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[https://cyber.harvard.edu/lists/info/projectvrm Here's a shortcut to the ProjectVRM list]. More details are under #10, below.
== Site/Blog ==
ProjectVRM's three sites are this wiki, a [https://cyber.harvard.edu/lists/info/projectvrm mailing list], and a Wordpress blog. The wiki and the list are hosted by the [https://cyber.harvard.edu Berkman Klein Center] at [https://harvard.edu/ Harvard University]. The blog was hosted at Harvard from 2007 to 2023. It is now independently maintained at what had been the shortlink for the Harvard blog: [http://projectvrm.org projectvrm.org].
== About VRM ==
== About VRM ==


VRM stands for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_Relationship_Management '''Vendor Relationship Management''']. VRM  tools provide customers with both ''independence'' from vendors and ''better ways of engaging'' with vendors. The same tools can also support individuals' relations with schools, churches, government entities and other kinds of organizations.
VRM stands for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_Relationship_Management '''Vendor Relationship Management''']. VRM  tools provide customers with both
# ''independence'' from vendors, and  
#''better ways of engaging'' with vendors.


To vendors, VRM is the customer-side counterpart of CRM (or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_Relationship_Management Customer Relationship Management]). VRM tools provide customers with the means to bear their side of the relationship burden. They relieve CRM of the perceived need to "capture," "acquire," [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in "lock in,"] "manage," and otherwise employ the language and thinking of slave-owners when dealing with customers. With VRM operating on the customer's side, CRM systems will no longer be alone in trying to improve the ways companies relate to customers. Customers will be also be involved, as fully empowered participants, rather than as captive followers.
The same tools can also support individuals' relations with schools, churches, government entities and other kinds of organizations.


VRM is part of a larger picture as well. Perhaps the best name and description for that larger picture is [http://www.kuppingercole.com/report/advisorylifemanagementplatforms7060813412 Life Management Platforms], coined by Martin Kuppinger of Kuppinger Cole. He describes them this way: "Life Management Platforms will change the way individuals deal with sensitive information like their health data, insurance data, and many other types of information – information that today frequently is paper-based or, when it comes to personal opinions, only in the mind of the individuals. They will enable new approaches for privacy- and security-aware sharing of that information, without the risk of losing control of that information... At KuppingerCole we expect and predict that Life Management Platforms, with related standards, protocols, business models, applications, etc., will be the one technology driven component that will have the strongest influence on our everyday life (and, on the other side, on enterprise infrastructures and the Internet architecture) for the next 10 years."
For individuals, VRM tools and services provide or increase personal autonomy and agency.
 
For vendors and other service providers, VRM is the customer-side counterpart of CRM (or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_Relationship_Management Customer Relationship Management]) and other systematic means for engaging individuals.
 
In commercial contexts, VRM tools provide customers — that's all of us — with ways to operate with full agency in the marketplace. This includes the ability to control and permit the use of personal data, to aassert intentions in ways that can be understood and respected, and to protect personal privacy. VRM tools also provide ways for each of us to bear bear our own side of relationship burdens, and to have the same kind of scale across many vendors as vendors have across many customers. (An example of scale: being able to change one's address, phone number or last name, for every entity with which a customer deals, ''in one move''.)
 
VRM relieves vendors of the perceived need to "capture," "acquire," [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in "lock in,"] "manage," and otherwise employ the language and thinking of slave-owners when dealing with customers. With VRM operating on the customer's side, CRM systems will no longer be alone in trying to improve the ways companies relate to customers. Customers will be also be involved, as fully empowered participants, rather than as captive followers.


== VRM Principles ==
== VRM Principles ==


VRM development work is based on the belief that ''free customers are more valuable than captive ones'' — to themselves, to vendors, and to the larger economy. To be free —
VRM development work is based on the belief that ''free customers (and citizens) are more valuable than captive ones'' — to themselves, to vendors, and to the larger economy. To be free,


#Customers must enter relationships with vendors as '''independent actors'''.
#Customers must enter relationships with vendors as '''independent actors'''.
#Customers must be the '''points of integration for their own data'''.
#Customers must be the '''points of integration for their own data'''.
#Customers must have '''control of data they generate and gather'''. This means they must be able to share data selectively and voluntarily.
#Customers must have '''control of data they generate and gather'''. This means they must be able to share data selectively and voluntarily.
#Customers must be able to '''assert their own terms of engagement'''.  
#Customers must be able to '''proffer their own terms of engagement'''—and to have auditable records of all contracts to which both sides agree.  
#Customers must be '''free to express their demands and intentions outside of any one company's control'''.
#Customers must be '''free to express their demands and intentions outside of any one company's control'''.


== VRM Goals ==
== VRM Goals ==
Line 30: Line 43:
#'''Make individuals platforms for business''' by opening the market to many kinds of third party services that serve buyers as well as sellers  
#'''Make individuals platforms for business''' by opening the market to many kinds of third party services that serve buyers as well as sellers  
#'''Base relationship-managing tools on open standards and open APIs (application program interfaces)'''. This will support a rising tide of activity that will lift an infinite variety of business boats plus other social goods.
#'''Base relationship-managing tools on open standards and open APIs (application program interfaces)'''. This will support a rising tide of activity that will lift an infinite variety of business boats plus other social goods.


== VRM Tools ==
== VRM Tools ==
Line 40: Line 52:
#'''VRM tools help customers engage'''. This can be with each other, or with any organization, including (and especially) its CRM system.
#'''VRM tools help customers engage'''. This can be with each other, or with any organization, including (and especially) its CRM system.
#'''VRM tools help customers manage'''. This includes both their own data and systems and their relationships with other entities, and their systems.
#'''VRM tools help customers manage'''. This includes both their own data and systems and their relationships with other entities, and their systems.
#'''VRM tools give customers scale across multiple vendors'''. This means customers can express an intent, or save a setting, or change an entry in a form (e.g. phone number or email address), across many different vendor systems, with one action."
#'''VRM tools are substitutable'''. They don't lock individuals into any company's silo.
#'''VRM tools are substitutable'''. They don't lock individuals into any company's silo.


Line 45: Line 58:


The list is too long to put here. So go to the [[VRM Development Work]] page.
The list is too long to put here. So go to the [[VRM Development Work]] page.
We also have a [[Cooperative_Work]] page.


== VRM Research ==
== VRM Research ==


ProjectVRM is a D&R — Development and Reserch — project. Development has always come first. Now, as VRM is coming to be adopted in the world, we need to encourage research the same way we have encouraged development — and conduct it as well. Here are a few questions we might probe, as the principles, goals and tools listed above start having effects:
ProjectVRM is a D&R — Development and Reserch — project. Development has always come first. For more on VRM research, see our [[Research]] page.


* How will VRM companies work together and/or at cross purposes? How will new categories emerge, and markets grow, as an effect of both?
Also, after more than a dozen years at this, it is clear that Amara's Law applies: We tend to overestimate in the short term and underestimate in the long.
* In what ways and to what extents are VRM tools and services interoperable, or substitutable?
 
* Will VRM disrupt existing businesses, enhance them, neither or both? How and where? One example: online advertising, which is already impacted by ad and tracking blockers. And, once selective ad and tracking blocking becomes more normative, what happens to surveillance-based personalized advertising? (It is easy to track investment; but what about actual effects on businesses, e.g. publishers and advertising companies)?
At this writing (September, 2022), Doc Searls, who started and runs ProjectVRM, is (with his wife Joyce) a [https://ostromworkshop.indiana.edu/about/visiting-scholars/index.html?keyword=&typeDefault=Visiting%20Scholars&letter=S visiting scholar] with the [https://ostromworkshop.indiana.edu/ Ostrom Workshop] at Indiana University, working on a VRM project called the [https://customercommons.org/a-new-way/ Byway], which will be researched closely as it rolls out in Bloomington, Indiana, home of the university. This is the first time Doc is working directly on a VRM development project, rather than just encouraging many projects.
* How will existing CRM and other customer relationship systems (e.g. Customer Experience Management, call centers) open up and change after they begin shaking hands with VRM tools and services on the customer side?
* How will jargon normalize? With personal data, for example, will "stores," "lockers," "life management platforms," "vaults" or PIMS (personal information management systems) become the prevailing label?
* How and where will intentcasting catch on first?
* In which countries or geographical regions will VRM and approaches like it first become organized and take off? How? Why?
* How do policy environments — laws, regulations, government purchasing practices — encourage or discourage VRM development, usage and market growth? (Of special interest already are European and Australian privacy laws, and Government Digital Services appetites for normalized citizen data in the U.K.) And how do VRM developers and/or citizens affect policy decisions?
* In what ways and to what extents to VRM developers adopt open standards, produce (and support) open APIs, and both use and generate free and open source code?
* One of the results of a ClarityRay survey (no longer online, since ClarityRay was bought by Yahoo ) was that ad blocker users tend to spend more money online. It would be good to expand on that.  Do privacy tools other than ad blockers also have an effect? Does the effect hold even when you control for skill and time spent online?
* It would be good to follow up on [http://pewrsr.ch/1tWNJIs last year's Pew study on Anonymity, Privacy, and Security Online] and ask, To what extent are user concerns about security and privacy affecting commerce? What security and privacy tools, behaviors, and policies are most effective for helping to address those concerns and promote commerce?


== ProjectVRM Resources ==
== ProjectVRM Resources ==
Line 67: Line 74:
* ProjectVRM [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm blog]
* ProjectVRM [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm blog]
* [[VRM FAQ]]
* [[VRM FAQ]]
* VRM [Twitter stream http://twitter.com/vrm]
* @VRM [Twitter stream http://twitter.com/vrm]


Conference Call archive and audio links can be found at the [[Project_VRM:Community_Portal | Community Portal]] page.
Conference Call archive and audio links can be found at the [[Project_VRM:Community_Portal | Community Portal]] page.


== Privacy Manifesto ==
ProjectVRM hosts the draft of a [[Privacy Manifesto]] that lives on this wiki, and which has also appeared in earlier versions elsewhere, such as [https://medium.com/@dsearls/a-privacy-manifesto-e475d4d8792a here on Medium].


== VRM Events ==
== VRM Events ==
=== Regular Events ===
The two events where the VRM community is gathered and maintained both happen in the same weeks, at the same location, twice per year, Spring and Fall. Those are VRM Day and [http://iiworkshop.org IIW, the Internet Identity Workshop]. VRM Day happens on the Monday preceding IIW, which happens the next three days (Tuesday through Thursday), at the [http://computerhistory.org Computer History Museum] in Mountain View, California, which is at the center of Silicon Valley, midway between its two main airports (SFO, for San Francisco and SJC, for San Jose).
The purpose of VRM day is to prep for the following three days at IIW. Note that IIW is an unconference, so its topics are whatever those participating choose. VRM is always one of the main topics.


=== Upcoming Events ===
=== Upcoming Events ===
2022
* VRM Day 2022b
=== Past Events ===
2022
* VRM Day 2022a
2021
* VRM Day 2021a
* VRM Day 2021b
2020
* [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vrmme2b-day-2020a-tickets-100546832282# VRM/Me2B Day 2020a]
* VRM/Me2B Day 2020b
2019
* VRM Day 2019a
* VRM Day 2019b
2018
* [http://vrmday2018b.eventbrite.com/ VRM Day] on Monday, 22 October, at the [http://chm.org Computer History Museum] in Mountain View, CA.
* [https://iiw27.eventbrite.com/ Internet Identity Workshop — IIW] on Tuesday-Thursday, 23-25 October, at the [http://chm.org Computer History Museum] in Mountain View, CA.
2017
* VRM Day 2017b
* VRM Day 2017a
2016
* [https://www.ctrl-shift.co.uk/personal-information-economy-2016/ Personal Information Economy 2016: Achieving Growth Through Trust] on Thursday, 29th September 2016 from 08.30 to 17.00 (GMT), Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9AG. (Doc Searls is one of the speakers, and many VRM community members will attend.)
* [http://vrmday2016b.eventbrite.com/ VRM Day] on Monday, 24 October, at the [http://chm.org Computer History Museum] in Mountain View, CA.
* [https://iiw23.eventbrite.com/ Internet Identity Workshop — IIW] on Tuesday-Thursday, 25-27 October, at the [http://chm.org Computer History Museum] in Mountain View, CA.
* [http://mydata2016.org/ MyData2016] 31 August to 2 September 2016, in Helsinki, Finland. (Doc Searls and Sean Bohan spoke there.)
* [http://vrmday2016a.eventbrite.com/ VRM Day] on Monday, 25 April, at the [http://chm.org Computer History Museum] in Mountain View, CA.
* [http://mesinfos.fing.org/self-data-the-european-pims-lanscape/ Self-Data: The European PIMS Landscape], part of  [http://fing.org/ FING]'s [http://mesinfos.fing.org/ Mesinfos] work.
* [https://iiw22.eventbrite.com/ Internet Identity Workshop — IIW] on Tuesday-Thursday, 26-28 April, at the [http://chm.org Computer History Museum] in Mountain View, CA.


2015
2015
Line 81: Line 142:
* VRM Day on Oct 26
* VRM Day on Oct 26
* [http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com/ Internet Identity Workshop] #21, (27-29 October) at the [http://chm.org Computer History Museum] in Mountain View, CA.
* [http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com/ Internet Identity Workshop] #21, (27-29 October) at the [http://chm.org Computer History Museum] in Mountain View, CA.
=== Past Events ===


2014
2014

Latest revision as of 11:40, 3 March 2024

Here's a shortcut to the ProjectVRM list. More details are under #10, below.

Site/Blog

ProjectVRM's three sites are this wiki, a mailing list, and a Wordpress blog. The wiki and the list are hosted by the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. The blog was hosted at Harvard from 2007 to 2023. It is now independently maintained at what had been the shortlink for the Harvard blog: projectvrm.org.

About VRM

VRM stands for Vendor Relationship Management. VRM tools provide customers with both

  1. independence from vendors, and
  2. better ways of engaging with vendors.

The same tools can also support individuals' relations with schools, churches, government entities and other kinds of organizations.

For individuals, VRM tools and services provide or increase personal autonomy and agency.

For vendors and other service providers, VRM is the customer-side counterpart of CRM (or Customer Relationship Management) and other systematic means for engaging individuals.

In commercial contexts, VRM tools provide customers — that's all of us — with ways to operate with full agency in the marketplace. This includes the ability to control and permit the use of personal data, to aassert intentions in ways that can be understood and respected, and to protect personal privacy. VRM tools also provide ways for each of us to bear bear our own side of relationship burdens, and to have the same kind of scale across many vendors as vendors have across many customers. (An example of scale: being able to change one's address, phone number or last name, for every entity with which a customer deals, in one move.)

VRM relieves vendors of the perceived need to "capture," "acquire," "lock in," "manage," and otherwise employ the language and thinking of slave-owners when dealing with customers. With VRM operating on the customer's side, CRM systems will no longer be alone in trying to improve the ways companies relate to customers. Customers will be also be involved, as fully empowered participants, rather than as captive followers.

VRM Principles

VRM development work is based on the belief that free customers (and citizens) are more valuable than captive ones — to themselves, to vendors, and to the larger economy. To be free,

  1. Customers must enter relationships with vendors as independent actors.
  2. Customers must be the points of integration for their own data.
  3. Customers must have control of data they generate and gather. This means they must be able to share data selectively and voluntarily.
  4. Customers must be able to proffer their own terms of engagement—and to have auditable records of all contracts to which both sides agree.
  5. Customers must be free to express their demands and intentions outside of any one company's control.

VRM Goals

In the "Markets Are Relationships" chapter of the 10th Anniversary edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto, Doc Searls writes this about the goals of VRM efforts:

  1. Provide tools for individuals to manage relationships with organizations. These tools are personal. That is, they belong to the individual in the sense that they are under the individual's control. They can also be social, in the sense that they can connect with others and support group formation and action. But they need to be personal first.
  2. Make individuals the collection centers for their own data, so that transaction histories, health records, membership details, service contracts, and other forms of personal data are no longer scattered throughout a forest of silos.
  3. Give individuals the ability to share data selectively, without disclosing more personal information than the individual allows.
  4. Give individuals the ability to control how their data is used by others, and for how long. At the individual's discretion, this may include agreements requiring others to delete the individual's data when the relationship ends.
  5. Give individuals the ability to assert their own terms of service, reducing or eliminating the need for organization-written terms of service that nobody reads and everybody has to "accept" anyway.
  6. Give individuals means for expressing demand in the open market, outside any organizational silo, without disclosing any unnecessary personal information.
  7. Make individuals platforms for business by opening the market to many kinds of third party services that serve buyers as well as sellers
  8. Base relationship-managing tools on open standards and open APIs (application program interfaces). This will support a rising tide of activity that will lift an infinite variety of business boats plus other social goods.

VRM Tools

These are ideal characteristics of VRM tools:

  1. VRM tools are personal. As with hammers, wallets, cars and mobile phones, people use them as individuals,. They are social only in secondary ways.
  2. VRM tools help customers express intent. These include preferences, policies, terms and means of engagement, authorizations, requests and anything else that’s possible in a free market, outside any one vendor’s silo or ranch.
  3. VRM tools help customers engage. This can be with each other, or with any organization, including (and especially) its CRM system.
  4. VRM tools help customers manage. This includes both their own data and systems and their relationships with other entities, and their systems.
  5. VRM tools give customers scale across multiple vendors. This means customers can express an intent, or save a setting, or change an entry in a form (e.g. phone number or email address), across many different vendor systems, with one action."
  6. VRM tools are substitutable. They don't lock individuals into any company's silo.

VRM Development Work

The list is too long to put here. So go to the VRM Development Work page.

We also have a Cooperative_Work page.

VRM Research

ProjectVRM is a D&R — Development and Reserch — project. Development has always come first. For more on VRM research, see our Research page.

Also, after more than a dozen years at this, it is clear that Amara's Law applies: We tend to overestimate in the short term and underestimate in the long.

At this writing (September, 2022), Doc Searls, who started and runs ProjectVRM, is (with his wife Joyce) a visiting scholar with the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University, working on a VRM project called the Byway, which will be researched closely as it rolls out in Bloomington, Indiana, home of the university. This is the first time Doc is working directly on a VRM development project, rather than just encouraging many projects.

ProjectVRM Resources

Conference Call archive and audio links can be found at the Community Portal page.

Privacy Manifesto

ProjectVRM hosts the draft of a Privacy Manifesto that lives on this wiki, and which has also appeared in earlier versions elsewhere, such as here on Medium.

VRM Events

Regular Events

The two events where the VRM community is gathered and maintained both happen in the same weeks, at the same location, twice per year, Spring and Fall. Those are VRM Day and IIW, the Internet Identity Workshop. VRM Day happens on the Monday preceding IIW, which happens the next three days (Tuesday through Thursday), at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, which is at the center of Silicon Valley, midway between its two main airports (SFO, for San Francisco and SJC, for San Jose).

The purpose of VRM day is to prep for the following three days at IIW. Note that IIW is an unconference, so its topics are whatever those participating choose. VRM is always one of the main topics.

Upcoming Events

2022

  • VRM Day 2022b

Past Events

2022

  • VRM Day 2022a

2021

  • VRM Day 2021a
  • VRM Day 2021b

2020

2019

  • VRM Day 2019a
  • VRM Day 2019b

2018

2017

  • VRM Day 2017b
  • VRM Day 2017a

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

  • VRM+CRM 2010 August 26-27 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

2009

2008

Other meetings and workshops take place before and during Internet Identity Workshops in Mountain View, California, each Fall and Spring. Also see Events page for some past events.

ProjectVRM Participation

We have two mailing lists:

You can edit this wiki by:

  • registering up at the top of this page
  • sending e-mail to the Project VRM mailing list asking to be enabled as an editor (to combat the spam problem). Be sure you provide your actual handle (username)

Here is a list of "VRooMers" on Twitter.

We encourage you to use the hashtag #VRM when blogging or tweeting about the topic.

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