Feb
23
VRM Hub Open Space
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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!
Feb
11
February VRM Hub meeting
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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.
Dec
6
January VRM Hub meeting
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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.

Nov
14
VRM Hub November evening meeting
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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.
Oct
23
VRM Hub meeting in October
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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

Oct
16
VRM Hub conference update
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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.
Oct
8
VRM Hub annoucements
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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.

Oct
3
Tuttle club hosts VRM roundtable
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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
Oct
1
Last week I visited Boston, MA where I gave a talk at the Future of Healthcare technology summit at the MIT Faculty Club. It was a tough one to prepare as the calibre of speakers and audience was rather intimidating for a mere social web guru like me. One of the keynotes, delivered by an HP Laboratories scientist was about: Maintaining Your Health from Within: Controls for Nanorobot Swarms in Fluids. The dinner was accompanied by conversations with Prof. Marvin Minsky of the AI fame and a NASA astronaut Daniel T. Barry.

The safest option was to stick to what I know and talk about online identity, with the aim of helping people see it from a different perspective and enabling them to apply that understanding in their own areas of expertise. VRM and the Mine! were mentioned in this context as practical approaches to patient-driven healthcare, which I see as one of the major implications of online developments in technology and behaviours.
Here are the slides with detailed notes in the slide transcript, which is visible on the slideshare page.
There is a lot more to cover on this topic but 30 minutes was what I had. I hope to work on the VRM healthcare proposition within VRM Labs with companies experimenting with customer/user/patient-driven models and technologies.
Sep
17
VRM Hub meeting in September
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This month’s VRM Hub meeting will be on 25th Sept, Thursday, 6-9pm, at Smollensky’s in the Strand, where we have booked a couple of long tables behind the bar.
Sign up here.

Sep
16
VRM Hub conference in London 2008
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I am organising a half-day conference in London on 3rd November this year, reaching out to those interested in redressing the balance of power between customers and vendors, people and businesses.
The event is called Unlocking the see-saw (link to the full programme with registration).
Sep
1
Notes from VRM Hub evening
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Over at the VRM Hub blog - yes, it’s time to for the VRM Hub to get its own room - one of VRM’s kind supporters posted her notes on the discussion. Although the evenings are social, we invariably end up discussing the finer points of VRM and conversations do get interesting:
It wasn’t a full-blown punch up, but there were definitely two schools of thought on how to foster VRM ‘adoption’. In the red corner - people who think large companies like Tescos and John Lewis are needed to drive early adoption; in the blue corner - people who think vendors need to feel ‘pain’ before they will respond to VRM (I don’t think we’re talking about actual physical pain) - is the pain of an economic slow-down enough to prompt this? And aren’t ‘customers’ also individuals who aren’t just defined in terms of the companies they interact with?!
Do join us to continue the discussion…


