"Good ideas should stand in their own proven pudding." – Doc Searls
ProjectVRM is one of those Good Ideas. At its most fundamental, VRM is about "providing customers with tools that make them both independent of vendors and better able to engage with vendors."
From my point of view, there are basic underpinnings such as:
- I should be able to decide which vendors with which I want to develop relationships
- I should be able to revoke / change how I grant vendor access to my personal information
- I should be able to "relate" in a panoply of ways – everything from the mundane ("I want to buy that toaster" or "Hey, I listened to that!") to the sublime ("If I tell you a story once a week, every week, for the next year, can you embroider a shirt for me that illustrates that story?") to the ridiculous ("Please let me know every time you feature a product that has anything even remotely to do with bacon")
- I should be able to even just put information "out there," and see how creative vendors want to relate with *me*, based on that information
- I should be able to do all those things anonymously, if I so choose
- &c, &c, &c.
(By the way, the fundaments of a "You know it's VRM…" document exist here, if you would like to contribute. I encourage you to please do so.)
There are more that will evolve over time, I'm sure. This whole VRM thing is a (very early) work in (very early) progress.
So, when someone goes salting the soil before anything has been planted, it definitely gets my hackles up a little bit. (Please read both the original "Fallacies" piece from Graham Hill as well as its counterpoint by Doc.)
We're in the definition and building stages of this thing. Instead of saying it should be bulldozed, how about helping define its architecture instead?