VRM – joeandrieu.com
type: channel
description: My personal space
date: 2017-06-14T22:38:45Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: Ten Years Later
items: Beware the Plan of Sauron
items: It all starts with sharing…
items: Fourth Parties are agents. Third Parties aren’t necessarily.
items: Facebook as Personal Data Store
items: Beyond Data Ownership to Information Sharing
items: A fresh breath
items: Introducing User Driven Services
items: The Great Reconfiguration
items: One Night Stand worth $300 Million

Ten Years Later
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2017-06-14T22:38:45Z
subject: Identity
subject: ProjectVRM
subject: Vendor Relationship Management
subject: GDPR
subject: IIW
subject: Personal Data Store
subject: User Driven
subject: User Driven Services
subject: VRM
description: Ten years ago I wrote a blog post that captured a key architectural insight at the core of VRM: putting the user at the center of integration not only improves the quality of services, it simplifies our systems. The article captured the gestalt of VRM and helped catalyze a range of conversations that still shape the VRM approach. Since then, we have seen a lot of progress. Here are a few standout examples. Continue reading →
encoded: Ten years ago I wrote a blog post that captured a key architectural insight at the core of VRM: putting the user at the center of integration not only improves the quality of services, it simplifies our systems. When we put the user at the center, and make them the point of integration, the entire system becomes simpler, more robust, more scalable, and more useful. The article captured the gestalt of VRM and helped catalyze a range of conversations that still shape the VRM approach. Since then, we have seen a lot of progress. Sometimes we proceeded in fits and starts and there were certainly failures along the way, including my own venture, SwitchBook. When I started pulling together my notes for this anniversary post, I was mildly surprised and delighted at how much real work got done and the real-world impact we’ve had. Here are a few VRMy developments in the last decade worth noting. Please chime in with a comment if you know of a good one to add to the list. Coming in December of that same year, OAuth kicked off a series of standard protocols for identity, attribute sharing, and permissions, including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and User Managed Access (now at 2.0). These efforts brought together the leading technology companies to collaboratively develop new standards that give individuals greater flexibility and control over data exchange between online services. Companies like Personal.com. (now TeamData), Digi.me, and Cozy Cloud shipped user-driven personal data stores. Software project HIE of One offers a personal data store that lets individuals manage our own healthcare data. In Europe, GDPR has ushered in a new wave of regulatory requirements and penalties driving companies and organizations to give individuals easier access to, greater control of, and more security in our personal data. JLINC Labs offers a provenance service layer that allows companies to quickly attain GDPR compliance for the right to erasure and data provenance by giving individuals di…

Beware the Plan of Sauron
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2015-02-17T04:01:52Z
subject: ProjectVRM
subject: Uncategorized
subject: Vendor Relationship Management
subject: Lord of the Rings
subject: project VRM
subject: Sauron
subject: startups
subject: VRM
description: The “Master App” can’t magically make it all work. On the project VRM blog, Doc Searls recently suggested that the killer app for VRM is the “Master App”. In response, on the Project VRM email list, Jim Pasquale suggested it’s … Continue reading →
encoded: The “Master App” can’t magically make it all work. On the project VRM blog, Doc Searls recently suggested that the killer app for VRM is the “Master App”. In response, on the Project VRM email list, Jim Pasquale suggested it’s more of a mixing board than a master app. Jim’s right. The “master app” reminds me of what I call “The Sauron business model,” a term I coined after watching over one hundred and twenty 60 second pitches at two different Startup Weekend Santa Barbara events in the last two years. With all of those pitches in rapid succession, the pattern popped right out. For those of you who might not be Lord of the Rings fans, Sauron was the bad guy hell-bent on unifying everything in Middle Earth under his brutal rule, and wanted that hobbit’s ring to do it: Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. [quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring] What I saw repeated again and again and again in those pitches at Startup Weekend were hopeful entrepreneurs who earnestly believed that if they could just unify all of a person’s [insert unique idea here], they could provide a ground breaking new service that would transform the world. Just like Sauron, all they needed was that One Thing to make it all work… Creating the only singular view of an individuals financials, MyFinances.com will make it easy for people to instantly waste less–and make more–money! Bringing together all of a user’s vendors into one coherent dashboard, people will finally be able to make smart choices that both save money and create more value, while vendors get better access to the right customers at the right time! Giving users control of their identity across a…

It all starts with sharing…
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2012-05-02T15:37:26Z
subject: Information Sharing
subject: ProjectVRM
subject: Shared Information
subject: User Driven
subject: Vendor Relationship Management
subject: IIW
subject: iiw14
subject: information sharing work group
subject: ISWG
subject: Kantara
subject: Kantara Initiative
subject: label
subject: legal
subject: notice
subject: open standard
subject: open standards
subject: privacy
subject: privacy policy
subject: standard information sharing label
subject: standard label
subject: terms of service
subject: terms of use
subject: TOS
subject: TOU
subject: VRM
description: From kindergarten through our professional life, sharing binds us together as friends, colleagues, and collaborators, so perhaps it should be no surprise that online sharing through services like Facebook, Twitter, and email shapes our online social life. Yet sharing online … Continue reading →
encoded: From kindergarten through our professional life, sharing binds us together as friends, colleagues, and collaborators, so perhaps it should be no surprise that online sharing through services like Facebook, Twitter, and email shapes our online social life. Yet sharing online is anything but simple. The details of what happens with the information we share is often hidden behind long, complicated legal agreements that almost no one reads. If we’re lucky, they are explained in Terms of Service and Privacy Policy documents, sometimes buried out of view, other times forced on us like ransom notes forcing us to state our compliance or leave the site. It doesn’t have to be that way. Today, at the Internet Identity Workshop, we officially launch the Standard Information Sharing Label, which makes it easy for websites to say in simple, consistent language what they do with our information, making it easier for individuals to make better decisions about the information we share online. The Information Sharing Work Group has published a draft specification defining the Standard Label as well as a Kickstarter project to finance its graphic design. The Kickstarter has a brief video explaining the effort. The official press release is here. The work is free to use and open to collaborators. In all my years contributing to the VRM conversation, few projects have made me as proud as I am of the work behind the Standard Label. Check it out. If you like it, please spread the word and consider chipping into help take this work to the next level.

Fourth Parties are agents. Third Parties aren’t necessarily.
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2011-04-13T19:16:43Z
subject: ProjectVRM
subject: Vendor Relationship Management
subject: Doc Searls
subject: fourth parties
subject: Platform
subject: VRM
description: Fourth Parties is a powerful, but sometimes confusing term. In fact, I think Doc recently mischaracterized it in a recent post to the ProjectVRM mailing list. Normally, I wouldn’t nitpick about this, but there are two key domains where this … Continue reading →
encoded: Fourth Parties is a powerful, but sometimes confusing term. In fact, I think Doc recently mischaracterized it in a recent post to the ProjectVRM mailing list. Normally, I wouldn’t nitpick about this, but there are two key domains where this is vital and I’m knee deep in both: contracts and platforms. Doc said: Like, is the customer always the first party and the vendor the second party? Well, no. So, some clarification. First and second parties are like the first and second person voices in speech. The person speaking is the first person, and uses the first person voice (I, me, mine, myself). The person being addressed is the second person, and is addressed in the second person voice (you, your, yourself). And To sum it up, third parties mostly assist vendors. That is, they show up as helpers to vendors. The first point is great, and if you continue this further (and make the leap from parties to data providers), you get something like this: The ownership of “your” and “my” data is usually clear. However, ownership of the different types of “our” data is a challenge at best. To complicate matters further, every instance of “my data” is somebody else’s “your data”. In every case, there is this mutually reciprocal relationship between us and them. In the VRM case, we usually think of the individual as owning “my data” and the vendor as owning “your data”, but for the vendor, the reverse is true: to them their data is “my data” and the individual’s data is “your data”. Similar dynamics occur when the other party is an individual. I bring my data, you bring your data, and together we’ll engage with “our” data. We need an approach that respects and applies to everyone’s data, you, me, them, everybody.. Which is from my post on data ownership. The trick is that 1st party and 2nd party perspectives are symmetrical. We are their 2nd party and they are their 1st party. Whatever solution we come up with in the VRM world needs to work for everyone as their own 1st party. Every…

Facebook as Personal Data Store
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2010-12-20T11:24:30Z
subject: Information Sharing
subject: Personal Data Store
subject: ProjectVRM
subject: Facebook
subject: Facebook Connect
subject: I Shared What?!?
subject: PDS
subject: Vendor Relationship Management
subject: VRM
description: With over 150 million people using Facebook Connect every month at over 1 million websites, Facebook has ushered in a new era, as the world’s largest personal data store. Personal Data Stores Personal data stores allow individuals to share online … Continue reading →
encoded: With over 150 million people using Facebook Connect every month at over 1 million websites, Facebook has ushered in a new era, as the world’s largest personal data store. Personal Data Stores Personal data stores allow individuals to share online data with service providers. Facebook Connect users can give third-party web sites like Digg, Amazon, and YouTube access to information stored at Facebook, turning Facebook into a personal data store for over 500 million people. What makes personal data stores special is the seamless sharing with websites for real-time personalization of the web. It’s more than just file back-up or synchronization. It’s not just publishing “content” to our friends or the public. Personal data stores allow us to bring our information to websites when we want to. It’s a way to treat the user as the point of integration. Personal data stores can be anywhere, shared with websites whenever we want. Consider giving FedexKinko‘s a link to a Flickr account so they can download photos to print a new calendar. Or giving a new doctor permission to access our personal health history rather than filling out a paper form while we sit in the waiting room. Or giving a website access to our Outlook contact list on our desktop computer so they can give us birthday reminders and gift suggestions. The key is user-managed access, wherever the data lives. Facebook Connect gives this kind of access control over all the data we store at Facebook, enabling web-wide personalization built around the individual. Mash-ups In recent years, mash-ups and real-time APIs have made it easier and easier for companies to combine information from different services into a single user experience. Instead of building bigger and more complicated proprietary data silos, companies take advantage of services like Google Maps and IP-address geolocation, using real-time information to enhance their websites. Some service are even built around other companies’ data: Twitter clients like…

Beyond Data Ownership to Information Sharing
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2010-01-21T22:32:19Z
subject: Information Sharing
subject: Intention Economy
subject: Personal Data Store
subject: ProjectVRM
subject: Shared Information
subject: User Driven Services
subject: Vendor Relationship Management
subject: CRM
subject: data ownership
subject: Doc Searls
subject: privacy
subject: project VRM
subject: User Driven
subject: VRM
description: The question of who owns our data on the Internet is a challenging problem. It can also be a red herring, distracting us from building the next generation of online services. The term “ownership” simply brings too much baggage from … Continue reading →
encoded: The question of who owns our data on the Internet is a challenging problem. It can also be a red herring, distracting us from building the next generation of online services. The term “ownership” simply brings too much baggage from the physical world, suggesting a win-lose, us-verses-them mentality that retards the development of rich, powerful services based on shared information. Anyone up for sacred cow cheeseburgers? I’m a member–and a big fan–of Steve Holcombe‘s “Data Ownership in the Cloud” LinkedIn group and I love the efforts of the Dataportability guys and am a big supporter of the Privacy and Public Policy work group at Kantara. There is a lot of good work being done by folks trying to figure out how to give people greater control over the use of data about them (privacy) and gain access to data they use or created (dataportability). Unfortunately, sometimes the arguments behind these efforts are based on who owns–or who should own–the data. This is not just an intellectual debate or political rallying call, it often undermines our common efforts to build a better system. Consider this: Privacy as secrecy is dead Data sharing is data copying Transaction data has dual ownership Yours, mine, & ours: Reality is complicated Taking back ownership is confrontational Privacy as secrecy is dead First, the data is pretty much already out there. The issue isn’t “How do we keep data from bad people,” it’s “How do we keep people from doing bad things with data?” DRM and crypto and related technology as the sole means to prevent data leakage and data abuse are failures. Sooner or later, the bad guys break the system and get the data. Sure, there are smart things we can do to protect ourselves. Just like we wear seatbelts and lock our front doors, we should also use SSL and multi-factor authentication, but we can’t count on technology to keep our secrets. We need solutions that work even when the secret is out. In fact, privacy isn’t about information we keep secret. It…

A fresh breath
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2010-01-02T04:09:32Z
subject: Uncategorized
subject: 2009
subject: 2010
subject: Azigo
subject: Doc Searls
subject: happy new year
subject: kynetx
subject: project VRM
subject: scanaroo
subject: SwitchBook
subject: the mine!
subject: User Driven Services
subject: VRM
description: This last year (2009) was the most challenging ever for me, both personally and professionally. Good times, tough problems, people that transformed my heart, and ideas that changed my perspective. It wasn’t always easy, but each challenge had its own … Continue reading →
encoded: This last year (2009) was the most challenging ever for me, both personally and professionally. Good times, tough problems, people that transformed my heart, and ideas that changed my perspective. It wasn’t always easy, but each challenge had its own reward. I’m looking forward to writing a bit more this year, opening the conversation up about portable contexts and user driven services. My work with Project VRM and the Kantara Initiative‘s Information Sharing and User-Managed Access Work Groups will continue to be a big part of that. I’m also looking forward to some interesting new product and service releases, from SwitchBook, MyDex, The Mine!, and others in the VRM community, as well as updates and innovations from Scanaroo, Kynetx and Azigo and others. Also, Doc Searls‘ upcoming book on the Intention Economy promises to be an intriguing read. It should be a good year for VRM. Best of luck to you and for your own plans for 2010. May it be a stand-out year for all of us.

Introducing User Driven Services
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2009-04-26T00:24:45Z
subject: Intention Economy
subject: User Driven Services
subject: Vendor Relationship Management
subject: Internet
subject: ProjectVRM
subject: VRM
subject: World Wide Web
description: Our world is continually becoming more and more user driven. From cable TV to YouTube, from newspapers to blogs, from Wal-Mart to eBay, from Ma Bell to the Internet, the shift from centralized, structured systems of authority to emergent, collaborations … Continue reading →
encoded: Our world is continually becoming more and more user driven. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-357" title="world UI" src="https://blog.joeandrieu.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/dreamstime_8489486world-uismall.jpg" alt="world UI" width="180" height="180" srcset="https://blog.joeandrieu.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/dreamstime_8489486world-uismall.jpg 180w, https://blog.joeandrieu.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/dreamstime_8489486world-uismall-150x150.jpg 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px" />From cable TV to YouTube, from newspapers to blogs, from Wal-Mart to eBay, from Ma Bell to the Internet, the shift from centralized, structured systems of authority to emergent, collaborations between individuals has been reshaping our political, social, and economic world for generations. This is a trend that has driven—and been driven by—the massive success of the Internet, email, the World Wide Web, eBay, Google, RSS, FaceBook, YouTube, and Twitter. Each of these examples took an existing model and made it more user driven: networking, messaging, electronic publishing, buying & selling, content discovery & advertising, news aggregation/syndication, online video, status updates. The conclusion: companies which find ways to be more user driven are more valuable, more profitable, and more successful. What does it mean to be “user driven”? At its most basic, it means putting the user in charge, in some way. Fully realized, it means putting the user at the center of the system, as a point of integration, origination, and control. We call these fully realized systems “User Driven Services”. User Driven Services put users in charge. Users start each interaction, manage the flow of the experience, and control what and how data is captured, used and propagated. Users are the cause and the controller, working with service providers to co-create collaborations that create value for all parties. From self-serve gas stations and soda …

The Great Reconfiguration
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2009-04-24T09:46:48Z
subject: ProjectVRM
subject: Search
subject: User Driven Search
subject: User Driven Services
subject: Vendor Relationship Management
subject: IIW
subject: IIW2009a
subject: User Driven
subject: VRM
subject: VRM Workshop 2009
subject: VRM2009
subject: VRM2009a
description: The Internet is undergoing a major reconfiguration. No longer is it sufficient for companies to package a value proposition on their website and then drive traffic to it through ads, search engine optimization, and reciprocal links. Today companies must find … Continue reading →
encoded: The Internet is undergoing a major reconfiguration. No longer is it sufficient for companies to package a value proposition on their website and then drive traffic to it through ads, search engine optimization, and reciprocal links. Today companies must find ways to provide a value proposition wherever the user might be: on Facebook and Twitter, on their iPhones, and even through 3rd party applications accessing deep into the company’s datasphere through APIs and webhooks. The Internet is reconfiguring around the user, wherever people happen to be. I’ve been talking with folks in the VRM community about this topic over the last few years. VRM is, at its core, about starting with the user, re-engineering systems to maximize user freedom and control, and placing the user at the point of integration. Or, as Doc Searls puts it, creating tools for “both independence and engagement”. For example, I’ve led several discussions at various VRM workshops on what I call “user driven search“: what would happen if the user were truly in control of all the data related to their search and could engage any Search provider they like with the full scope of that information and under the user’s terms? In the last several months, I have been advocating a new term has that captures the core direction of both VRM and User Driven Search: “User Driven Services”. When you configure your services around the user as the primary point of origination, integration, and control, you are building User Driven Services. Over the next few weeks, I’ll dive into what we mean by User Driven Services; consider it a warm up for both the VRM West Coast Workshop 2009 and the Internet Identity Workshop. More …

One Night Stand worth $300 Million
type: item
creator: Joe Andrieu
date: 2009-02-23T06:43:23Z
subject: Intention Economy
subject: Personal Data Store
subject: ProjectVRM
subject: Vendor Relationship Management
subject: Abhijit Nadgouda
subject: Doc Searls
subject: iface thoughts
subject: Jared Spool
subject: One Night Stand
subject: project VRM
subject: Vendor Releationship Managment
subject: VRM
description: In the ProjectVRM Standards Committee discussions, we’ve talked quite a bit about a “One Night Stand” use case, where a personal data store is used with an online retailer and all personal data is erased–as much as possible–after the transaction. … Continue reading →
encoded: In the ProjectVRM Standards Committee discussions, we’ve talked quite a bit about a “One Night Stand” use case, where a personal data store is used with an online retailer and all personal data is erased–as much as possible–after the transaction. Teleconference 2008 06 18 Teleconference 2008 07 02 Teleconference 2008 08 13 Teleconference 2008 09 24 Teleconference 2008 10 08 Face to Face 2008 October The premise is simple: if users know they are safe giving personal data, they will give it more freely. Limits on long term data mining (and its attendant offensive behavior of junk mail, spam, and telemarketing) paradoxically increase data sharing and enhance the ability of vendors to provide more meaningful engagement at the moment of the transaction. Less long term data retention leads to more real-time data provided by users, resulting in better customer experiences, and more profit for vendors. Until recently, this was a theoretical argument, a belief by those of us promoting VRM. As Doc Searls puts it, “A free customer is more valuable than a captive one.” Now we have evidence of just how valuable that can be. Jared Spool shares with us the real-world example of a redesign in the direction of the “One Night Stand” that created $300 million in value in the first year: [excerpt edited for brevity. see full article for details] The form was simple. The fields were Email Address and Password. The buttons were Login and Register. The link was Forgot Password. It was the login form for the site. It’s a form users encounter all the time. How could they have problems with it? The problem wasn’t as much about the form’s layout as it was where the form lived. Users would encounter it after they filled their shopping cart with products they wanted to purchase and pressed the Checkout button. It came before they could actually enter the information to pay for the product. “I’m Not Here To Be In a Relationship” We were wrong about the first-time shoppers. They did mind register…