Re: [projectvrm] [ PFIR ] Proposed California law requires site privacy polices not to exceed 8th grade language and 100 words

[Chris Savage < >]

In response to the California law requiring 100-word privacy policies, I joked earlier (although I'm not sure that the list got it due to some temporary issues) that we ought to require tweet-able privacy policies.

More seriously: I wonder if it is possible to identify a "10 Commandments of VRM" or "The VRM 12-Step Program" that actually encapsulates the key, core, essential, unshakable things that VRM will do, or prevent, or enable, or whatever?

This is not meant -- not in the slightest -- as an exercise in "dumbing down."  As some famous writer once said, "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one."  Putting things into a set of words that is simultaneously not too numerous and not too obscure is hard. 

Perhaps someone has done this already, and in my VRM-newbie status I have missed it?

Chris S.

On 2/14/2013 3:09 AM, Phil Wolff, PDEC wrote:

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On the readability front, 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/feb/12/state-of-the-union-reading-level 

It looks to me like: 

- SOTU Flesch-Kincaid readability (grade levels needed to read) fell as media distribution grew and the authors weren't just reporting to educated elites. 

- Formal communication styles, the language of authority, became more colloquial over time. 

- The US developed a shorthand for policy topics, as a country, making pith pothible. 

Kaliya and I have been writing and rewriting blurbs for her seminars on the Personal Data Economy; boiling down why this topic is worth a deep-dive is tough. I'm short on prior art for explaining why this is useful, important and urgent to newbies. Heck, we can't even assume awareness of user centricity, design thinking, or the existence of CRM. And in today's medium of email subject lines and tweets and bumper stickers, we are still writing and talking as though it's 1800 in VRMland. Too much jargon, too many complex ideas invoked by reference. To follow our threads you'll need backgrounds in constitutional and contract law, IT architecture, startup culture, microeconomics, social science, software UX, and graduate studies in social media. It's juicy and intellectually rich. 

And it's a bit much. 

I just hope it doesn't take 200 years to invent how to talk VRM before you're out of middle school. 

- phil