Impressions from the CRM Evolution 2009 conference

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The CRM Evolution 2009 in New York has passed, and I missed it.   But this is the world of social media after all, so you can be sure it was tweeted and blogged by many.

But Lithium was well represented - our own Haresh Kumar was among the team to attend, and collected the following impressions from the Lithium folks in attendance:

Here are some of the highlights gathered from Evolution CRM conference:

1)      Speakers and attendees are well aware of the presence of social media and the impact it has on the brands. It was particularly enjoyable being the cool new company on the block and translating the social interactions to the business value that we provide. Our innovative approach was awarded the Rising Star award by CRM Magazine (along with Google and Facebook).

2)      Great to see evidence of the broad deployment/impact of social not only for businesses, but in the public sector as Brian Komar of Center for American Progress described how they were beginning to integrate social with their CRM systems http://www.americanprogress.org/

3)      It was very interesting to see the various levels of participation by the attendees and their significant use of social media for business applications. Their insightful questions stirred some interesting conversations around how to best manage customer conversations and best practices around it.

4)      There was the usual dichotomy between "backward looking" and "forward looking" ways of looking at the world. One school of thought, typified by Bill Band, was that you ask people what things have the most traction in organizations - which means what have people spent a lot of money and effort on over the past five years - and then tell others to do those things. The other can be somewhat breathless, but it says, "The whole world is changing and everything is new." Lithium is, I think, well positioned because we take a pragmatic and business-oriented approach to the new, and retain ties to the old.

Thanks Haresh for compiling these and sharing them with us! I'm making my plans for next year, and hoping I'll see you there!

Did you attend the CRM Evolution - what was your impression?