Doc Searls

David "Doc" Searls (born July 29, 1947), co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and author of The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge, is an American journalist, columnist, and a widely read blogger, a fellow at the Center for Information Technology & Society (CITS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an alumnus fellow (2006–2010) of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Overview

A longtime advocate for open-source software, Searls has been involved with Linux Journal since it began publishing in 1994. He became a Contributing Editor in 1996 and has been Senior Editor since 1999. His column "Linux for Suits" ran until 2007, and was followed by "EOF" inside each issue's back cover. His work with Linux Journal, and as an advocate of free software and open source, earned him a Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award for Best Communicator in 2005. His byline has also appeared in many other publications, including OMNI, Wired, PC Magazine, The Standard, The Sun Magazine, Upside, Release 1.0 and The Globe & Mail.

The Intention Economy

In April 2012, Doc Searls' book The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge was published (ISBN 978-1422158524). Searls coined the term intention economy in a March 2006 article for Linux Journal. He wrote: "The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You don't need advertising to make them."

The book forecasts changes to the economy as customers obtain more power through tools of their own, rather than just through allowances by sellers. Many of those tools have been fostered through Searls' work with ProjectVRM, at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where he served as a fellow from 2006-2010, and where the project continues under his direction.

VRM stands for Vendor Relationship Management, which is the customer-side counterpart of Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, a familiar business function and software category. The term "intention economy" was first coined by Searls in a 2006 article in Linux Journal, and has come into more general use since.

Take Charge

Take Charge is a government program that provides free family planning and pregnancy prevention services to low-income residents of Washington State. The program expands Medicaid coverage for family planning services to individuals whose income is 200% or lower than the federal poverty level (FPL). By reducing the prevalence of unintended pregnancies, the goal of the program is to improve public health while reducing Federal and State Medicaid costs of unplanned pregnancies and their consequences. As of November 2007, there were 200 clinics in Washington providing the program's services.

Services

Services available to eligible women include family planning counseling, annual examinations and pap smears, prescriptions for FDA-approved birth control methods including emergency contraception, and tubal ligation (sterilization) procedures. Services available to eligible men include FDA-approved over the counter contraceptives (such as male and female condoms and spermicide), annual contraceptive counseling sessions, and vasectomy (sterilization) procedures.