March 8 2007 Meeting notes

Conference Call Notes

Drafted by Joe Andrieu, March 8, 2007

Invitation

Next VRM Conference Call: Thursday March 8 at 10:30 AM Pacific / 1:30 PM Eastern

Please note: different dial-in number effective as of the next call.

Here are all the key details:

• VRM Conference Call
• Date: Thursday, March 8, 2007
• Time: 10:30 PDT, 1:30 EST
• Dial-in Number: 1-218-486-1300 Please note, this is the NEW NUMBER to use!!
• Conference Bridge Access Code #: 170658

As usual we are going to record the call for potential future use as a reference audio or podcast. The MP3s of the two prior calls can be found on the Community Portal page of the Project VRM wiki.

Do you have an agenda item for the call? Please send it to the group (or to me, if you're feeling shy).

Some members of our group have had timing conflicts (other calls or meetings) with the day and time of these Thursday calls. If a Wednesday call would be better, please advise. Let's do our best to maximize participation and productivity.

Previous Meeting Links

• February 8
  • Conference MP3
  • meeting notes 2007 02 08
• February 22
  • Conference MP3
  • No notes available

Attendees

(please update with last names & IM if you'd like a backchannel during the call...)

• Kevin Marks
• Kevin Baron
• Iain Henderson
• Joe Andrieu
• Dean Landsman On IRC: deanland On AIM: deanlandsman
• Nick Givotovsky
• Chris Carfi
• Tom Hawkin
• Doc Searls

Status

what	who	when	status
----------	----------	----------	----------
open id on wiki	david	no date
group blog/RSS to wiki (venus)	doc	no date	up, but only one author
project VRM definition	doc	1 week	still working on it
brainstorm Initiatives	all	ongoing
Set up Jabber Host for conference calls	doc	no date	new

Notes

This call moving to Wednesday. Same time.

National Public Media

B2B VRM

In the hosting business, it would be great to have RFPs and responses where you could compare providers without knowing their names, then follow up after a first filter.

Large companies have hugely different needs from small companies. So, there will be more than one split than just B2B and B2C.

Indeed, there are many vertical/horizontal distinctions that can and should be pulled apart. We should put as many ideas as we can onto the mailing list and blog: as many use cases, potential businesses, etc. The whole VRM category is extremely large. Lets break it into pieces and get that started.

Dean: ok. Let's get a B2B thread going on the blog.

Access by License Requirements

Everyone wants other people's data in a semantically rich way. Nobody wants to share theirs. The result is that private datafeeds have access & terms of use requirements, while spidering the open web bypasses these requirements. This is inhibiting widespread use of semantic HTML online.

This appears to be a catch-22.

Perhaps there is a Creative Commons approach around the licensing.

Distinguishing not WHO you are but THAT you are could be very useful for access. For example, instead of identifying the person in particular, identify the credentials.

This would be open immediately to gaming the situation. Which would be the role of the 3rd party identity provider/claims verifier.

There are apparently parallel situations in the semiconductor industry. Shortage expectations can create phantom demand, which implicates expected fulfillment by exacerbating the shortage.

• The Bullwhip Effect (Chris will post)

This resonates with a prior topic of meaningful consequences in the VRM commons. Do folks who make false claims have any meaningful consequences?

New Projects

Mobile VRM

Note from editor: I'm not sure I got this part right. Doc?

Public media/broadcasting

We have partners and interested parties in this space who want to help. NPR, TRX. TRX: how do we match demand with supply using the distribution system that is in place? That distribution is in-place. Primarily an inventory of programs that are wholesaled to stations from NPR, PRI, TRX and others. Most listeners, however, want to pay for just "This American Life" not just her local station. And if you try to do that, you are also signing up for a bunch of spam via the membership paradigm.

Dave Sifry had a really good idea. "I'd like to put a short-code on my cell phone that pays some money to whoever I was just listening to. And maybe that could be escrowed until the demand piles up enough to be worth doing something with it."

These guys do see the writing on the wall. The mechanism is accepted as "broken". And their product is inherently freely available. So what we need to do is reduce payment friction, increase convenience in other ways. Part of this is "How do we pay for public goods"?

The bit that's broken is the geographic link in the channel, while distribution is no longer geographic thanks to the net.

Interesting, the local stations are very motivated to increase local control and local content.

Enabling the flow of money and enabling the listener to have some control over that flow of money. There will no doubt be issues--legal, logistic, and otherwise--but the answer seems to be giving the power to the user. That probably scares a lot of people.

The regulatory regime we have right now is one that makes a distinction between streaming/downloading by subscription and otherwise.

Process

There is a proposed VRM process. However, it is young and needs iteration. Let's take the Public Media and shephard it through that, revising as appropriate. There's some shared concern that the process may be too bureaucratic, and yet there is definitely interest in a mechanism to streamline and rally our efforts.

There are projects that will be essentially "internal" to Berkman's efforts and others spurred externally and driven by other entities. Our process should support both of these types of projects.

Identity Workshop

In May, we'll be reconvening a VRM session at the next Identity Workshop. There are some interesting potential overlaps, so we should come prepared to whiteboard out ideas and implementation approaches. Hopefully we can get more Berkman folks showing up.

Identity is a critical aspect of VRM. This is a huge problem. Authentication and Signon is still completely hosed. Something is going to solve this. Some mashup or revision of current approaches. Who knows? But once that happens, once there is something that belongs to us, that relieves us of going through a signup process every time we go somewhere.

Quite a bit more adoption in the field for OpenID.

Wiki

Update on contact information.

Clean up for new people.

Development needs verses a public need.

• How to Contribute
• VRM People

Joe will organize a planning meeting next wednesday.

Action Items

what	who	when	status
open id on wiki	david	no date
group blog/RSS to wiki (venus)	doc	no date	Done, but needs multiple authors
project VRM definition/vision statemnts	doc	tomorrow	still working on it
brainstorm Initiatives	all	ongoing
write up Public media initiative	Doc	Monday	new
Set up Jabber Host for conference calls	doc	next week	new
Polish VRM website	Joe	meeting in one week Next Item	new
Bullwhip effect reference	Chris	Tomorrow	new

Next Meeting

March 21, 1:30PM EST/10:30AM PST