January 14 2009 Conference Call

Conference Call Notes

Drafted by Joe Andrieu, December 03, 2008

IRC

#vrm at chat.freenode.net

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Category:conference call

Attendees

• Joe Andrieu
• Dean Landsman
• Doc Searls
• Adriana Lukas
• Chris Carfi
• Iain Henderson
• Keith Hopper
• Alan Mitchell
• Drummond Reed
• Charles Andres

Notes

Org Notes

Things are in development. Doc has a meeting with Andy Updegrove, who is a guru on association law.

ListenLog

ListenLog is underway with Keith Hopper at the helm. A bit of funding to integrate a user-driven listen log into an NPR streaming turner application for the iPhone. The first rev of the application is already deployed. Now we are working on how we do the user-driven thing. Notes in the wiki page. Also, the Tuesday 4:30PM EST meetings are going to be focused on this application. All steering committee members are welcome to join the conversation. If you (or someone you know) want to join (even if not steering committee member), contact Keith.

This is the beginning of a VRM approach to capturing behavioral data on behalf of the user. There are lots of ways to leverage the project, not only as a technical initiative, but also to start integrating various efforts such as The Mine!, VPI, etc.

The Mine

Adriana gave a quick progress report. Hopefully an early version with simple UI by end of January. A good UI designer is being sought, but at least the core functionality will be present and we can begin to see how it would function.

VRM Hub London

The next VRM Hub will include a word game about VRM to get a sense of what people think it means, in part to learn how to better explain to people what we are doing.

MyDex

Last two months building their version of the personal datastore. Learned a lot about technology, what works and what isn't quite there. Iain will do a longer write up rather than jam it all into a minute here.

Next face to face

Stanford in the spring? Either Bay Area or Santa Barbara. We will get more attendees up north, but we need a person on the ground to handle event logistics. In Santa Barbara, Joe is willing to do that. But it'll be more of a travel burden for the Silicon Valley crowd.

March 2nd, 3rd, 4th. (M/T/W) Following IIW structure. 1/2 day Monday, baselining Two full days T/W Dinners M/T

Conflicts

• March 13-17 SXSW
• Third week of Feb IMA
• April 12th Easter
• March 26 Kinneret
• March 24-26, Community Networking
• May 18-20 IIW

Voice

There seems to be more common usage of "user voice". And indeed, things like Twitter give the average person the ability to blog or twitter about product issues, sometimes the company responds immediately.

Joe mentions that sometimes this means that the people who actually get the attention are the famous and the powerful. So, in some ways, the custom voice is most heard when the speaker is already powerful, meaning the random individual may not really have much value from tweeting a complaint about a product.

The task ahead is "process not propaganda". It's not so much that we need to sell it, but that we need to give what we are selling structure.

The place to focus is that, if the individual is the point of integration, how does that work?!?

Next Steps

There's a view that what we can benefit from is collaborating/co-developing/sharing the learning from MyDex, Search Maps, ListenLog, and The Mine! We are all working toward answering that question of how the personal data store really works. We can all benefit from feedback and input. Together, we can help improve each others products.

Upcoming Calls

• Thursday 10:30AM PST: R-button
• Tuesdays 1:30PM PST: ListenLog
• Alternating Wednesdays (Next 1/21) 10AM PST: Standards committee call

Next Meeting

• January 28 2009 Conference Call