Filling The Disclosure Gap

Recent events -- specifically the recent tempest-in-a-teapot about FON's advisory board of bloggers supposed conflict of interest sparked by Rebecca Buckman's WSJ piece -- have led me to consider the question of disclosure. I stated a few days ago, based on the wise words of Doc Searls, that I would write a basic disclosure post that I could refer to, and update from time to time.

Here's my HTML-ish approach to standardizing this.

<TABLE BORDER>
<TR>
<TD ROWSPAN=3>Re: Company X, I</TD>
<TD>[ ] have</TD>
<TD ROWSPAN=3>a</TD>
<TD>[ ] formal</TD>
<TD>[ ] consulting</TD>
<TD ROWSPAN=3>relationship with the company. I </TD>
<TD>[ ] do</TD>
<TD ROWSPAN=3>have a financial interest with the company at this point.</TD
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>[ ] had</TD>
<TD>[ ] informal</TD>
<TD>[ ] advisory</TD>
<TD>[ ] don\'t</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>[ ] never had any</TD>
<TD> </TD>
<TD> </TD>
<TD> </TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>

And now my actual disclosures, in force today, 15 Feb 2006:

Re: Corante, I	[ ] have	a	[X] formal	[X] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[X] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[X] had		[ ] informal	[ ] advisory		[ ] don't
	[ ] never had any
Re: Yahoo, I	[X] have	a	[ ] formal	[ ] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[ ] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[ ] had		[X] informal	[X] advisory		[X] don't
	[ ] never had any
Re: 3bubbles, I	[X] have	a	[X] formal	[X] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[X] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[ ] had		[ ] informal	[X] advisory		[ ] don't
	[ ] never had any
Re: Microsoft, I	[ ] have	a	[X] formal	[X] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[ ] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[X] had		[ ] informal	[ ] advisory		[X] don't
	[ ] never had any
Re: SyncPeople, I	[X] have	a	[X] formal	[ ] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[X] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[] had		[ ] informal	[X] advisory		[ ] don't
	[ ] never had any
Re: TravelPod, I	[ ] have	a	[X] formal	[ ] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[X] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[ ] had		[ ] informal	[X] advisory		[ ] don't
	[ ] never had any
Re: Edgeio, I	[ ] have	a	[ ] formal	[ ] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[ ] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[ ] had		[ ] informal	[ ] advisory		[X] don't
	[X] never had any
Re: 83 Degrees, I	[ ] have	a	[ ] formal	[ ] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[ ] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[ ] had		[ ] informal	[ ] advisory		[X] don't
	[X] never had any
Re: memeorandum, I	[X] have	a	[ ] formal	[ ] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[ ] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[ ] had		[X] informal	[X] advisory		[X] don't
	[ ] never had any
Re: CoComment, I	[ ] have	a	[ ] formal	[ ] consulting	relationship with the company. I	[ ] do	have a financial interest with the company at this point.
	[ ] had		[ ] informal	[ ] advisory		[X] don't
	[X] never had any

At any rate, I will try to keep this up to date in a sensible way: for example, I won't in general include companies that I don't have involvement with, although I put one or two in here to demonstrate how that might be done, just in case the question comes up.

tags: 3bubbles, blog+disclosure, corante, cocomment, 83degrees, syncpeople, memeorandum, edgeio, microsoft, yahoo

Comments

[Dossy]

Wow, Stowe, how 1999. Shouldn't you be publishing a microformat or something? :-P

[Bill Seitz]

sounds like a job for FOAF!

[Tom Foremski]

Very difficult to read!

The user interface for disclosure is quite simple just color code your links in names of people or companies: green equals a money relationship, brown equals brown-nosing or sucking up, red means I'm hoping to get to know them a bit better :-)