| Woops, left out a link. See below.
Also, a word of appreciation for the good work of Fing, which Daniel Kaplan brings up in another thread. Thanks to them and their friends, VRM is more familiar in general, I would say, in France than it is in the U.S. — and perhaps even the U.K. (where VRM has had a hotbed all along).
Doc On Jan 21, 2013, at 1:46 PM, Doc Searls <
">
> wrote: Thanks for getting this rolling, Lucas.
Bill and Judi's responses are both good ones, and I add a few more in response to your bulleted questions below. Meanwhile, I'll point to Chapter 27 of The Intention Economy, where I float consideration of four broad verticals, in addition to retail, which I cover in a prior chapter:
- Banking and Finance - Supply Chain - Health Care - Law
VRM in health care was already a huge concern, with lots of participants, before VRM showed up as a discrete idea. We've been talking about that lately on the list, and we need to continue. Your townhall would be one good place to do that.
Two VRM companies — Kynetx and Respect Network — worked with the Innotribe division of SWIFT this past year to advance development of the Digital Asset Grid, which is a VRM tool. This was actually the second year of work on "the DAG" for SWIFT. Across both years a number of additional individuals in the VRM dev community were involved, including Craig Burton, Kaliya Hamlin, Mary Hodder, Judi Clark and myself. Since the DAG was shown at the Sibos conference late last year I have also been contacted individuals at two of the world's largest banks. I believe either or both of those banks should be ready soon to start finding ways for banking to work in the midst of the Intention Economy that VRM will help enable.
While law itself is not ready for VRM reform (in part because lawyers tend to be hired, literally, as fourth parties, and are highly conversational by nature already), there is much law work to be done in order for VRM to work at full power in the world. Much work is taking place there as well. ProjectVRM is concerned with the development side of that work, while Customer Commons is concerned with the legal work.
Outreach and connection to VRM work in various parts of the world (other than the U.S. and the U.K.) is essential. Check out this tweet and its link by Caroline Condamin of OneCub in France.
https://twitter.com/CaroCondamin/status/293032387355488256 (View it in Chrome to see it in English.) I've been contacted by more companies than I can count in Australia, from which we have also acquired several new list members. What Kevin Cox is doing there around identity is also critical, I think. TrustFabric in South Africa is already downstream with VRM. Kuppinger-Cole, based in Germany, is focused on Life Management Platforms as a lever for VRM: http://www.kuppingercole.com/report/advisorylifemanagementplatforms7060813412.
Craig Burton is a Distinguished Analyst with the company, and would have us focus as well on what he calls the API Economy.
Retail, however, is where most of our mental energy goes, largely because that's where we live as customers. Which verticals within retail will prove most friendly, and earliest to adapt to VRM, is an open question, but one worth visiting at the townhall.
More below. On Jan 20, 2013, at 8:00 PM, Lucas Cioffi <
">
> wrote: Hi All,
I've been happily soaking in the discussion on this listserv since attending the 2008 VRM workshop in Cambridge.
I'd like to organize a 2-week asynchronous online townhall on the State of VRM for two reasons: 1) I want to create a robust knowledge-sharing opportunity for the community and 2) I want to test out the software that I've built.
I don't like the form that online townhalls take in politics-- they are mainly 1-way broadcasts of information. So the software I'm building focuses on a many-to-many sharing of information. Instead of broadcasting, the convener asks questions or opens up hypotheses for feedback/debate. The format is 1) discuss relevant facts and definitions 2) brainstorm 3) deliberate and 4) summarize.
This is not to replace the listserv-- just to provide a temporary space for more in-depth discussion at scale to move some ideas forward. Would something like this be useful to us or would it be a waste of time?
If this is to succeed, I'll need some help choosing the following: - What are some open-ended questions that members of the VRM community may want to discuss?
Here are a few of mine, in addition to what I mention above:
- How can we bring UI coherency to the many different offerings in categories such as ad blocking, tracker following and blocking, intentcasting and personal data stores (aka lockers, vaults, clouds, services, etc.)? Or alternatively, better collaboration among them? I can't even count the tracker following and blocking tools I have installed on many different browsers, and I still feel like I'm flying blind. All look and behave very differently.
- A related problem is silo-ization of VRM tools and services. An advantage of a common UI suite and a single data store on the customer's side is substitutable apps and services. Right now many offerings are their own playing fields, and not competing on a single playing field. That slows progress, even if it looks like good competition to each service.
- VRM + CRM. We need real connections between the two, and don't have them yet. If we did, CRM companies would be pushing us. They aren't. But they are waiting.
- Emancipay < http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/EmanciPay>. This applies across retail, banking, nonprofit support and many other fields. The DAG grew out of Emancipay discussions, but Emancipay got dropped when the work focused on customer data rather than customer intent. I'd like us to go back to intent, whether we call the _expression_ of that intent Emancipay or something else.
- Quantified Self and self-hacking. This is personal data that individuals already value. Only a relatively small number so far, but a significant one. Some among us (e.g. Adriana Lukas) have shifted their energies in this direction from VRM, in part to get some leverage on VRM development. In any case, we need better connections between these communities.
- The Internet of Things. Phil Windley < http://windley.com> and Kynetx have been working on this for some time, but I'd like to see more work there. Also in discrete standalone personal devices, such as the one I talk about in my WSJ essay from last summer: < http://on.wsj.com/UczP5Z>. - What are statements/hypotheses that members of the VRM community may want to debate?
First I think of ones I'd rather we not debate, starting with whether or not companies will accept VRM signaling from their customers. We'll only find out if we make it possible, and so far we have not — at least not to the degree that there is a critical mass of adoption. We need inventions that mother necessity. That was Job One when we started, and to me it's more like Job Only. If debate is required here, it should be around what it will take to bring together disparate efforts, and maximize the chances of any one effort succeeding.
- Additionally, if there are any words/phrases that have unclear definitions within the community and are important for the community to have a broader consensus emerge on these terms, which words would they be?
I can think of a few, but am out of time right now and want to get this off.
Doc
Lucas Cioffi Board Member, National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation CEO, AthenaBridge Inc Charlottesville, VA 917-528-1831
|