When I first saw the note from David Phillips about this meeting, I was intrigued, but after discussing the XPRL standard with more seasoned PR folks did not have high hopes honestly. People I spoke with said it was a dead but valiant effort to bring standards into the professional Public Relations world. They said the principal reason for failure was the lack of adoption in the many years since it was conceived. As is often the case with technology projects, it seemed that there was not enough early buy in from the people who were affected by it.

I was happy to see this was not lost on the members of the group and was indeed one of the key points of emphasis pursued during the course of the meeting.

In attendance were:

• Mike Granatt, Chair
• Michael Ferland, Treasurer
• Peter Wilson, Technology Lead
• David Phillips
• Mark Adams
• Antony Mayfield
• and of course, myself Chris Heuer.

We met at a Club on Portman Square, near Marble Arch on the West side of Central London. The agenda, per Mark Adam’s email earlier in the day was focused around “moving on” whch was great to see as dwelling too much on the past is a waste of time and could have eaten up all our time together. To this point, the best email signature I ever used was “Look back to learn, Look forward to dream, Look at today and be.”

The agenda we addressed was:

1. Introductions to new bods
2. Where we are today - objectives restatement Mike G (Chair) and Mike F (money) and Peter (tech)
3. New Bombshells - eg David Phillips’ document
4. What we do about it
5. New task list
6. Owners, deadlines, structure, progress

I took out my podcast rig, but ultimately decided this was not the time or place to intrude upon new acquaintences with my personal desire to capture conversations for the benefit of other outside the room. This was further driven by the realization that the other meetings taking place in the room and the acoustics would not have allowed a good recording anyway. I did however request permission to take a few photos which I posted onto Flickr. Mark Adams’ attitude and energy was a key inspiration througout the conversation. I particularly enjoyed his focus on celebrating small steps forward, even suggesting that we “pop open the champagne bottle” when the first small decision was made unanimously.

After a very brief round of introductions, the Treasurer Michael Ferland gave a report on the status of the organization. At present there are no legal issues the group faces, other than some simple organizational paperwork that needs to be updated. XPRL also has sufficient funds in the bank for simple operations and administrative expenses. Though the group was mostly dormant the last couple of years, they do have a mailing list of a few hundred people, some of whom are counted as ‘members’, and others of which have just signed up to receive information from the group. In this part of the discussion, I learned an interesting tidbit about organizations in the UK needing to register their databases as part of the local privacy laws. From my perspective this is a bit too “big brotherish” for me, but I can see where it might prevent some litigation. This would never work in the US since providing such a membership database would fly in the face of our sense of privacy to belong to a group without government interference.

David Phillips had written a proposal in the days leading up to the meeting which I won’t comment on in too much detail until he is ready to publish it. I can tell you it is very insightful and well conceived with support from some UK industry leaders and academics including Anne Gregory from Leeds Metropolitan University who is a big advocate of XPRL. Most interestingly, he posted it to Writely for collaboration, but has not had many edits yet. The reason for this was obvious to me (I have not contributed yet either), it was so well thought htrough and detailed that it felt more complete than draft like. Also, as is the case with most ad-hoc groups, they need to work together first in person to feel the sense of permission to edit someone else’s document rather than merely comment on it. In other words, it was really good and I personally was more concerned with mucking it up than engaged with the possibility of adding value. This proposal will be considered more over the coming days and published in the coming weeks to the general public.

There was a good overview of the need for XPRL and an in-depth discussion about the value such a standard provides to the various members of the industry. It was clear that this was not well understood fully by everyone in light of recent technological advancements, but the discussion brought the group to a common understanding in this regards in short order. The one question that was not really discussed was “why did this standards effort fail to be widely adopted so far?” - I should have asked this, but it did not occur to me at the time. Also, I was trying not to be the brash young yank that forced himself on this passionate group of professionals who truly care about the industry and their work. Nonetheless, I was a bit more vocal than even I expected I would be - hopefully this was received with the good intentions I had carried into the meeting.

As the Chair of the group, Mike Granatt was trying to dig at some key questions, including “Why would the large stakeholders support this effort tactically and financially?” The group came up with 4 primary answers that I noted (in addition to several other secondary reasons):

1. Financial savings through decreased effort required and easier interoperability of disparate systems that would lead to projects that have greater impact than traditional press releases.
2. The added value of search engine optimization through distributing structured information instead of the typical unstructured format
3. A stronger potential for measurement and tracking than currently exists with clipping services
4. The future capabilities and innovations that will come as a result of a common standard

The other question we were striving to answer was “Who would be the most valuable supporters of XPRL that would get us to the point of broader adoption in the industry?” One path considered was to create demand from big clients who have a real need stemming from the pains of their current operations in this area - particularly from the financial PR companies and public companies who have to adhere to the latest financial disclosure regulations. By cultivating this demand in clients, it would drive demand for the agencies to pick it up and then in turn to bring the wire services along.

Mark Adams noted that “if there were a petition from the biggest clients to support the standard, the agencies and related services would certainly follow.” This would be something akin to a preferred vendor list which had certain minimum requirements in order for agencies to be able to get their account. Here I relayed Mark Nowlan’s suggestion that we needed to get the major newsroom editors from AP, Reuters and other major news organizations to want to use it along with the wires - to include the journalists in the conversation, which is exactly what we are trying to do with our New Media Release efforts. This was echoed by many in the room who ticked off the major news organizations globally and around the UK with whom we should be talking.

I was concerned in the day leading up to the meeting that the group needed to focus more on developing a community of interested stakeholders rather than trying to implement something upon them. But this concern was unfounded, as the entire group embraced the idea of inclusiveness and listening to the needs of organizations to ensure that the solution represented by XPRL meets their needs.

Additionally, I pointed out that everyone should be clear that the standard itself is a neutral platform, like the highways, which is an analogy I learned from Lawrence Lessig’s excellent presentation on Net Neutrality. The standard enables other people to do all kinds of interesting things, but the standard itself is merely common ground to have a shared understanding and language for describing the information, not the functionality it enables. Others would be able to build needed tools like measurement reporting and tracking. Ultimately the standard may include elements to support new functionality across the tools, but must start out with coverage of the core needs for common descriptions in the meta layer.

Mark Adams presented two proposals which he will submit to the group formally next week. In short, let me say that he has chosen a great path forward to re-energize the group and realign it with the core mission of serving the needs of the whole PR industry. While it is based upon the UK’s view of the industry, I hope to influence it with more of a global perspective, as we are attempting to accomplish with the Media Release Working Group. In addition to the idea of building a ‘petition’ of clients who support the need for the XPRL standard, he has envisioned a sort of BrainJam amongst industry stakeholders to clearly define the pain points and determine how XPRL can alleviate that pain. Ideally, this event will take place before year’s end and the group can really move out in earnest in Q1 2007. I hope to be able to support XPRL’s Chair Mike Granatt in facilitating this event in some small way and learn from his experience.

After two hours, the meeting adjourned to The Bricklayers Arms where the really important bit of business of getting to know one another over a few pints commenced. I had a really great time and am very glad to have made the decision to travel to London for this meeting. Not only did I gain much needed insight into prior work related to our New Media Release efforts, but also created some new friendships that I suspect will last for a long time to come. After all, isn’t that the real business I am engaged in these days, of connecting people who can learn from one another and help each other with successfully pursuing their passions. Or as Jackie Danicki says, “helping connect people who need to talk to one another”.

There is a followup conference call scheduled for 3pm London time next Wednesday, which is just before our re-scheduled Media Release Working Group meeting. On a side note, I can’t begin to say enough good things about David Phillips. He is simply a brilliant nice guy, who also enjoys connecting people who need to know each other. Now I am off to the Fleishman HIllard office in Covent Garden to do a little client work and prepare for the Social Media Club meeting tonight. (OK, I lost the earlier version of this post which was based on a mindmap of my notes, I am now heading to the conference room to setup for the meeting.)

I had thought there might only be a small group of 4 or 5 people showing up for it given the last minute nature, but interest is much higher than I expected. When I last checked, 15 people had registered to attend using the RSVP form, and 5 others, including myself, Jackie Danicki and Ben Mason will also be in attendance. Of course, since this a free event on a Friday evening, I suspect several people will not be able to make it, but even still it will be a great group of folks that will make for an even greater discussion. Look for the Podcast of the conversation from Social Media Club London on Monday afternoon PST, as I hope to actually spend some time here enjoying this great city over the weekend. Then again, I hope to be coming here more often, only next time, my fiancee Kristie has to come with so I can show her why London is one of the best cities in the world.

In case you missed it, the XPRL Web site is here.