Understanding the Impact of GDPR: Key Considerations in Copenhagen

Initiated by Carsten Weber from Bonnier Magazine Data, Nordic Advantage clients and AdvantageCS participated in a GDPR roundtable on January 22nd, at the Bonnier office in Copenhagen. What was initially a meeting of two publishers expanded to include four Nordic Advantage clients: Bonnier Magazine Data, Egmont Publishing, Aller Media and Alma Talent. Air Business Subscriptions from the UK also joined this gathering, as did AdvantageCS.

Participants included John Osborn (Air Business Subscriptions), Bjarne Christensen (Aller Media), Christel Heegaard (Aller Media), Martin Paluszewski (Aller Media), Mari Aalto (Alma Media), Hanna Kaivo-oja (Alma Media), Farhoud Fazeli (consultant, representing Bonnier Magazines and Brands), Rune Spanggaard (Bonnier Magazine Data), Carsten Weber (Bonnier Magazine Data), Göran Lindgren (Egmont Publishing) and Klas Persson (Egmont Publishing). Philippe van Mastrigt and Bryan Varblow represented AdvantageCS.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the new European regulation taking effect on May 25th, 2018. It significantly affects the way personal data will be managed for any European citizen or resident, both for European companies and companies operating outside of the European Union. AdvantageCS is actively preparing for this milestone and has written several blogposts in the past six months about GDPR topics (Customer Permissions, the GDPR way, Data Ownership and Consent, Forgetting a Customer, the GDPR way). This roundtable was held to discuss various aspects of GDPR and to provide input to Advantage development. 

Bryan Varblow and Philippe van Mastrigt managed the full-day session, reviewing aspects of the new regulation that affect Advantage. At each step, discussions between all the participants took place concerning their understanding of what is needed for compliance, and potential requirements. The group reached consensus on several issues, including personal data definition, individual rights management through the application, and necessary data protection measures to put in place. Some subjects are still being debated and will need more investigation and discussion.

At the end of the meeting, AdvantageCS presented three modifications coming in future updates (one is already available) to support some of the requirements. The group provided valuable feedback on subjects such as API access, use of the event workflows and more. There will be more opportunities for the full Advantage community to provide input. 

Many thanks to Carsten for making this GDPR Nordic summit happen, and thank you to all the participants for your invaluable contributions!