions ====

(Wiki note takers will fill in the sessions below. The canonical session outline will be on the wall of the room during the workshop.)

'''''Session 1'''''
* [[Creating an Open Zeo ecosystem - how open should we be]]?
* [[VRM and Healthcare Session]]: Just give me the *&%^ data!

'''''Session 2'''''
* Medialogging

'''''Session 3'''''
* [[VRM Research opportunities]]

'''''Research possibilities'''''

ProjectVRM is classifed as a ''research'' project by the Berkman Center, and conducting research of some kind is part of ProjectVRM's charter. So we have a brief session near the end of the day to talk about the possibilities here, based on discussion during the last two days.

''''' Reports from group sessions '''''

''''' Wrap-up and next steps '''''

==Space/Location==

We have a the John Chipman Gray Room in Pound Hall (on the second floor) in Harvard Law School booked for both days. (Among other things, [http://thinkexist.com/quotes/john_chipman_gray/ Gray said], "âIt is a step for further advance to see what has been won from chaos already.") The room is the one over the bike racks on the south side of Pound Hall, which is on Massachusetts Avenue ("Mass Ave") next to the big construction project.

The room will have plenty of chairs and tables for group sessions.

Note: Parking is scarce and expensive in Cambridge. Public Transportation is best.

[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Image:Grayroom.jpg Here is a map] of Harvard Law School, with the John Chipman Gray room highlighted.

== Name ==

The first workshop, also at Harvard, was called just [[VRMWorkshop]], then [[VRM Workshop 2008]]. The second was called [[VRM West Coast Workshop 2009]]. We chose "VRM East Coast Workshop 2009" as a way to stay sort-of in compliance with that poor naming convention. The name "VRooM" was chosen by suggestion from the ProjectVRM mailing list.

The new workshop naming convention will be VRooM (location) (year). Until we come up with something else.

Creating an Open Zeo ecosystem - how open should we be

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Creating an Open Zeo ecosystem session

Attendees:
* John Eckman
* Tom Stites
* Ben Rubin
* Keith Hopper
* Doc Searls
* Robbin Lubbock
* Bob Wayland
* Alan Hoving

Where we have been - you use the SD card to upload your data to the web site.

What are the various ways we could open this data?

# Excel download of sleep features
# OpenAPI - access your sleep data from anywhere on the web (data export) (Read, Write, or Both)
# Aggregated data - sharing / access - how do other 40 yr old women in Duluth sleep
# Open up the data real time - data comes out of the serial port, do we publish the format
# Make it an open application platform - let other people write apps on it.

Weâre leaning towards the open platform, but we have to make sure we do it responsibly.

How many users? Largest sleep database in the world, well over 30,000 points of data.

Reach out along social media space - FB group (300 fans), twitter account (600 followers).

To what extent are you feeding conversation? (What arcana exists where people talk about what they learned from their Zeo)

People are talking about their ZQ score - weâre seeing the 1% of that online, but people are having the conversation.

Doc recommends registering the OtherThird.com - for the other third of your life which is sleep.

A. Create a planet, aggregating content from around the web about sleep - make yourself the Lord of Sleep.

B. Then, once you have some critical mass - make a big push out of the fact that the user owns their sleep data - I use a zeo, I own my sleep data.

C. Go to the users - what should we all do with this data? The people in the community. These are issues best studied in aggregate, we think there is value in it, how can we best leverage it?

---

At the end of the day, the building of a commuity around what youâre doing is where the value is - sleep optimization / sleep data / focus on sleep issues not just sleep data.

Reaching out to existing communities - where can we find folks who are already having this issue.

Doug Mayer who runs car talk forums - folks who want to answer questions versus folks with question.

---

Forum recomendations - Vanilla, Ning, BBPress,

---

What about data owership:

Weâre right at the beginning of this and we donât know whatâs around the curve. Weâve got the folks who are zealots, and folks who donât care at all, and not much in between.

You need to be able to redraw the picture as you go - drawing your picture in pencil as you go.

Youâve bitten off a market corner thatâs really large but focused.

You have to have a clear policy about the data. This policy reassures the concerned but also creates the space for having the possibility to do interesting work down the road.

What kinds of policy make sense for data usage? What should you allow or not allow?

Difficulty of traditional challenges - the default corporate culture today would be to keep the data private.

Keith - the key value here is going to be the community, which will require honestly. Also, youâre going to get a lot more exposure by being open. Finally youâre also going to get some interesting results coming out of the research.

Whats the argument to make to those concerned about regulatory issues and those from a more traditional background who worry about giving away the data?

----

What prevents a competitor from coming along and ripping off the interface and use? What would keep people from taking the SD that has the data on it and using it for other purposes?

When people impersonate you, thatâs a sign youâve won. Donât worry about Elvis impersonators - youâll always be better at it than you.
---

Devilâs Advocate positions:
- let people access their data, but only through a web API
- let people access their data off the SD card but decrypt it if you use an app where youâve accepted a developer version.

Whatâs wrong with that?

Feels like the company is setting the terms whereby the user can access his data - why is it the companies place to set these terms?

What would be better would be to say this is your data to use as you please, but here are some terms of service you should request - there are lots of people who will want your data, but this is what you should require from them.

The shift from âyou give us ownershipâ to âyou give us a right to use a copyâ in photo sharing services - there are steps beyond this you can explore.

Example: you can use this data for non-commercial, aggregate level research studies.

What you want ultimately is a trusted relationship with your community of users - thatâs a huge value if they know that they trust. Thatâs more important than the cheap opportunity youâd miss out on from selling the userâs data.

You have to be the shining example of safeguarding the users data.

Whatâs the benefit to the consumer of interacting with you? The most important thing is to build trust with the community.
- youâre gonna sleep better
- youâre gonna become part of a community
- youâll see your own behavior normalized in an aggregate set (where does my sleep disruption sit on a scale)

What will build trust?
- a user data covenant is one part of a broader picture
- accurate results, helpful results
- transparency into the data
- contest type stuff - the X prize for sleep

Open is horizontal, closed is vertical - you can do either, you can even play at both.

Apple as the prime counter example - they manage to do things but stay closed.

Be ready to jump - let the market tell you.

Main Page

2011-09-27T19:10:24Z

BerkmanSysop: revert spam edits

== About VRM ==

VRM stands for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_Relationship_Management '''Vendor Relationship Management''']. VRM tools provide customers with both ''independence'' from vendors and ''better ways of engaging'' with vendors. The same tools can also support individuals' relations with schools, churches, government entities and other kinds of organizations.

In a narrow sense, VRM is the reciprocal  the customer side  of CRM (or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_Relationship_Management Customer Relationship Management]). VRM tools provide customers with the means to bear their side of the relationship burden. They relieve CRM of the perceived need to "capture," "acquire," [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in "lock in,"] "manage," and otherwise employ the language and thinking of slave-owners when dealing with customers. With VRM operating on the customer's side, CRM systems will no longer be alone in trying to improve the ways companies relate to customers. Customers will be also be involved, as fully empowered participants, rather than as captive followers.

VRM development projects are listed below.

== Project VRM ==

[http://projectvrm.org ProjectVRM] is a project of [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu the Berkman Center for Internet & Society] at Harvard University. It was created by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Searls Doc Searls] when he became a fellow at the Center in 2006. (He has been an alumnus fellow since September 2010). The purpose of the project is to encourage VRM development and to conduct research on its premises and its progress.

When the project began, Doc saw this as "a way to fulfill the promise of [http://cluetrain.com ''The Cluetrain Manifesto'']'s Prime Clue":

[[Image:Not-1.gif]]

Doc believed that customer reach would only exceed vendor grasp if customers had the tools for the job. So Doc created ProjectVRM to support the creation and building of those tools.

Since then the VRM community has grown to include many development projects, companies, allied associations and individuals, in addition to ProjectVRM itself. The community's work is outlined in this wiki, and discussed on its [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Mailing_list mailing list], its [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm blog] and in workshops and other events.

Read more about ProjectVRM on the [[About | About Page]].

== VRM and the Economy ==

The economic goal of VRM is to improve relationships between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to engage with and drive the latter.

This is not possible when all the tools of engagement are provided by suppliers, and all those tools are different. For example, most customers today carry around up to dozens of "loyalty" cards and key-ring tags, each with its own vendor-provided means for controlling interactions and providing benefits. These inconvenience both buyers and sellers, and limit the intelligence that can be gathered and put to use by either party.

What if buyers had the ability to advertise their shopping lists to the sellers with which they have relationships? What if buyers were able to establish and maintain loyalty on their own terms and in their own ways? What if customers' ability to express preferences and advertise demand were improved to the point where sellers could reduce money wasted on advertising and other forms of guesswork? What if it were quick and easy for customers to say what they'll pay for what they want, on their own terms (and to pay on the spot, if the terms are mutually agreeable) ? VRM tools and services will answer these and many other questions that could not be asked before the Internet and came along  and cannot be asked, as long as sellers continue to hold all the relationship cards.

== VRM Principles ==

VRM development work is based on the belief that ''free customers are more valuable than captive ones''  to themselves, to vendors, and to the larger economy. To be free 

#Relationships must be voluntary.
#Customers must enter relationships with vendors as independent actors.
#Customers must be the points of integration for their own data.
#Customers must have control of data they generate and gather. They must be able to share data selectively, voluntarily, and control the terms of its use.
#Customers must be able to assert their own terms of engagement and service.
#Customers must be free to express their demands and intentions outside of any one company's control.

VRM research work probes the willingness and ability of customers to assert and enjoy independence from vendors -- and of vendors' willingness and ability to value and engage with independent customers. It also follows changes in the marketplace as VRM tools come into use.

== VRM Goals ==

In the "Markets Are Relationships" chapter of the [http://www.cluetrain.com/Cluetrain_10/index.html 10th Anniversary edition] of ''The Cluetrain Manifesto'', Doc Searls writes this about the purposes of VRM efforts:

#Provide tools for individuals to manage relationships with organizations. These tools are personal. That is, they belong to the individual in the sense that they are under the individual's control. They can also be social, in the sense that they can connect with others and support group formation and action. But they need to be personal first.
#Make individuals the collection centers for their own data, so that transaction histories, health records, membership details, service contracts, and other forms of personal data are no longer scattered throughout a forest of silos.
#Give individuals the ability to share data selectively, without disclosing more personal information than the individual allows.
#Give individuals the ability to control how their data is used by others, and for how long. At the individual's discretion, this may include agreements requiring others to delete the individual's data when the relationship ends.
#Give individuals the ability to assert their own terms of service, reducing or eliminating the need for organization-written terms of service that nobody reads and everybody has to "accept" anyway.
#Give individuals means for expressing demand in the open market, outside any organizational silo, without disclosing any unnecessary personal information.
#Make individuals platforms for business by opening the market to many kinds of third party services that serve buyers as well as sellers
#Base relationship-managing tools on open standards, open APIs (application program interfaces). This will support a rising tide of activity that will lift an infinite variety of business boats plus other social goods.

== VRM Development Work ==

Here is a partial list of VRM development efforts. Some are organizations, some are commercial entities, some are standing open source code development efforts:
*[http://www.azigo.com/ Azigo.com]
*[http://www.banyanproject.com/ The Banyan Project]
*[[EmanciPay]]
*[[FCRA: Access to credit data]]
*[[GRM: Government Relationship Management]]
*[http://higgins-project.org higgins-project.org]
*[http://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/infosharing/Home Information Sharing Workgroup at Kantara]
*[http://kynetx.com Kynetx], which also does [http://hvr.me HoverMe]
*[[ListenLog]]
*[https://github.com/quartzjer/Locker#readme The Locker Project]
*[http://themineproject.org/ The Mine! Project]
*[http://newgov.us/ NewGov.us]
*[http://www.paoga.com/ Paoga]
*[http://pegasuspublic.wikispaces.com/ Pegasus]
*[http://personal.com Personal.com]
*[http://personaldataecosystem.org/ Personal Data Ecosystem]
*[[Personal RFP]]
*[http://projectdanube.org/ ProjectDanube]
*[http://www.projectnori.org/ Project Nori]
*[http://www.qiycorporate.com/ QIY]
*[[r-button]]
*[http://sing.ly/ Singly]
*[http://www.socialnori.org/ Social Nori]
*[http://www.getabl.com/ Getabl]
*[http://www.switchbook.com/ SwitchBook]
*[http://telehash.org Telehash]
*[http://www.thumbtack.com/ Thumbtack]
*[http://www.trustfabric.com/ TrustFabric]
*[http://tucows.com Tucows] and [http://hover.com Hover.com]
*[http://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/uma/ UMA]
*[http://www.vrmhub.net VRM Hub]
*[http://www.vrmlabs.net VRM Labs]
*[http://code.google.com/p/webfinger/ webfinger]

== ProjectVRM Committees ==

*[[Vision Committee]]
*[[Marketing Committee]]
*[[Standards Committee]]
*[[Organization Committee]]
*[[Usage Committee]]
*[[Compliance Committee]]
*[[Steering Committee]]

== ProjectVRM Resources ==

* ProjectVRM [[mailing list]]
* ProjectVRM [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm blog]
* [[VRM FAQ]]
* VRM [Twitter stream http://twitter.com/vrm]

Conference Call archive and audio links can be found at the [[Project_VRM:Community_Portal | Community Portal]] page.

== VRM Events ==

Also see [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Events Events] page.
ProjectVRM events take place once or twice per year:
=== Upcoming Events ===
2011
* [http://iiw13.eventbrite.com/ IIW XIII (2011-B)] October 18-20, 2011, Mountain View, CA]

=== Past Events ===
2011
*[http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com/iiw-12/ IIW #12][http://www.chenkrahman.com/ ,] May 3-5, Mountain View, CA
*[http://www.cvent.com/events/conversational-commerce-conference/event-summary-f70a703bbabf4cda930c1412dee2bf4f.aspx Conversational Commerce Conference], February 2-3, San Francisco
* [http://impact.kynetx.com/ IMPACT/2011], March 22-23, Salt Lake City, UT
* VRM Gathering at [[SXSW Interactive 2011]]
* [http://iiw12.eventbrite.com/ IIW XII (2011-A)] May 3-5, 2011, Mountain View, CA

2010
* [[VRM+CRM%202010]] August 26-27 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

2009
* [[VRooM Leadership Workshop]] took place on 31 Oct * 1 Nov in Mountain View, CA
* [[VRM East Coast Workshop 2009]] (VRooM 2009) took place on 12-13 October at Harvard University
* [[VRM at SXSW 2009]] were meetings during SXSW in March 2009, Austin, TX
* [[VRM West Coast Workshop 2009]] took place May 15-16, 2009 in Palo Alto, CA.

2008
* [[VRM2008]] took place in Munich on 21/22 April 2008
* [[VRM Workshop 2008]] took place in July 2008 at Harvard University

[http://www.vrmhub.net/ VRM Hub] is a series of monthly meetings in London.

Other meetings and workshops take place before and during [http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com/ Internet Identity Workshops] in Mountain View, California, each Fall and Spring. VRM is also a topic at [http://kynetximpactspring2010.eventbrite.com/ Kynetx Impact] conferences.

== ProjectVRM Participation ==

Sign up for the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/lists/info/projectvrm Project VRM mailing list]. You can also edit this wiki by signing up at the top of this page.

Main Page

2011-09-27T18:55:53Z

BerkmanSysop: revert spam edits

== About VRM ==

VRM stands for '''Vendor Relationship Management'''. VRM tools provide customers with both ''independence'' from vendors and ''better ways of engaging'' with vendors. The same tools can also support individuals' relations with schools, churches, government entities and other kinds of organizations.

In a narrow sense, VRM is the reciprocal from the customer side of CRM (or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_Relationship_Management Customer Relationship Management]). VRM tools provide customers with the means to bear their side of the relationship burden. They relieve CRM of the perceived need to "capture," "acquire," "lock in," "manage," and otherwise employ the language and thinking of slave-owners when dealing with customers. With VRM on the customer's side, CRM systems will no longer be alone in trying to improve the ways companies relate to customers. Customers will be also be involved, as fully empowered participants, rather than as captive followers.

VRM development projects are listed below.

== Project VRM ==

[http://www.choithraminternational.com schools indore] [http://projectvrm.org ProjectVRM] is a research and development project of [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu the Berkman Center for Internet & Society] at Harvard University. It was created by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Searls Doc Searls], a fellow at the Center, to encourage VRM development and to conduct research on its premises and its progress.

When the project began in 2006, Doc saw it as "a way to fulfill the promise of [http://cluetrain.com ''The Cluetrain Manifesto'']'s Prime Clue":

[[Image:Not-1.gif]]

Doc believed that customer reach would only exceed vendor grasp if customers had the tools for the job. So Doc created ProjectVRM to support the creation and building of those tools. You can also try a [http://phonyphonecalls.blogspot.com/ cell phone lookup ]

Since then the VRM community has grown to include many development projects, companies, allied associations and individuals, in addition to ProjectVRM itself. The community's work is outlined in this wiki, and discussed on its [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Mailing_list mailing list], its [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm blog] and in workshops and other events and site.

Read more about ProjectVRM on the [[About | About Page]].

== VRM and the Economy ==

The economic goal of VRM is to improve relationships between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to engage with and drive the latter.

This is not possible when all the tools are provided by suppliers, and all those tools are different. For example, most customers today carry around up to dozens of "loyalty" cards and key-ring tags, each with its own vendor-provided means for controlling interactions and providing benefits. These inconvenience both buyers and sellers, and limit the intelligence that can be gathered and put to use by either party. What if buyers had the ability to advertise their shopping lists to the sellers with which they have relationships? What if buyers were able to establish and maintain loyalty on their own terms and in their own ways? What if customers' ability to express preferences and advertise demand were improved to the point where sellers could reduce money wasted on advertising and other forms of guesswork? What if it were quick and easy for customers to say what they'll pay for what they want, on their own terms (and to pay on the spot, if the terms are mutually agreeable)? VRM tools and services will answer these and many other questions that could not be asked before the Internet came along and cannot be asked, as long as sellers continue to hold all the relationship cards.

== VRM Principles ==

VRM development work is based on the belief that ''free customers are more valuable than captive ones'' to themselves, to vendors, and to the larger economy. To be free 

#Relationships must be voluntary.
#Customers must enter relationships with vendors as independent actors.
#Customers must be the points of integration for their own data.
#Customers must have control of data they generate and gather. They must be able to share data selectively, voluntarily, and control the terms of its use.
#Customers must be able to assert their own terms of engagement and service.
#Customers must be free to express their demands and intentions outside of any one company's control.

VRM research work probes the willingness and ability of customers to assert and enjoy independence from vendors -- and of vendors' willingness and ability to value and engage with independent customers. It also follows changes in the marketplace as VRM tools come into use.

== VRM Goals ==

In the "Markets Are Relationships" chapter of the [http://www.cluetrain.com/Cluetrain_10/index.html 10th Anniversary edition] of ''The Cluetrain Manifesto'', Doc Searls writes this about the purposes of VRM efforts:

#Provide tools for individuals to manage relationships with organizations. These tools are personal. That is, they belong to the individual in the sense that they are under the individual's control. They can also be social, in the sense that they can connect with others and support group formation and action. But they need to be personal first.
#Make individuals the collection centers for their own data, so that transaction histories, health records, membership details, service contracts, and other forms of personal data are no longer scattered throughout a forest of silos.
#Give individuals the ability to share data selectively, without disclosing more personal information than the individual allows.
#Give individuals the ability to control how their data is used by others, and for how long. At the individual's discretion, this may include agreements requiring others to delete the individual's data when the relationship ends.
#Give individuals the ability to assert their own terms of service, reducing or eliminating the need for organization-written terms of service that nobody reads and everybody has to "accept" anyway.
#Give individuals means for expressing demand in the open market, outside any organizational silo, without disclosing any unnecessary personal information.
#Make individuals platforms for business by opening the market to many kinds of third party services that serve buyers as well as sellers.
#Base relationship-managing tools on open standards, open APIs (application program interfaces), and open code. This will support a rising tide of activity that will lift an infinite variety of business boats, plus other social goods.

== VRM Terminology ==
Like any new market, VRM requires the introduction of a handful of new terms. The community is currently (October 2010) using this wiki to develop Wikipedia entries for the following terms. Feel free to help us by reviewing and editing the following pages (or our [[Wikipedia Article Discussion]] page):
* [[Personal data service]]
* [[Personal data server]]
* [[Personal data store]]
* [[Personal data ecosystem]]
* [[Personal Cloud]]
* [[Personal Data management]]

We encourage discussion of these definitions on the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/lists/info/projectvrm Project VRM mailing list]. Please add other terms you feel are important to [http://seoph2.cafe24.com/wordpress/ seo blog] harmonize within VRM and with related [http://www.allseoexperts.com/ web design] communities.

== VRM Development Work ==

Here is a partial list of VRM development efforts. Some are organizations of whom some are commercial entities, some are standing open source code development efforts:

*[[EmanciPay]]
*[[FCRA: Access to credit data]]
*[http://genomera.com Genomera (Health VRM)]
*[[GRM: Government Relationship Management]]
*[http://www.gofrugal.com/pos/point-of-sale.html Project Management]
*[http://higgins-project.org higgins-project.org
*[[Personal RFP]]
*[http://themineproject.org/ The Mine! Project]
*[http://code.google.com/p/webfinger/ webfinger]

== ProjectVRM Committees ==

*[[Vision Committee]]
*[[Marketing Committee]]
*[[Standards Committee]]
*[[Organization Committee]]
*[[Usage Committee]]
*[[Compliance Committee]]
*[[Steering Committee]]

== ProjectVRM Resources ==

* ProjectVRM [[mailing list]]
* ProjectVRM
* [[VRM FAQ]]
* VRM [Twitter stream http://twitter.com/vrm]

Conference Call archive and audio links can be found at the [[Project_VRM:Community_Portal | Community Portal]] page.

== VRM Events ==

Also see [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Events Events] page.
ProjectVRM events take place once or twice per year:
=== Upcoming Events ===
2011
* [http://iiw13.eventbrite.com/ IIW XIII (2011-B)] November, 2011, Mountain View, CA]

=== Past Events ===
2011
*[http://www.cvent.com/events/conversational-commerce-conference/event-summary-f70a703bbabf4cda930c1412dee2bf4f.aspx Conversational Commerce Conference], February 2-3, San Francisco
* [http://impact.kynetx.com/ IMPACT/2011], March 22-23, Salt Lake City, UT
* VRM Gathering at [[SXSW Interactive 2011]] (date TBD)
* [http://iiw12.eventbrite.com/ IIW XII (2011-A)] May 3-5, 2011, Mountain View, CA

2010
* [[VRM+CRM%202010]] August 26-27 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

2009
* [[VRooM Leadership Workshop]] took place on 31 Oct * 1 Nov in Mountain View, CA
* [[VRM East Coast Workshop 2009]] (VRooM 2009) took place on 12-13 October at Harvard University
* [[VRM at SXSW 2009]] were meetings during SXSW in March 2009, Austin, TX
* [[VRM West Coast Workshop 2009]] took place May 15-16, 2009 in Palo Alto, CA

2008
* [[VRM2008]] took place in Munich on 21/22 April 2008
* [[VRM Workshop 2008]] took place in July 2008 at Harvard University

[http://www.vrmhub.net/ VRM Hub] is a series of monthly meetings in London.

Other meetings and workshops take place before and during [http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com/ Internet Identity Workshops] in Mountain View, California, each Fall and Spring. VRM is also a topic at [http://kynetximpactspring2010.eventbrite.com/ Kynetx Impact] conferences.

== ProjectVRM Participation ==

Sign up for the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/lists/info/projectvrm Project VRM mailing list]. Or edit this wiki by signing up at the top of this page.

<div class="right" >
<ul style="display:none;">
[http://www.ocularconcepts.us Web Design Cleveland]

</div>

VRM Meeting

2011-09-27T18:55:08Z

BerkmanSysop: revert spam edits

This is a VRM Developers Meeting. Not a conference.

We want to make this small and focused on development work: who's doing what, who's planning what, and how we can help each other do whatever we're doing.

Questions to visit include

* What's already been done that we can put to use
* What new work needs to be done

The date is January 25 at the [http://www.sofitel.com/sofitel/fichehotel/gb/sof/0922/fiche_hotel.shtml Hotel Sofitel] in Redwood City, with thanks to the [http://www.projectliberty.org Liberty Alliance Project], which is making the space available during its [http://www.projectliberty.org/news_events/events/liberty_2_0_workshop Liberty 2.0 Workshop].

It's an all-day thing. 9 to 5. Though you can show up early to nosh and schmooze.

This page is also where we sign up. Add your name and relevant links to the list below:

* [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/doc_searls Doc Searls]
* http://lid.netmesh.org/images/openid-relying-party-authenticated.gif [http://netmesh.info/jernst Johannes Ernst]
* [http://blog.joeandrieu.com Joe Andrieu]
* [http://www.deborahschultz.com Deborah Schultz]
* [http://xri.net/=drummond.reed Drummond Reed]
* [http://epeus.blogspot.com Kevin Marks]
* [http://haystack.cerado.com/profile/2 Christopher Carfi]
* [http://blog.wachob.com Gabe Wachob] (Its in my home town - can't miss it!)
* [http://www.confusedofcalcutta.com JP Rangaswami]
* [http://www.digisenseinc.com Avery Lyford]
* Iain Henderson
* vinoo
* [http://blog.deanland.com Dean Landsman]
* [http://www.cardcarrying.info Bill Barnes]
* Kenji Takahashi, NTT
* [http://haystack.cerado.com/profile/1 Leif Chastaine]
* [http://www.myspace.com/urban_revolt SEO]
* [http://www.shindiristudio.com/SEO-optimizacija-sajta/ SEO optimizacija sajta]
* [http://www.shindiristudio.com/ Web Design Studio]

[[Action Items 1_25 Meeting]]