VRM Hub is a monthly gathering of people who think the web has more to offer than the classic social networking sites like Facebook, which keep your data locked up so you can never use it again (from info like your date of birth and contacts through to info like your wall posts and poking activity).

At the most recent VRM Hub meetup James Paterson gave a great presentation about how the web will change as people start to gain more control of their data.  Adriana Lukas, who convenes VRM Hub, has done a good summary of the key points of James's presentation.  She's also done a helpful one-page explanation of the concept of Vendor Relationship Management - it's not hard to see that it has huge ramifications for the public sector as well as businesses. 

Those who get it and start working with customers to share their data back will be ahead of the pack and reap the benefits.  These include higher quality data to inform service design, the ability to give better customer service as customers manage the relationship with organisations on their own terms, not to mention the cost benefits of more accurate data.

The next VRM Hub meeting will be on Thursday 28 January at 6pm, somewhere in central london, and all are welcome.  I'll post here in the New Year with more info.