Hey Mark, must have overlooked this one yesterday . . . here’s some thoughts
From: Mark Lizar [mailto:
]
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 4:25 PM
To: Katherine Warman Kern
Cc: Doc Searls; Project VRM
Subject: Re: Open Loyalty -- Re: VRM Utopia Re: [projectvrm] good Groupon Math
Great Ideas and comments,
On 10 May 2011, at 12:13, Doc Searls wrote:
I agree that whatever this is needs to be a community exercise. If it's yet another company with yet another site/service, it's yet another silo. But that means creating a nonprofit, or something close. Is that what's being proposed here?
Yes it is.. but I the devil is in the details.
>> As always absolutely, but the intent is exactly as described a community for the benefit of the individuals who invest the assets, time and money to build it. The source of capital would be grass roots to avoid conflict of interest, the source of revenue would be from the businesses who are interested in the info “as it is packaged and presented” by the community ( in other words they don’t get a free license to the raw data), the businesses who have an offer in response to the request made by one or more groups in the community, and a handling fee on transactions made between the community individuals and businesses through the community transactional system, which is uniquely designed to give the individual control over what data is shared with whom.
On 10 May 2011, at 14:30, Katherine Warman Kern wrote:
I don't know if the legal definition is a non-profit or for profit. Would be great to hear the pros and cons from those in the know. The principle is that the customers who generate the info are rewarded for the value they contribute after the cost of making sense of that info is paid for.
Thoughts?
As for company structure.
Perhaps something along the idea of a Community Interest Company (CIC) like Mydex? This type of structure is designed to take care of community assests like skating rinks and parks. It is designed to be transparent and make a profit! Basically, a bit of a hybird type of business structure. The organisation can provide dividends but these are capped and so are the salaries but the services that are provided on this infrastructure are not limited in the profits that can be made. As a CIC in the UK is regulated by a regulator to be financially transparent so would the services offered also need to be transparent. Creating a trusted business structure from the start.
>> Interesting. I’m curious why the dividends are capped? And I’m assuming that the services are contracted and could be bidded out to assure the best performance for the money? By the way, Community Banks in the US are structured so that dividends go back to the customers and, I think, they are required to donate some share of profits to the community.
I started a Community Interest Company in 2007 (that was not successful), I learned alot about how a business structure can be tailored specifically to a community. I also learned that the ideas I had when starting this type of company were sound, but, it is a community which needs to create such the Enterprise of gaining control and access over personal information in the context of sharing information with a Vendor. An activity I believe that fundamentally needs to be mirrored in the structure of the community organisation.
>> Yes. The trick is how to design the infrastructure for community integrity – i.e., individuals’ information sharing organically determines how the community clusters and the aspirations which emerge, but the organization can not be hijacked by wolves in sheep’s clothing.
In this regard, through legal consultations and brute force experience I have discovered that a CIC business structure can be replicated in other countries. A company in another company can be formed and designed then to mirror the practices and sturcture of a UK CIC and self-regulate its activities in a transparent way to obtain the same CIC effect. IN this way a CIC structure in the UK can be mimicked in the US and Canada.
But why stop the idea there! The idea of a co-operative is very valuable, perhaps what this community needs is a combination of structures? Even more recently I have been thinking that was is really needed is a customer union, something powerful enough that access and control of shared vendor data can actually become a reality.
>> Am I missing something or is the key difference between a cooperative and a community interest company the issue of caps on dividends?
Maybe what is required is a CIC like structure, described as a data co-operative, with a customer charter that resembles a Union!! Whatever the case I believe the effort would need to start with consolidated support from the community.
>> I like the idea of a charter or “bill of rights” or social contract or something that individuals get in return for contributing capital to this thing. A sort of reverse terms of use.
Structure not with standing it is the vision and the consolidated action to create a hub organisation that will end up facilitating access to data stores full of our valuable customer information controlled by vendor. Having a common VRM vision that is also congruent with existing VRM efforts and services is also a critical requirement. The second critical requirement that comes to mind is the actual creation of an extremely valuable and individually owned/controlled data source to form the kernel hub of the VRM Community business structure. The core service that faciliates the customer as the point of integration. What I have come to believe is the the "red dot" of VRM. (Coined in the first VRM IIW workshop)
>> I do think that the key to generating value and giving individuals control is that the individuals go through a process, on an interest group basis, in which they reach consensus of how that group wants to package/make sense of information shared by individuals to share with businesses interested in serving them better. In other words the value comes by organizing lots of individual’s data (with their cooperation) into a request that business can act upon. It is no one’s best interest to an individual’s raw data, with or without their permission, with business. They don’t know what it means so they will guess. The outcome is that the individual doesn’t get anything relevant in return for sharing information and the business doesn’t sell anything. No one wins.
In this regard I am still working on this draft of what this could practically look like. But to expand what I wrote earlier.
What if the VRM community banded together and put together a platform
that combined loyalty card program and paperless receipts upon an
infrastructure of personal data control as to create a user driven
channel.
The paperless receipts provide a core service to open loyalty around. This is being mandated in Taipai and they estimate that will save XX amount of money a year by XX and save x amount of tree's. (Providing the potential for a very big VRM idea, if people could control and own the data)
Enabling people to independently control, benefit, gain access too and
make valuable our own personal information in the context of all the
vendor relationships we have.
Open loyalty is in essence data portability of loyalty card and transaction data into one central VRM community created hub.
Perhaps this is a bit of a utopian VRM vision, but I do think there is
great potential in the combination of these traditional vendor tools
to build the business book that contrasts with the Facebook.
Creating a business book of transactions amounts in my mind to a (reverse Facebook) Imagine a VRM Hub CIC that VRM services can hook up to like apps in an App Store.
>> Although I think transactional data can add value, I think it is on top of a base of richer anecdotal information generated by individuals sharing answers to questions about what would be better in the future, rather than just looking at the past numbers. Predicting the future by analyzing past numbers doesn’t change anything.
So I think the business book idea may be a valuable service on the platform, it is not the backbone of the platform.
One service on such an app store that I have been envisioning is an e-zine like the one Paper.li is offering for twitter. (e.g. identity trust daily) but instead of tweets this provides access to company and product/services information directly relevant to the transaction of the individual. In my minds view I can imagine my own personal transaction driven secure web-site (constantly updated) with gardening, entertainment, real estate, cars (depending on my transaction data and combined with my interest) A little more imagination, I can imagine clicking on a company info icon in my e-zine (made out of data I control) and being able to observe the privacy and control settings of that particular company. Perhaps providing a two way channel of communication where a an individual can request that their local corner store order in a type of chocolate bar and a way for others to like that idea. Yet another VRM service idea.
The potential is limitless for a business book. The most poignant point being that the aggregated data of the individual is owned by the individual and in this way the individual is now in a significant data bargaining position. - (A reverse groupon position) at this stage there is alot of services that can be designed and built to make really amazing things happen.
Of course, its not going to be easy to convince retailers to share that transaction data online. Even at the customers behest. As a customer could then be anonymous.. ! This is why I believe a united VRM is needed to Open Up Loyalty. This proposal is dependant on a vendor partnership with the customer that can be facilitated at the till.
In summary, a VRM Utopia is imagined here as being the penultimate fourth party, the central hub for all of our lovely VRM services to be offered for the individual to integrate into their own live experience.
>> I agree individuals who use VRM and Personal Data Stores to manage their data more efficiently will contribute more to reaching consensus as an aggregated community interest group and those communities will give back more to the individual.
The question being, is this something that Mydex, Connect.me, Emancipay, Switchbook etc think is a way to light up the ecosystem and create the massive flow of customer owned data that is needed to make things really happen?
At the moment I am imaging that a company like MYDEX can offer the PDS, Connect.me can do the aggregation, Emancipay can provide the method of payment, Switchbook, could help individuals switch to open loyalty. The Mine could provide user driven data mining. The list goes on. The requirements are that people have ownership over their transaction data to start this ball rolling.
With the most Sincere Regards / Mark Lizar
>> Hope this leads to more interesting discussions.