Serious Simplicity

Last Sunday I headed down to the Sun Microsystems building for another VRM event in London. This time it was called “VRM Hub Open Space” and the objective of the session was to participate and listen to ‘participant-sourced’ conversations about VRM. Lloyd Davis did a splendid job of explaining the Open Space method to newbies like myself and thus the afternoon was both pleasant, argumentative and informative. To a certain extent this was a follow-up to November’s VRM event (Unlocking the See-Saw) primarily because a large number of the attendees had been present at the earlier event so, in a way, certain conversations picked up where they left off last time.

VRM interests me because it is a grass roots movements that is promoting an alternative to what I call the “traditional entrepreneurship model” and provides an approach that enables entrepreneurs to be more ethical in their ventures. But what made the event really interesting was not that it matched my personal ethos. Rather it was the sheer variety of ideas and approaches that a relatively small group of people brought to the table. Topics discussed ranged from public sector to mobile operators, from social media to privacy, identity and retail! My take-away value:

1. VRM Excites People
   Although mostly everyone present had their own interpretation and personal ‘VRM Utopia’ in mind, the level of enthusiasm and engagement was ubiquitous. Moreover, this was not some geek-centric or startup-centric or other niche-centric group of people. There were developers, bloggers, consultants (ahem), academics, entrepreneurs, writers and designers all agreeing about the fact that this is something worthwhile and worth sharing knowledge and ideas about.
2. VRM is Still Young
   Of course, what all these diverse people weren’t agreeing about was about how to go about implementing, promoting or otherwise advancing VRM. And this is not a bad thing. VRM is still young and in my humble and unschooled opinion, were the energies of the VRM community directed solely towards the realisation of one particular project the likelihood of success (define it how you will) would be drastically reduced.

This is the time to “let a thousand flowers blossom” and let VRM take root in a variety of different fields and soils. Sometimes not even necessarily outwardly shown as “VRM”. But the message will be out there, and, hopefully will take root.

At the very least, I hope to be able to contribute to this in some small way.

(Oh, if you’re new to VRM and have no idea of what I’ve been talking about read this.)

Found this running around somewhere. Yours truly fourth from the right looking interested.

I managed to miss attending the VRM monthly event in February due to embarassingly getting lost in the middle of supposedly-familiar London territory.

However, a follow-up event to Unlocking the See-Saw is being organised on the 30th of March in London dubbed VRM Open Space. It should be good fun, interesting and very engaging if it’s anything like the last event. So if you’re interested in VRM get registered. It’s free.

funnily enough London is not the best place in the world for free public wifi.

However, I just found out that in Leicester Square there is a free wifi hotspot provided by Four Communications. Very fast, great signal and free.

Just connect to network “Four’s Free Hotspot”. Thanks four :-) … you’re much better than 3.

–

If you liked this post follow me on Twitter, I’m @richardmuscat, or subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed.

I just got back from a VRM event in London: Unlocking the See-Saw. It was a serious pleasure to meet so many people dedicated to building a more ethical consumer-enterprise relationship. The panels and the conversations (and the wine!) were highly stimulating.

For the uninitiated, VRM stands for “Vendor Relationship Management” which, in a nutshell, is the flipside of “Customer Relationship Management” (CRM). The VRM movement aspires to create both technological tools as well as a social context in which customers and users have more control over the data that corporations store about them as well as being able to choose what sort of personal data to make available to which organisations.

Ambitious? Yes. Utopian? No.

My take on the whole VRM thing is that at the core its about “open-source data” and more transparent relationships between individuals and organisations. It’s already happening in some areas. People are experimenting, entrepreneurs are listening, and change is brewing. Check out the VRM Hub and the VRM Labs websites to find out more.

The event itself seemed to me to be a successful exercise in VRM. First off, the agenda and programme were only loosely structured giving space to particpants and panelists to take it in different directions. The emergent discussions were probably miles better than a more stiff Speak+Q&A session could have ever achieved. Secondly the mix of participants themselves was testimony to the fact that “fat cats” and “thin individuals” can find common ground, discuss and come up with mutually beneficial ideas. The forty or so people attending included freelance consultants, marketeers, top execs, academics and entrepreneurs, and, because it was a small group, it was almost inevitable that everybody spoke to everybody.

So, kudos to Adriana Lukas for organising an excellent event. Definitely looking forward to attend the next one!

And now, after all the traveling, I’d better get back to finishing off my unfinished Part II post on the “Travel Bubble”…