23G/ The Byway
The Byway
Thursday 23G
Convener: Doc Searls
Notes-taker(s): Doc Searls
Tags for the session - technology discussed/ideas considered:
- Byway #VRM #VRMCRM #IntentionEconomy #CustomerCommons
Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:
We discussed Customer Commons’ pioneering work on a new market model that can grow outside of Big Tech and customer-trapping silos.
The model is called the Byway. Here are four links that explain where it stands so far.
A New Way https://customercommons.org/a-new-way/
Byway https://customercommons.org/solutions/tools/byway/
Byway FAQ https://customercommons.org/solutions/tools/byway/byway-faq/
Paving the Byway https://customercommons.org/paving-the-byway/
A summary from one of those::
In the Byway model, intention signaling between buyers and sellers is maximized by providing a way for anyone to signal anyone, outside any company’s private system. The best model we have for that is email. Like the Internet it runs on, email is NEA:
Nobody owns it
Everybody can use it
Anybody can improve it
None of today’s hundreds of different commercial messaging, texting, and chat systems are NEA. Even the biggest ones: (e.g. WeChat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger are closed and proprietary. This means the Byway is free to be bigger than any of them. As is email already.
Doc and Joyce Searls, both of whom are founders and board members of Customer Commons, are currently embedded in Bloomington, Indiana, to work with the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University on rolling out and researching the Byway with local communities of interest.
This strategy and some of the target communities were discussed. We also reported on progress since the last IIW.
Wendy Gilch, of Selling Later, joined by Bill Wendel of RealEstateCafe, led a discussion of how the Byway could work for the real estate business.
Adrienne Meisels showed how a tool built by her company, MyPlanIt, is the “personal dashboard” Joyce and others have wanted for a long time.
