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Ouch!

I’ve been trying to write something about this for a while but finding a title that didn’t mention VRM was important to me and now I’ve just done it, it looks scary but worthwhile. “VRM” (or vendor relationship management) as a term doesn’t look scary or even interesting let alone worth putting some effort into. It’s a cute shorthand, but, in my view, talking about “the reciprocal of CRM” will only work for the intersection of two groups: those who understand CRM and those who understand what a reciprocal is…

We’ll be hosting a bolt-on (starting at 12.30) to this week’s new-fangled Tuttle at the ICA in preparation for a conference (at which I’m speaking) on 3rd November: “Unlocking the see-saw” organised by the unstoppable Adriana Lukas.

I’m interested in particular in:
Why it’s time for us to take power back from vendors who’ve come to dominate and control our relationship with them.
How we can make the whole thing a lot more fun.
What successful personal relationships can teach us about improving commercial ones.
How we start to take more responsibility for our part in commercial relationships.
What freedoms we can lay claim to.
How relationships are affected by being codified into structured data.
How the social web can be used to manage such relationships for our benefit.

Which is to say, I haven’t written my presentation yet beyond those few bullet points.
Come, help us think it through on Friday.