Blueprint

[The Information Valet Project]

Blueprinting the shared user/value network

December 3-5, 2008
Reynolds Journalism Institute
Columbia, Missouri

REGISTER NOW . . . THE PROGRAM/SCHEDULE . . . LODGING . . . TRAVEL . . .

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RJI PICTURED

THE RJI VISION

A senior-level strategy session combined with a public symposium designed to blueprint the law, ownership, management, marketing and technology of a shared-user network for user-centric demographics, privacy-protected purchasing and advertising exchange and compensation. Come help make the market for digital information.

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Two levels of participation welcomed

• Member/collaborators -- Enterprise partners, institutions, individuals, donors or foundations who are likely to play a key role (money or time) in forming the Information Valet Service Corp. (IVSC). This is a targetted/invited group. Reduced registration applies to this group, to make it clear that we are inviting them to consider contributing their time and institutional support as a result of what we all learn.


• General participants -- Registration is open to the public, until we reach a limit beyond which active one-on-one interaction and participation could be difficult.

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REGISTER NOW . . . LODGING . . . TRAVEL . . . PROGRAM

AN INVITATION

Why now?

Today we face a challenge not just for democracy -- how to support independent, fact-based reporting -- but just for our own enjoyment -- how to find, sort and encourage the information and entertain we enjoy as citizens and people.

When people like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee helped invent key parts of the Internet and World Wide Web, no one foresaw that a one-time defense-industry experiment and academic research network would become a key engine of worldwide commerce.

Their elegant inspiration -- protocols that did barely what was necessary, and nothing more, has fostered nearly two decades of furious, independent, free-market innovation. But we now know there are some missing pieces:

A new way to track advertising and reward consumers for viewing it.

A way to end an endless pattern of multiple user IDs, passwords, and accounts, and obtain a more customized web experience.

The option to purchase -- and be paid -- for information transactions with a single account, recognized at most websites.

The freedom to choose from an array of service providers for such single-account, customized convenience, rather than forced to a single provider.

Transferring value -- a shared-user network

The technologists would call this federated authentication coupled with a four-party commerce network. We're calling it the Information Valet Project. The Internet needs additional infrastructure which will update the role and effectiveness of advertising, enhance consumer privacy options, and enable the sharing of information commerce among publishers, producers and artists. [http://informationvalet.wordpress.com/about (READ MORE).

For an afternoon, a full day and a wrapup morning, in the serenity of the Midwest prairie, and with the facilities of the just-opened, $31-million Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at our disposal, we'll hash out the governance, technologies, business models, marketing and financial operation of the Information Valet Service . . . who will own it and who will benefit.

Taking charge of disruption

If you are a senior executive or strategist in the news, telecommunications, wireless, technology, health care, financial services or entertainment businesses, we urge you to joining us. Because the Information Valet Project could change your business in ways you haven't imagined. For once, it's your chance to shape disruption to your advantage -- before it occurs.

In the development of any transformative technology, a time arrives for collaboration that does not stop competition . . . but enables it -- by creating rules . . . and a level playing field. Whether it's settling on 60-cycles alternating current, or establishing the railroad-track guage, or the Bluetooth specifications . . . technology requires standardization before the real change begins.

As a participant in "IVP Blueprint," you are accepting a challenge to lead this pattern again in creating crucial new standards . . . to add a new dimension to the Information Superhighway that rigorously respects personal privacy, yet takes Internet information commerce to a new level of sharing -- and competition.

You may never have been to Columbia, Missouri. And you may never return again. But please don't miss this chance to visit America's heartland, at a special time and for a critical reason. The connections you make, the ideas you'll share . . . and hatch . . . should inform your business and your life for years to come.