Category: Uncategorized

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Contact Lost

Deborah Micek (@CoachDeb) writes:

"I’ve realized it’s more upsetting 2 lose contacts than lose $ money.
Felt disconnected this week 1st losing all contacts on iphone + Twitter"

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Do you agree?  Why or why not?

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Building Blog and Site Traffic with Content Syndication Session at #Blogher08

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I was torn, and actually in the Open Source session at #blogher08, so I missed the Content Syndication session, which was running concurrently.  Luckily, Beth Kanter was live-Twittering it.  Here are the resources she noted.

Thanks, Beth!

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BlogHer Conference Ventana Launched

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It has been quite the busy week in Cerado-land, as we were supporting the two hottest tickets in town, PSFK and BlogHer, with custom, iPhone-enabled pocket guides.

As PSFK wraps up today, BlogHer kicks off on Friday.  We’re supporting the conference and created a custom VentanaTM that will serve as a mobile-friendly Official Pocket Guide and connect the event with its attendees in real time. 

There are three versions of the BlogHer Pocket Guide available:

The guide offers quick access to…

People – The Network page lets attendees add themselves to the guide  and link to their Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

News– The latest blog posts,  announcements, and comments are the first things you see when you open the Guide.

Agenda – The Agenda page will be updated in real time whenever the conference agenda shifts.

Help – We’ve included a helpful FAQ to help you keep track of everything that’s going on.

The BlogHer ’08 annual conference is like no other — it is the
thrilling diversity of the blogosphere come to life! Featuring
technical labs, educational workshops, intense discussion sessions,
relevant sponsors, speakers from every corner of the blogosphere,
established and new, and plenty of opportunities to network and
socialize. Appropriate for anyone and everyone who’s interested in any
kind of blogging, from the personal to the professional to the
political.

You can learn more about Cerado Ventana at ventana.cerado.com.

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PSFK Now Fits in Your Pocket, iPhone

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This year, the PSFK conference is collaborating with Cerado to create a custom VentanaTM that will serve as a mobile-friendly Official Pocket Guide and connect the event with its attendees in real time. 

There are three versions of the PSFK Pocket Guide available:

The guide offers quick access to…

People – The Network page lets attendees add themselves to the guide  and link to their Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

News– The latest blog posts,  announcements, and comments are the first things you see when you open the Guide.

Agenda – The Agenda page will be updated in real time whenever the conference agenda shifts.

Help – We’ve included a helpful FAQ to help you keep track of everything that’s going on.

PSFK is an international
trends-led publishing, events and consultancy business, inspiring
readers, audiences and clients to make things better. The San Francisco
2008 conference will take place July 17th. To reserve your place in the conversation, register now, and get the mobile, iPhone, or blog version of the guide.

You can learn more about Cerado Ventana at ventana.cerado.com.

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The Principles of VRM

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Doc did a foundation-setting presentation yesterday at #vrm08, and clearly laid out the key principles of VRM in an easy-to-grok format. 

  1. VRM provides tools for customers to manage relationships with vendors. These tools are personal. They can also be social, but they are personal first.
  2. VRM tools are are customer tools. They are driven
    by the customer, and not under vendor control. Nor to they work only
    inside any one vendor’s exclusive relationship environment.
  3. VRM tools relate. This means they engage vendors’ systems (e.g. CRM) in ways that work for both sides.
  4. VRM tools support transaction and conversation as well as relationship.
  5. With VRM, customers are the central “points of integration” for their own data.
  6. With VRM, customers control their own data. They control the data they share, and the terms on which that data is shared.
  7. With VRM, customers can assert many things. Among these are requests for products or services, preferences, memberships, transaction histories and terms of service.
  8. There is no limit on the variety of data and data types customers can hold — and choose to share with vendors and others on grounds that the customer controls.
  9. VRM turns the customer, and productive customer-vendor relationships, into platforms for many kinds of businesses.
  10. VRM is based on open standards, open APIs and open code. This will support a rising tide of activity that will lift an infinite variety of business boats, and other social goods.

These principles have a number of implications.  These are:

  • A free customer is more valuable than a captive one
  • Markets won’t be free until customers are free
  • VRM tools are personal tools — they benefit the individual first
  • VRM tools provide individuals with ways to manage relationships
  • The individual is the central point of integration

There are more; here’s the video (for the folks reading on RSS).  The video is also embedded below.  Take a look.

(Thanks to Tom Guarriello for shooting this!)

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Rubber, Meet Road

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Have just arrived in Boston (Cambridge, actually) for the first VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) workshop, which runs July 14-15, 2008.  ProjectVRM is under the auspices of the Berkman Center at Harvard, and is a project being spearheaded by Doc Searls as an effort that will enable customers and vendors to engage in more mutually beneficial relationships.

The workshop is a coming-out party of sorts, as it is the first dedicated get-together of the people around the world who have been working on not only defining VRM, but beginning to make it a reality.  Up until now, all the VRM get-togethers were grafted on to other (important and complementary) activities like the Internet Identity Workshop.  This meeting is VRM’s passage into toddlerhood and first steps.  (Too soon, it’ll be asking to borrow the car, I’m sure.)

There are a few things in particular that I personally am hoping to help drive forward over the next couple of days.  The first is to nail down a solid working model of what it means for something to be able to call itself "VRM."  This project has some legs, and without the above, there will be a surfeit of products and/or services coming into the market that will attempt to connect themselves with the effort.  That’s fine, but there needs to be a standard and unambiguous way of separating the wheat from the chaff, and separating the architecture from the marketecture.

The next goal related to code.  Over the next couple of days, I want to both learn about and, more importantly, determine the best ways we can contribute to the code that’s going to need to be created to enable VRM.  What will this code do?  It will enable us, as individuals, to be have increased control of our digital information, and independence regarding its use (rather than having every bit of our digital identity strewn about the tens or hundreds of vendor silos in which it currently lives, which is the current state-of-practice, unfortunately).

There are a number of instances where effort is starting to pay off.  A couple of examples:

Also, some great thinking here from Alan Mitchell: "Is VRM a Phenomenon?"

This group is going to get a lot of work done over the next couple of days.  Looking forward to rolling up the sleeves and digging in.