This well attended meeting of VRM ambassadors from the UK, USA and Europe rightly ignored the technology and debated the issues of adoption by individuals and vendors.
I was pleased to hear from interested and diverse vendor organisations including Johnson & Johnson (wanting to interact with 'a growing army of well informed patients' - see Philip Virgo's blog), nPower and The Royal Horticultural Society (CRM not appropriate to manage the fast moving and diverse content of their community) who recognised the wisdom of Doc Searls 'a free customer is more valuable than a captive one' but also compared many organisations current attitude as that of 'a turkey voting for Christmas'.
Also well represented was the marketing industry which can see the new opportunities for Permission Based Marketing for the consumer that VRM tools could provide. Nick Buckley of GfK NOP (Market Research) is aware of the cost/time it takes to collect data and is interested in the potential for individuals to volunteer data (on their terms) using the metaphore of the mail train snatching the mail sack which has been hung out for collection. Exactly what My Sorting Office proposes.
The key issue, so aptly demonstrated by the current banking debacle, is all about Trust - can we trust the accuracy of the data? can we trust companies to use it responsibly? can we trust organisations not to lose it?
