Re: [projectvrm] Can I tell you a story ....

[Markus Sabadello < >]

So if you're just talking about the vocabulary and not about protocols
(which is a very smart separation I think), then this should indeed be
not so difficult.

I don't think I have ever seen any standardized way of expressing a
relationship between customer and supplier.

I agree Good Relations probably has some parts of this, e.g. the "Offer"
class which I am sure you know:
http://schema.org/Offer

In the W3C Social WG I found the following, which could be relevant:
https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg/Social_API/User_stories#Offering_asparagus

But I understand those are just parts of what you're looking for.

Why not just get something started on a wiki page or Github repo?
Now that I think of it this could be really exciting.

What if Customer Commons published a simple OWL ontology (and/or XDI
dictionary) that defined a SINGLE relation: X hasSupplier Y
This could then be expanded/refined of course, but even defining that
one thing could be a HUGE (symbolic) first step, no? :)

Markus

On 03/17/2015 02:02 AM, Iain Henderson wrote:
> Hi Markus, yes I well remember all those conversations with Paul and 
> personal data store popping out as an area of general consensus.
>
> To your point about standards, I think we perhaps do need to be more 
> specific. What i’m referring to is a data standard that defines the data 
> required around me and my suppliers. The technical means of moving that 
> data around, managing identity and access control and the like are related 
> but not what i’m describing. Higgins came relatively close on some aspects 
> of that’ albeit with some assumptions about ontologies. I’m fairly sure 
> there is nothing out there as a public standard in that space. There are 
> some in adjacent spaces or sub-sets, such as postal address standards, or 
> Good Relations on Products/ Services; anything beyond that then let’s air 
> them on the list for discussion.
>
> Cheers
>
> Iain
>
>
>
>
>
>> On 16 Mar 2015, at 15:00, Markus Sabadello 
>> <
 >
>>  wrote:
>>
>> For me, the most interesting aspect of Higgins was that it started by
>> defining an abstract data model with a single and very light API
>> ("IdAS") and several plugins that allowed you to access (parts of) your
>> personal data from all over the Internet.
>>
>> It took a long time before Higgins itself provided a "perferred" way of
>> storing personal data in a place you control, which was eventually
>> called "personal data store".
>>
>> In other words, Higgins was first concerned with interoperability with
>> external services, and only second with storing personal data "in Higgins".
>>
>> Today, it mostly seems the other way round. People develop personal
>> clouds, and afterwards (maybe) ask the question how to interoperate with
>> others.
>>
>> Before starting yet another standard, maybe a useful project would be to
>> map out the standards that are currently out there and potentially
>> relevant for personal clouds.
>> What functions they aim to fulfill, how they relate to each other, etc.
>> Such work could be done by Customer Commons, or PDEC would also be an
>> obvious place.
>> Anyone interested?
>>
>> Markus
>>
>> On 03/16/2015 04:25 PM, Iain Henderson wrote:
>>> Hi Julian,
>>>
>>> I understand the point you are making on the data standards/ ontology 
>>> issue, and it makes sense from an individual organisational stand point. 
>>> The problem is, multiple other entities are pursuing the same approach, 
>>> dating way back to at least the Higgins project which was (is) open and 
>>> used best of breed available wherever possible.
>>>
>>> With my CRM Manager hat on, this makes it almost impossible to engage 
>>> with a VRM solution/ bring my customer base to the party prior to it 
>>> gaining large scale. The lack of an open standard schema/ ontology around 
>>> personal clouds is, in my view, pretty much the only thing now holding 
>>> back the personal cloud model from large scale adoption. XDI promises to 
>>> help in this area, but in practice is some time away from being able to 
>>> meet that need globally and at scale; sufficiently far away that we can’t 
>>> wait for it.
>>>
>>> The upsides to opening up and working on a cross-industry collaboration 
>>> would likely far outweigh the downsides; and if there is a mind to 
>>> collaborate, the actual task itself is not that difficult. Without it we 
>>> just create more silos on the VRM side as well as the CRM side.
>>>
>>> Doc - we could host such a standard at Customer Commons?
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> Iain
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 14 Mar 2015, at 11:41, Julian Ranger 
>>>> <
 >
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Ah all these marriage proposals – makes me wish I was back in my 20s and 
>>>> 30s!
>>>>
>>>> The standards issue you raise is a good one and could be used to start a 
>>>> long train of thought.  I should firstly state that I am totally in 
>>>> favour of standards before I bring my BUT into play.  I spent 19 years 
>>>> building a business in the military internet arena (which I eventually 
>>>> sold to Lockheed Martin) that was based predominately around standards; 
>>>> however, to achieve interoperability across systems, all of which had 
>>>> implemented standards but different ones for different purposes and to 
>>>> different levels of completeness and competence, it was necessary to 
>>>> create a new process (iSMART) that borrowed from these standards, 
>>>> incorporated them, but ultimately was itself a new standard that had to 
>>>> be implemented first by some, then by more, before it ultimately became 
>>>> the gold standard.
>>>>
>>>> What we are doing in digi.me is analogous to the approach we took for 
>>>> the military problem.  We are incorporating and using data standards in 
>>>> our own normalised ontology, but that ontology is itself new.  We will 
>>>> publish that ontology when we open the Permission Access API and hope 
>>>> through its use, and because we are not perverse and have based it on 
>>>> strong standards (and pseudo standards by which I mean ontologies which 
>>>> are commonly used but are not necessarily standards in themselves), that 
>>>> it will become a de facto standard – and we wouldn’t stand in the way of 
>>>> it being made an open standard.  Why are we doing this and not using a 
>>>> standard today? – because no standard today covers everything, or even 
>>>> most of, what we need to cover, so we have to do something new.
>>>>
>>>> Carrying on the marriage theme “something old, something new, something 
>>>> borrowed, something blue” our answer  incorporates the old and the 
>>>> borrowed with the new – not sure we’ve got blue covered though yet!
>>>>
>>>> I am not in a position yet to release our ontology and normalisation 
>>>> processes because of commercial reasons.  Not only will they make it 
>>>> easier for businesses to use digi.me data, but the process also makes 
>>>> our software easier to implement and scalable and that is a competitive 
>>>> advantage that we cannot forgo until we are close to releasing the open 
>>>> API.  That said I default to as much openness about what we’re doing, 
>>>> why and with whom as I can and I am therefore happy to answer further 
>>>> questions and discuss the principles, etc but please excuse me if I have 
>>>> to stay silent on some aspects.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, Jules
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> From: 
>>>> 
 
>>>>  
>>>> [mailto:
 ]
>>>>  On Behalf Of Adrian Gropper
>>>> Sent: 14 March 2015 02:12
>>>> To: Julian Ranger
>>>> Cc: ProjectVRM list; T.Rob
>>>> Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Can I tell you a story ....
>>>>
>>>> I watched the video and share T.Rob's love. Maybe digi.me will move to 
>>>> Utah so we can all marry you. 
>>>>
>>>> The logic of what you're doing is impeccable but it raises the question 
>>>> of standards. An authorization service would need to be substitutable in 
>>>> order to compete with the likes of Apple at doing the same job by 
>>>> extending HealthKit and ResearchKit where they say: "Apple will not see 
>>>> your data." (But Apple controls the apps.) The UMA standard is meant to 
>>>> address some of what you're doing, for example. 
>>>>
>>>> What is the role of standards in your service and your business model as 
>>>> post office?
>>>>
>>>> Adrian
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 7:52 PM, Julian Ranger 
>>>> <
 >
>>>>  wrote:
>>>> T.Rob,
>>>>
>>>> Thank you for your kind words – all offers of marriage gratefully 
>>>> considered (but unfortunately my wife has final say!).  More seriously 
>>>> we will of course work with anyone who wants to further the progress of 
>>>> personal data.
>>>>
>>>> Answering your questions as follows:
>>>> Q1:  You mention the ability to choose a cloud storage provider but do 
>>>> not mention that the data is encrypted.  After the discussion of how we 
>>>> would not trust any one vendor with all that data, I assume that it is 
>>>> encrypted locally before transmission to the cloud storage provider, yes?
>>>>
>>>> A1:  Yes the data is encrypted.
>>>>
>>>> Q2:  The video mentions Amazon, FitBit and others but the Pricing page 
>>>> lists only "social network accounts."  Are the vendor accounts free, 
>>>> counted as social media accounts, or are they not there yet?  Have you 
>>>> considered collaborating (or merging) with FileThis who already fetch  
>>>> tons of utility bills and bank account statements?
>>>>
>>>> A2: As of today we have implemented only social media accounts (which 
>>>> have massive amounts of data I might add) – because they are the most 
>>>> evocative.  As we progress through 2015 and into 2016 we will add the 
>>>> other accounts we mention.  For example we are working on getting step 
>>>> data and Transport for London data for a particular application we are 
>>>> working with a health provider in London on – over 2,000 people in 
>>>> London die each year because they do not walk enough!
>>>>
>>>> Q3:  Is there an open API to develop our own apps against the data?  One 
>>>> of the biggest issues with Internet of Things is that proprietary 
>>>> devices interface only with whatever other devices the vendor thinks 
>>>> have a possibility of strong ROI for the development costs.  As cool as 
>>>> Digi.me sounds, the idea of waiting endlessly for the company to clear 
>>>> off the high priority interfaces and get to the niche integrations is a 
>>>> total turn-off.  (For those who haven't realized it yet, the long tail 
>>>> *is* the tail.  If your Internet biz doesn't scale to handle niche 
>>>> cases, it isn't an Internet biz, or if it is it won't be for long.)
>>>>
>>>> A3: You won’t be surprised to know that we are constrained by funding as 
>>>> to what we can do when.  Clearly, distribution is key – no one will want 
>>>> to access data (with user Permission of course!) if there aren’t many 
>>>> users.  Cost of acquisition with a direct acquisition model gets 
>>>> expensive quickly, so we have a partnership model as our main user 
>>>> acquisition channel initially.  Therefore in 2015 Permission Access is 
>>>> being worked on for our main partners only – those who can strategically 
>>>> get us lots of users (Telcos, FMSCG, banks, insurers – all whilst 
>>>> following our strict Permission Access principles) and who can gives us 
>>>> some money as well.  We expect to have an anyone can access your data 
>>>> API (again with Permission of course) by mid 2016 at the latest.  If 
>>>> anyone wants earlier access then just email me and we’ll see what we can 
>>>> do – we’re moving as fast as we can.
>>>>
>>>> Q4:  Can I route my email receipts through Digi.me?  For example my 
>>>> bank, department store, sporting goods store, and most online stores 
>>>> will send me an email receipt.  These are almost all text so they can be 
>>>> dropped as-is into a DB and become instantly searchable.
>>>>
>>>> A4:Not on the plan for 2015 nor 2016.  Others may do this and move the 
>>>> data when we have the general purpose API available in 2016, but for now 
>>>> we are concentrating on direct access to data via APIs only.  (I’d love 
>>>> to buy one of the companies that does a lot of this already, but 
>>>> strategically it’s not the most important think we can do – I think.)
>>>>
>>>> Q5:  Is the pricing structure scalable?  At some point do you stop 
>>>> counting accounts and just go by bandwidth?  Because I hit 20 social 
>>>> media accounts before I even start counting the vendor accounts and I 
>>>> probably have way more than 20 of those.  Thinking of the Long Tail 
>>>> again, I'm not worried that Digi.me will capture my Duke Power 
>>>> interactions, it's the appliance repair guy or the tree surgeon I used a 
>>>> couple of years ago that I *really* need help remembering.  If Digi.me 
>>>> believes per-account pricing is the way to go, there's a natural 
>>>> incentive to *not* load up data from occasional vendors, which would by 
>>>> design omit large swathes of useful info, thereby crippling the app to 
>>>> some extent.  I'm the CEO of my family and I want an enterprise license, 
>>>> dammit!
>>>>
>>>> A5:  Taking the pricing answer from my email to JP:
>>>>
>>>> “The video doesn’t really explain our charging model, so as you mention 
>>>> the “The Free is the Lie” syndrome I’ll address it.  Today we DO charge 
>>>> for the basic software – at a low $7 a year for basic premium features; 
>>>> however, in time the software functionality of digi.me will be free.  
>>>> Our main revenue will be from postal charges – when you Permission 
>>>> Access to some element(s) of your data and your digi.me app ”posts” that 
>>>> data to another app/web page/etc then a postal fee is charged by digi.me 
>>>> to the receiving entity.  This postal fee will only be cents/tens of 
>>>> cents each time (or for a regular “subscription”) but will add to $20 or 
>>>> so per user per year (roughly)and when you consider we don’t hold data, 
>>>> process it or have bandwidth then that makes us profitable without the 
>>>> need to take commission, sell your data or anything else.  Our mission 
>>>> is to be dreadfully boring – be your Librarian and Postman and nothing 
>>>> else”
>>>> So you won’t in the medium term pay per channel at all – only when you 
>>>> Permission Access to your data, and then you won’t pay, but the receiver 
>>>> will.  Yes, we charge now, but that is because until our Permission 
>>>> Access API is up and running we have to make some money – and we have 
>>>> partners who do get many customers for us by selling our software.  For 
>>>> example FNAC in France sell our software as part of a security pack.
>>>> I hope that gives you further detail and responds to your questions 
>>>> adequately, but do fire in my thoughts questions, comments.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers Jules
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: T.Rob 
>>>> <
 >
>>>> Date: Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 1:51 PM
>>>> Subject: RE: [projectvrm] Can I tell you a story ....
>>>> To: Julian Ranger 
>>>> <
 >,
>>>>  ProjectVRM list 
>>>> <
 >
>>>>
>>>> I'm in love!  Can I marry Digi.me?
>>>>
>>>> Seriously though, I do have a couple of questions from the video.
>>>>
>>>> ·       You mention the ability to choose a cloud storage provider but 
>>>> do not mention that the data is encrypted.  After the discussion of how 
>>>> we would not trust any one vendor with all that data, I assume that it 
>>>> is encrypted locally before transmission to the cloud storage provider, 
>>>> yes?
>>>>
>>>> ·       The video mentions Amazon, FitBit and others but the Pricing 
>>>> page lists only "social network accounts."  Are the vendor accounts 
>>>> free, counted as social media accounts, or are they not there yet?  Have 
>>>> you considered collaborating (or merging) with FileThis who already 
>>>> fetch  tons of utility bills and bank account statements?
>>>>
>>>> ·       Is there an open API to develop our own apps against the data?  
>>>> One of the biggest issues with Internet of Things is that proprietary 
>>>> devices interface only with whatever other devices the vendor thinks 
>>>> have a possibility of strong ROI for the development costs.  As cool as 
>>>> Digi.me sounds, the idea of waiting endlessly for the company to clear 
>>>> off the high priority interfaces and get to the niche integrations is a 
>>>> total turn-off.  (For those who haven't realized it yet, the long tail 
>>>> *is* the tail.  If your Internet biz doesn't scale to handle niche 
>>>> cases, it isn't an Internet biz, or if it is it won't be for long.)
>>>>
>>>> ·       Can I route my email receipts through Digi.me?  For example my 
>>>> bank, department store, sporting goods store, and most online stores 
>>>> will send me an email receipt.  These are almost all text so they can be 
>>>> dropped as-is into a DB and become instantly searchable.
>>>>
>>>> ·       Is the pricing structure scalable?  At some point do you stop 
>>>> counting accounts and just go by bandwidth?  Because I hit 20 social 
>>>> media accounts before I even start counting the vendor accounts and I 
>>>> probably have way more than 20 of those.  Thinking of the Long Tail 
>>>> again, I'm not worried that Digi.me will capture my Duke Power 
>>>> interactions, it's the appliance repair guy or the tree surgeon I used a 
>>>> couple of years ago that I *really* need help remembering.  If Digi.me 
>>>> believes per-account pricing is the way to go, there's a natural 
>>>> incentive to *not* load up data from occasional vendors, which would by 
>>>> design omit large swathes of useful info, thereby crippling the app to 
>>>> some extent.  I'm the CEO of my family and I want an enterprise license, 
>>>> dammit!  J
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'll go sign up later.  Tonight I'm in charge of dinner and, as I posted 
>>>> earlier to Facebook, my soup has that "new crock pot smell."  I think 
>>>> I'll have to run to the store for something to grill real fast. 
>>>>
>>>> Kind regards,
>>>> -- T.Rob
>>>>
>>>> I have availability! For a good time (with IBM MQ) call:
>>>> T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner
>>>> IoPT Consulting, LLC
>>>> +1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/Text
>>>> +44 (0) 8714 089 546  Voice
>>>> https://ioptconsulting.com
>>>> https://twitter.com/tdotrob
>>>>
>>>> From: Julian Ranger 
>>>> [mailto:
 
>>>> ]
>>>> Sent: Friday, March 13, 2015 12:34 PM
>>>> To: ProjectVRM list
>>>> Subject: [projectvrm] Can I tell you a story ....
>>>>
>>>> …. using a pack of cards?
>>>>
>>>> Time for me to tell you all what we’re really up to at digi.me – please 
>>>> look at http://digi.me/video
>>>>
>>>> We’re over 270K licences out there now, growing fast, and expect some 
>>>> major partnerships we have in final stages to take us beyond first 
>>>> million this year – moving.  The personal cloud and iOS mobile versions 
>>>> mentioned in the video all get released this month; the PC/Mac versions 
>>>> have been around for a long time and are now at a true V7. Permission 
>>>> Access will be open to select partners this year and to the world from 
>>>> mid-2016.
>>>>
>>>> Comments, questions, thoughts all very welcome.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, Jules
>>>>
>>>> Julian Ranger
>>>> Founder & Chairman, digi.me (formerly SocialSafe)
>>>>
>>>> 
 
>>>>
>>>> http://digi.me – It’s your life
>>>>
>>>> Mobile: +44 7802 207470
>>>>
>>>> @rangerj
>>>> uk.linkedin.com/in/julianranger/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Adrian Gropper MD
>>>> Ensure Health Information Privacy. Support Patient Privacy Rights.
>>>> http://patientprivacyrights.org/donate-2/
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>>
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