Here is a great introductory presentation to ORCID, by Laurel L Haak, Executuve Director of ORCID:

Connecting Research and Researchers, is taken from the CrossRef Annual Meeting on 14th November 2012.

It outlines ORCID scope and principles, and addresses how ORCIS it tackling "The Problem":

Two organisations, ORCID and CrossRef, have collaborated to solve the problem of ambiguous author names in scholarly content. ORCID began assigning unique identifiers to researchers in October.

ORCID, was established in 2010 as non-profit organisation serving the research community. You may contact the Executive Director Laure Haak at l.haak@orcid.org and follow @ORCID_Org on Twitter.