Vendor Information Exchange (VIX)

The Vendor Information Exchange (VIX) is an interest group within the Quilt that focuses on establishing relationships with vendors of common interest to the Quilt Participants and Affiliates as a whole. Specifically, we focus on vendors, or other entities, that provide products or services of interest to a majority of the Quilt community and/or can provide these products or services to or in a geographic area that covers a significant portion of this community.

The primary goal of this group is to facilitate the exchange of information with the Vendor community, ensuring that this community is kept up to date on the ever changing needs of the Quilt community, thus better able to develop products, services and programs that are consistent with our needs. The Quilt also wants to be kept up to date on what is happening within a vendor's organizations with respect to such things as: new products and services, service definitions, rollouts and corporate information. Two-way information exchange is considered crucial to making this program successful.

Participation Criteria

In order to efficiently and effectively focus our efforts within the VIX group, we have established a short set of criteria vendors must follow in order to participate in the VIX program. Specific criteria include:

An advocate within the Quilt, specifically someone associated with one of the Quilt Participants that can articulate to the group as a whole the benefits associated with an informal relationship with the specific vendor.
A brief description of the products, services, or technologies of specific interest to the Quilt Participants. Where appropriate the overlap between the geographic coverage for the services with the Quilt Participants should be indicated as well.

Steps for Participating

Below are some suggested steps for establishing an informal relationship with the Quilt through the VIX Program.

Work through existing contacts among the Quilt participants to find and identify an advocate. A complete listing of the Quilt Participants can be found on the Quilt home page .
For geographically based services, look at the Quilt PoP locations and indicate what geographic areas you do and do not cover.
Work with the Quilt advocate to develop a short summary of the specific areas of value and interest between your group and the Quilt.
Your advocate within the Quilt will then work with you to get this information to the Quilt Steering Committee and Technical representatives. This information will typically be reviewed on a monthly basis, during the Quilt's monthly conference call.
Contact the Quilt's Program Manager, Jen Leasure (jen@thequilt.net) if you have any questions regarding this process.