VRM Day 2017a

By VRM Day and IIW (which follows over the next three days at the same location), we should have terms individuals can assert as first parties in dealings with others—especially companies—in the world. These terms, at the very least, can provide personal privacy protections, especially regarding collection and use of personal data.

This is new, and huge. It may also be the most leveraged thing ever to come out of ProjectVRM.

Background. Ever since industry won the Industrial Revolution, individuals have been subordinate second parties when dealing with large companies, especially in mass markets. When we click "accept" to those companies' terms, we are always  second parties. But now we will have first person terms of our own that companies can accept as second parties. These terms will live at Customer Commons, much as personal copyright terms now live at Creative Commons. (In fact Customer Commons is modeled after Creative Commons, which also came out of the Berkman (now Berkman Klein) Center.

Until now the timing hasn't been right, because there were always too many reasons for companies to say no. But now the timing is right, thanks to new privacy protecting regulations, especially the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the EU. Punishments to companies not complying with the GDPR are very nasty. Accepting friendly but privacy-protecting terms individuals assert can make companies GDPR compliant, and do it simply, easily and automatically. This will be especially good news to the compliance offices at large international companies. It will also be good for business, because it will involve better signaling of good will and commercial intentions by customers, while saving companies the expense of purely speculative (and soon illegal) spying-based adtech.

These terms can be accepted (or not) automatically by CRM systems. This was demonstrated using the JLINC protocol and a Salesforce CRM system at the last VRM Day. At this VRM Day we want to discuss both developed and possible terms, the technologies required to advance, accept, record and retrieve them, and ways to grow Customer Commons as well.

As always, VRM Day will also be prep for the next three days at IIW, where we can dig down a lot farther and start fostering or developing supportive code. VRM Day is free. IIW is cheap as conferences go. (You won't find a conference as leveraged, period. Or one as cheap for three solid and productive days of real work—and good food.) Register for VRM Day here, and for IIW here.