Blank (Media) Slate

It’s the morning of day one of the first Project VRM Workshop.  Doc Searls gave a quick intro, while Joe Andrieu outlined some VRM projects already in progress.  Much to talk about, and so far Kaliya (aka IdentityWoman) has helpled orchestrate a tightly packed couple days.  Looking forward to diving in.

Some Project VRM initiatives and tie-ins in progress:

• Personal RFP - Ability to place a formalized request into the marketplace so that it can be fulfilled by vendors.
• Personal Datastore - Data storage (local or distal) under control of the user as the basis for their personal information.
• Personal Address Manager - A mechanism for managing address changes between users and their vendors.
• Paychoice - A new business model where readers, listeners and viewers can quickly and easily pay for the media they consume.
• RelButton - A representation of the VRM relationship available and the entry point for interaction.
• rCard - A representation for connecting your Personal DataStore with a trusted partner via an “umbilical cord” allowing for two-way communication.

More to come as the sessions are finalized as interesting items pop up.

UPDATE: Check out the summary of Twitter comments via the #VRM08 query on Summaryize.com for snippets coming out of the workshop.

Usually by this time you’d be loading up on our latest DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast. Instead, you’ll find we didn’t produce an episode this week. The reason is that both Steve and I have been incredibly busy this week. He’s traveling for business, and I’ve spent my allocated DataPortability time in other productive ways.

Taking up a couple hours a day has been my work with the Steering Group’s Governance Task Force headed by Elias Bizannes to sprint to the finish line on our upcoming deliverable. It’s coming together nicely, though we’re still hammering out all of the necessary specifics to ensure it works. Anyone who has pulled together a loose collective of volunteers can attest to the time, effort, and delicacy required to get that done. Needless to say, we’re making a lot of headway, but it’s time consuming.

In addition to that, I’ve been asked to moderate a panel for the upcoming OMMA Behavioral conference in San Francisco on July 21st. The topic centers around the portability of preference data and how that impacts the marketing and advertising ecosystem. So, I’m donning my matchmine cap and wearing a name badge as a DataPortability Project Steering Group member to facilitate the discussion. In addition to moderating, I’m also helping source the panelists (i.e. trying to herd cats). As soon as the cats are in the barn, I’ll spin out more details.

Finally, and closest to home… the matchmine Ministry of Openness is currently supporting the development of OpenID. Yup, we’re actually taking a couple pages out of the DataPortability recipe book to help make your data (in the form of your media preferences) more easily accessible. More to come on that front as we move forward.

So, at the end of the week… I don’t feel we’re letting down the podcast audience. Instead, I feel we’re moving the ball significantly forward.

If, however, you simply need your podcast fix, perhaps you’d be interested in checking out the archive of previous episodes. Enjoy!