Februrary 20 2008 Conference Call

Conference Call Notes

Drafted by Joe Andrieu, February 20, 2008

IRC

1. vrm at chat.freenode.net

Other Calls

Category:conference call

Attendees

• Joe Andrieu
• Dean Landsman
• Drummond Reed
• Deb Schultz

Previous Action Items

1. Forward presentation deck to vision committee - Charles Andres - Feb 6 - Done
2. Ping Dean about Vision committee to schedule a meeting about objectives, next steps - Keith Hopper - By Friday Feb 8. - DONE
3. Schedule an IP policy discussion - Joe Andrieu - by Friday Feb 8. - Done
4. Download components to new CMS website - Charles Andres - by Friday Feb 15. - Done.
5. Send out link to notes to steering committee - Joe Andrieu - Feb 6 - Done

Notes

Vision Committee (Dean)

Website CMS is now up. Many thanks to Sean Bohan.

Keith and Dean are looking to put some teeth in that. They'll talk more once Dean is healthier and Keith is back from IMA.

Standards Committee (Joe)

We had the IP conversation. Working outline of Change of Address use. Moved the conversation to the main list.

Organization Committee (Doc)

Need to get Doc to be a bit more proactive. He has mentioned he knows he needs to put more time in and will be making an effort.

Usage Committee (Adriana)

These were the items to mention in the call:

• VRM Hub meeting on 27th February - looking forward to seeing Doc there. Quite a few people signed up so far.

• The usage side falls under two rough categories - the geeks/developers who are able and willing to contribute to VRM technology and infrastructure (as they also will be the first users)

and people in business who see the need for a shift and are ready to engage with VRM. To that end we are:

• Organising a small working event (35 people) in London for people who are already following VRM, currently scheduled for 15 April, titled 'Scratch your VRM itch'. The objective is to examine why people got involved in VRM, what appeals to them and what ideas/plans they have to make it happen. The result should be specific action for them to take within their own spheres of influence - business or individual - to move VRM vision forward from the user side. More details to follow soon, just flagging it up.

• Continuing conversations with various individuals and companies and gathering them around VRM Hub monthly meetings in London. There is also a Facebook group called VRM Hub to keep people in the loop.

• Attending Barcamp NYC3 on 15/16th March in Brooklyn, talking about VRM and hopefully getting some geeks interested.

Regarding driving usage the focus ought to be on the user, as without widespread adoption there won't be much to demonstrate to companies. Bringing business along from the start is important both for resources and ultimately the VRM reality but I do believe it all starts from the individual.

Note: I posted this to the usage group, for those interested in an alternative approach to the use cases.

Compliance Committee (Iain)

VRM Compliance/ Benchmarking

Brett and I circulated a proposed direction for VRM compliance and benchmarking several weeks ago.

In a previous group call Doc said he was happy with it, and since then we have had a number of other positive responses and some suggested minor tweaks - all of which we agree with.

The barrier to progress is around having an organisational entity which would own the compliance programme. That remains an issue that will perhaps come up in the call today.

In terms of timing, I have mixed views' on whether 'VRM compliance' is something that we/ the market would benefit from now, or that it is best left until the market develops further. The upside to doing sooner rather than later is that the process of defining compliance would necessarily make us produce much tighter definitions of what VRM is/ is not. The downside is that there is no VRM application that requires compliance testing right now.

It would be good to get feedback from the group as to the collective view of when it would be beneficial to have a compliance programme in place.

Events

Doc had mentioned a potential event on the East Coast in June. Deb requests a date later in the month.

Bart is also kicking butt in the EU, with invitations to folks to join him. If you can make it, please do.

Open Discussion

Committees seem to have sapped the momentum and no synergy.

Deb suggested using the same time slot (alternating Wednesdays) for committee meetings.

She also suggested that she's not quite sure how we want to describe VRM. So, we err on the side of waiting. But maybe we should just dive in.

Dean seconds that. Some peculiar sense about not being sure how to blog about it. A question of point of reference. Dean has numerous examples, very much Doc's style of talking about things, but that's not Dean's style. So that makes it a bit harder. And there is a part of him that wants to write position papers and such.

Deb points out however, that Chris and Adriana and others have blogged VRMy stuff. But she has some questions about what it means to say "hey that's VRM" in contexts where we see it happen. She has erred on the side of caution.

What do we mean by VRM? We need a second level of a little bit more structure.

Dean suggests that he & Deb put a position piece together. Dean has access to Doc, so we'll run it by him and see if he likes it. Deb says that would be great. And that she's ready to dive in as editor. Dean will take a first draft, an outline.

Action Items

1. Send query on email list about use of main list. Is that working better? - Joe - By Friday Feb 22, 2008
2. First draft position paper - Dean - By Friday Feb 29, 2008.

Next Meeting

March 5 2008 Conference Call