Alec Muffett and Adriana Lukas have been at work on “Feeds-based VRM”, which they call A Web-Centric Approach to VRM Implementation. I like the goals:
Check it out and see what you think.
CRM 2.0 = CRM + SCM + PRM + VRM ?, by Guido Oswald
Socialultions: Is It Disruptive Innovation?, by Jay Deragon
Emerging Trends? - Nope, it’s been a long time coming, by Elias Bizannes
Running the Numbers, by Joe Andrieu
Driving Markets from our own kernels, by Doc Searls
Do Not Track Legislation Could Change the Ad Landscape, by Bernard Lunn
PGreenburg: should we call CRM 2.0….duh…..VRM?
Bart Stevens: VRM vrs the “I waste a 1 billion dollar/year industry, and The wheel, fire and… VRM.
Nick Brisbourne: VRM - requirements of a good service.
Keith Hopper: Empowering the individual creates beneficial outcomes and cultivates an environment where these contributions are most valuable. Since the best participatory environments exist to serve individuals and address their interests first and foremost, the heavy-handed, centralized actions or exploitation of participants corrupts an online collective environment irreparably. Ideally, participants develop a feeling of ownership over the environment, and providing such an atmosphere is indispensable to ensure the environment’s continuance.
Martin Kuppinger: For me, VRM, infocards and technologies like U-Prove are the pieces of a puzzle which, when ready, shows personalization and profiling as the picture.
Nilhan: The Web 2.0 Social VRM impact on Insurance and Financial Services.
In Two tales of user-centricities, Adriana Lukas gets at something that has bothered me for years about the term “user-centric”. It always seemed too external to me. It equates too easily with terms like “customer-focused”. It’s something one does for a user. Not something a user does.
In the past I’ve tried to steer the identity development community away from it, suggesting terms like “independent” instead of “user-centric”. But I failed and just accepted “user-centric” as is. Hell, I don’t like the term “user”, either.
But I think Adriana is right about “-driven”. It’s a much better term. I don’t know if it’s too late to get the identity community to adopt it, but we’re still getting started with VRM. Regardless of what adjectival phrases we use to describe what VRM is about, it’s essential to get our vectors right.
With VRM, our vectors are anchored on the user side, the customer side, the individual’s side. The relationships we establish and manage are on our terms and not just those of vendors. We are not against vendors in the least, of course. Our logic is AND, not OR. But it starts with the sovereign autonomy and independence of each individual as a fully-empowered participant in the relationships that comprise markets and other social arrangements. “-driven” says that much more clearly and correctly than “-centric”.
Same goes for the identity development efforts I’m most familiar with. The difference is that they’re downstream with their vocabularies and we’re not.
For the identity folks, I’d like to see a session at IIW (and discussion in any case) about concepts and vocabularies. Because when I look at this goal of Identity Commons …
To support, facilitate, and promote the creation of an open identity layer for the Internet, one that maximizes control, convenience, and privacy for the individual while encouraging the development of healthy, interoperable communities.
… I see “-driven” rather than “-centric”.
So hey, maybe it’s not too late. The Identity Thing is still pretty young, too.
Another problematic noun in the identity lexicon is “provider”. Here OpenID talks about “identity providers” both as servers the user operates and as something you get from other entities. Specifically,
OpenID allows anyone who can run a web server to run an identity server. Your identity server is separate from your identity, so you are free to use any identity server that has some ability to validate your identity and you can change between them at will. An identity server is sometimes referred to as an identity provider. If you wish, you can use the services listed below with your own website as your identifier using delegation…
The following sites provide OpenID identities and servers to verify them.
People want to feel, to know, that they are in charge of their own identities, and how those identities are used. “Providing” identities from the outside seems quite different, even if we’re actually talking about infrastructure that supports individuals providing for themselves — which OpenID does.
So, food for re-thought.
Just found out from Keith Hopper about Fundable.org. Also about RepRap, which Chris DiBona says is “China on your desktop”. And Boston FabLab, which just looks totally cool.
Wanted to get those down before I lost track.
Thanks to the good folks putting on the 2nd European Identity Conference, also known (and now tagged) as EIC2008, we have VRM2008 starting in advance of it at the same location in Munich.
VRM2008 will take place on 21-22 April (all day Monday, and up until lunch at 1300 on Tuesday). EIC2008 will follow for the rest of 22 April and on through Friday, 25 April.
We also learned recently that ProjectVRM is one of three finalists for a Special Award to be given at the European Identity Award Ceremony on the evening of 22 April. I’ll be there for all of it. This includes a talk titled What Happens When the Users are Really In Charge, at 1030 on Wednesday 23 April. An interview with Dr. Christian Stöcker, SPIEGEL Online, will follow.
Here’s the deal. Anybody registering for VRM2008 will receive:
The event location, Forum am Deutschen Museum, is in the center of Munich.
Free registration is here.
A point is reached, in the spread of an original idea, when its source realizes that others can make the case for the idea at least as well — if not better — than he or she can.
That point came for me with VRM a while ago, from a number of the sources I just added to the blogroll there on the right. But it was especially gratifying to read What Comes After CRM, from Jay Deragon, about whom I’m sorry I wasn’t clued into sooner than the last few weeks, when I started catching up on his writing, that of Carter Smith, and other colleagues of theirs. In fact, while making their improving acquaintance, I wrote the forward to their book, The Emergence of the Relationship Economy.
Lots of grist for our mills there.
In my view, the problem Jon has raised for discussion is one of a great many that have surfaced because institutions “elided” users from business interactions. One of the main reasons for this is that institutions had computers long before it could be assumed that individuals did.
It will take a while for our society to rebalance - and even invert some paradigms - given the fact that we as individuals are now computerized too.
This is the core of VRM, which is about equipping individuals with tools of independence and engagement.
It is, indeed, paradigm inversion.
So Gam Dias is talking here at IIW about how he creates and manages his own interactions with the marketing mechanisms in the world. Can’t detail it here, but it’s interesting stuff, and I want to get it down in a blog, much as he does in his own blog.
Nooked is also up on the screen. Cool angle on the same thing.
So I’m answering an inquiry from a student doing a paper on DRM. While doing that, I’m wondering if VRM is the cure for DRM. Meaning, it does away with the need by replacing one-way coercion with two-way relationship. Or maybe three-way if a trust assurance party is also involved. Need to think about that.
From my reply:
The idea is to equip customers with tools of both independence and engagement. That is, independence from sellers and better ways of engaging with sellers.
For copyrighted works, VRM could involve agreements made on an individual basis — ones that could involve actual relationships between copyright holders and their customers. For example, if I buy an open (non-DRM’d) copy of an album by Mike Marshall (my favorite mandolin player), it might involve letting him know who I am, the fact that I like his work, a commitment not to duplicate it beyond fair uses, and the option to do any number of things, including re-distributing it for pay that would get us both a slice of the take. The options are wide open. What matters is that there would means for a real reslationship based on mutual interest, trust and control.
What think ya’ll?
Bibliography:
No time to make those links “blue” right now. Will get to it when I’m off the bus and have time later.
