December 03 2008 Conference Call
Conference Call Notes
Drafted by Joe Andrieu, December 03, 2008
IRC
#vrm at chat.freenode.net
Other Calls
Attendees
- Joe Andrieu
- Dean Landsman
- Sean Bohan
- Iain Henderson
- Keith Hopper
- Doc Searls
- Alan Mitchell
Agenda
- Declaration of Independence/Principles
- Project VRM Landing Page
- CRM Business
- Iain Email
- Marketing group output
- Organization and IP policy discussion
- Next face to face
- Expectations
- VPI
- Dataportability
Notes
Declaration of Independence/Principles
Doc is working on it. Hopes to have something by the end of the week. Doc & Dean remind us that we keep getting questions about "is this VRM" and quite often just about advertising.
This flows with Doc's work on the 2nd edition of the cluetrain manifesto. So progress soon...
Project VRM Landing Page
Website is up. Looking for feedback/changes/etc. Hasn't been fixed to go over to Drupal at Berkman.
Send feedback to Dean. mailto:deanland@gmail.com
Note we also need a new logo.
CRM Business
We had a VRM meeting after IIW, graciously hosted by friends at Oracle.
Where it was mentioned by our hosts that "Whoever wins at VRM wins at CRM". To note, we do have the attention the top people at the #2 worldwide CRM company (#1 in US).
For the r-button, it occurs that we are going to be providing stuff for CRM people as well as VRM folks. Let's consider how we approach CRM companies without getting caught up in it.
Iain--I think its fairly easy to articulate to a CRM vendor how to make their system VRM enabled. I have had talks with folks at Terradata and IBM.
Doc--It seems to me that Oracle and Salesforce have dramatically changed the language they are using. Less about acquiring and owning customers. The wikipedia entry has changed. The old ways of pitching themselves has changed.
The smartest people don't go to Oracle for CRM solutions. Because it isn't so much about the technology, it's about changing your internal processes and culture. So why Oracle gets lots of money for enterprise solutions, there's a LOT more spent on CRM internally by companies reinventing themselves.
VRM + CRM Workshop?
VRM needs to interface with CRM.
If clever organizations see this as the future and start investing now, that will ease our development. The risk is them also trying to co-opt VRM for their own ends. That's an inevitable confrontation we'll just have to manage.
Once we have the declaration of independence and constitution, we can use that to focus our attention and to counter the inevitable efforts to co-opt VRM.
Actions:
- In the principles, we need to specifically address the reciprocity between CRM and VRM, that these are additive relationships.
- Doc would like to work with Iain on an article/working set of talking points about what VRM means for CRM.
- An event--VRM + CRM. Preferably one of many verticals. Doc would like to feel we are a bit further downstream. More concrete stuff to talk about.
Marketing group output
Group started out with Sean & Chris document, plus help with Dean and Deb. Sean has been picking up stuff and working on two new documents. Talking with some designers, looking for pro-bono.
Is this marketing group for marketing VRM or is it for the implications /for/ marketing of VRM. Answer: it is for marketing VRM. We are looking at interpreting VRM for "the real world". To be able to take what we do and take it to large retailers and invite them to be part of a pilot project, with a nice fee to fund that. So, anything we write has to make it past legal and IT as well as marketing. We want them to understand there is benefit here and in their language. We have a few candidate firms to approach.
Alan Mitchell asked to join the effort.
Organization and IP policy discussion
There are some challenges playing well with Berkman. Doc needs to build up the project at Berkman, ie, getting funding in, before growing the project outside Berkman.
Conversation processing Bill Smith's feedback.
Doc is meeting with a lawyer next week on the organizational side.
Got to get the principles up. Website up. FAQ. These are gatekeepers for getting funding into VRM.
Next face to face
Expectations
VPI
Had a MyDex developers gathering with Asa over in the UK. We think we are just a few weeks away from being able to say "I want to buy that" with all the appropriate identity technology wrapped around it.