The talk I gave at a Social Media Week event organised by Alan Patrick and David Terrar (kudos for fast and efficient organisation!), called The Elephant in the ecosystem on February 2, 2010 at Cass Business School in London.

Here is a comprehensive summary of the evening by David Terrar.

The coming VRM Hub evening will be the 2nd anniversary meeting. We are going to have a look at where VRM was two years ago, where it is now, and where we want to take it this year. As always, the discussion moves to the pub across the street after GfK NOP kicks us out.

Items for discussion:

1. Monthly VRM Hub meetings this year

   Do we change the format? If so how? Creating ’speaker slots’ for each meeting and opening it up? How about letting different people organise each meeting, etc?

2. An event or conference covering the topic interchangeably knowns as personal data, personal informatics, personal analytics, self-analytics, self-tracking etc

   Date: tba but ideally 1Q 2010 (though 2Q more realistic perhaps)
   Format: One day event, open space as well as some pre-determined speakers to make sure we meet those who are already active in this space (web apps etc)
   Venue: tba
   Supporters & sponsors: tbd

3. Anything else that comes to mind…
4. Pub

The sign-up page is here. We are meeting on Thursday 28 January 6-9pm, back at GfK NOP. Look forward to seeing you there.

Yesterday I attended a meeting called a mashup* event – private Digital Identity Roundtable, organised by the indefatiguable Tony Fish – whose book My Digital Footprint also came out yesterday.

The conversation was varied and under Chatham House rules so can’t talk about it in detail. What I can repeat here is my closing remark – a result of pervasive assumption that there should be identity provider(s) and my data doesn’t need to be mine:

I want to own and drive, manage, share my identity.
I want to do that on my own terms, using technology that enables me rather than provides for me.
I want to be my own ‘identity provider’ and I’d rather address challenges that this would pose than shoe-horn notions and practices of offline identity management onto the online networked world.

There you go, I said it. Here I try to work on it.

The sign up page is up. This month we are doing a summer version of VRM Hub evening and will be meeting at Henry J. Beans‘ beer garden in the King’s Road, Chelsea at 6pm onwards.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

crossposted from VRM Hub

Another in the series of VRM Hub events, an open space event is planned for 30th March, registration opened here.

Here is the page for the event itself.

See you there!

The next VRM Hub meeting is on Thursday 26th February, 6-9pm at the same venue as the last month – GfK NOP building in Southwark, Room 15, 9th floor, Ludgate House, 245 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 9UL (map).

The topic will be further discussion of VRM – ideas, concepts, definitions, explanations etc, – a follow up on the game playing at the January session. Those who didn’t take part, do not fear, we have detailed notes on the results of January Game Playing.

Sign up here.

In the last two years I have discovered that the idea of VRM appeals to most on an instinctive level. People respond in different ways and with different ideas and interpretations of what VRM means and how to go about making it happen. This means people get involved, which is good. It also means people bring their more or less complete understanding, which is sometimes challenging.

I thought it would be useful to spend some time exploring what VRM means to each of us. So I decided to dedicate the January VRM Hub meeting to discovering together the various aspects of what VRM means to people who rally behind it. It might help us explain it better to others, and collaborate more effectively together on how to make it happen.

We are going to take a playful approach to this and many thanks to
Johnnie Moore for agreeing to facilitate/run the game, and to GfK NOP for providing the venue. Johnnie works with all sorts of companies on collaboration and is going to use one of two of his favourite games to help us explore ideas together. He warns there’s a serious risk of having a few laughs and some danger of unexpected learning.

Sign up here, as usual.

Reminder: VRM Hub Christmas drinks will be on 15th December at Crosskeys pub in Chelsea.

Our next meeting is on Thursday 27th November, 6-9pm at the same venue as the last month – GfK NOP building in Southwark, Room 15, 9th floor, Ludgate House, 245 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 9UL (map).

Our speaker for this session will be, Nick Buckley, who kindly arranged the venue for VRM Hub until next February. He will talk about what the shift in balance of power between vendors and customers might mean for Market Research and where this might lead to real change rather than incrementally “adaptive adoption” of VRM. As always, I’ll encourage Nick to come at this from his personal perspective as a market research expert but also as someone who has observed the web and its impact on individuals.

I don’t have a link for Nick who is in the process of setting up a blog to continue to share his insight with the world. Good stuff.

Look forward to seeing you there, sign up here.

We have a venue and a speaker for this month’s VRM Hub evening gathering. We are meeting at GfK NOP office, Room 15, 9th floor, Ludgate House, 245 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 9UL (map). Thanks to Nick Buckley we will be able to use a meeting room at GfK NOP office up to the end of February. Many many thanks!

Also, we have a speaker for this meeting – read a person who kicks off the discussion – Peter Parkes, a veteran member of the VRM Hub community and a social web (power)user will be talking about ‘VRM and the battle for relevancy’. His site is Peter Parkes and he is part of the team at we are social.

I don’t think this is about whether VRM relevant or not – one of the things very clear to me from talking to people about VRM for the last two years is that it is very relevant. The issue is how, not why. So interested in Peter’s take on it.

If we end up talking about something else that’s fine too. But at least now we have a speaker, er, topic to kick around.

So please do join the discussion, which will start at 6pm, carry on until about 9pm. Then we might retirw to a nearby pub, which is what usually happens. Look forward to seeing you there. Sign up here.

cross-posted from VRM Hub

A few good pieces of news for the London VRM Hub conference on 3rd November:

Doc Searls, the VRM godfather, will be at the Unlocking the see-saw conference, talking about VRM principles as part of the introductory hour before the user panel and the vendor panel discussions.

Mike Nutley, the editor-in-chief of the New Media Age magazine will be joining the ‘vendors’ panel, commenting on how VRM impacts branding & marketing.

And finally, thanks to the generous support of iCrossing we will be able to network drinks following the afternoon sessions as well as refreshment during one of the breaks. This makes a difference to me as VRM Hub normally operates on less than a shoe-string.

For those who missed it, here is the conference programme: Unlocking the see-saw and registration.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Over at the VRM Hub blog, there is some news about our monthly gatherings. In short, for each meeting we will have a topic to focus on and a speaker for 15 minutes to kick off the discussion. Both will be announced with on each meeting’s sign up page and on the VRM Hub.

For those of Media Influencer readers who are interested in VRM and the Mine!, I will continue to write on these topics, in fact, I am stepping up the volume on VRM Hub and the Mine! project respectively. So please bookmark or subscribe to the VRM Hub feed and the Mine! project feed, if you wish to follow. I will cross-post for a while but eventually, the VRM action will happen there.

I am a fan and supporter of the Tuttle Club and what Lloyd has done for the social media scene in London can be seen from the popularity of the gatherings every Friday morning from 10am till about 1pm. I have two pieces of news to share regarding the Tuttle Club/Social Media Cafe.

First, the Friday morning meetings are moving from Coach & Horses to the ICA club (as part of what Lloyd calls Phase II). The weekly sign up wiki is here.

Secondly, on 10th October the Social media cafe meeting will be morph into a VRM roundtable at around 12.30pm. The idea is to bring VRM to the attention of the social web network in London and as a forerunner to the VRM Hub conference in November.

For more information feel free to email me at adriana dot lukas at gmail dot com.

Look forward to seeing you there!

cross-posted from VRM Hub