Wrapping Up The Fall Conference Season: ESOMAR 3D, Festival of NewMR, TMRE, and MRIA

Conference season is almost over, but we have 4 more left over the next few weeks: ESOMAR 3D Digital Dimensions 2011, the Festival of NewMR,  The Market Research Event, and MRIA Digital Conference: Some Like It Mobile.

I had planned to attend all four, but I have some unavoidable conflicts that make it impossible to get to TMRE (bummer!), arguably the largest of all the industry conferences.

 

The program reads like a “Who’s Who” of the industry and with more than 140 sessions, 175 speakers and anticipated attendance of 1,200 MR professionals from around the world it is living up to it’s title of “THE” Market Research Event.

A few of the highlights that I hate to be missing are:

• The Research Club Networking Event. TRC knows how to throw a party and this roving social network always promises great opportunities to meet and chat with friends old and new no matter where it is.
• The NGMR Disruptive Innovation and EXPLOR Awards. Anything that honors Innovation in market research is something to look forward to, and these two pioneering awards always highlight organizations on the forefront of the industry.
• The great Keynotes. IIR has the cash to get big names and they always deliver. This year is no different.

So, for all of you going to TMRE, I’ll follow enviously on Twitter and various blogs. I’m looking forward to hearing all about it when you get back!

The good news is that there are 3 other events that I am very much looking forward to attending besides TMRE. The ESOMAR 3D, Festival of NewMR, and MRIA Digital conferences may be smaller in scale than TMRE, but certainly not in quality. Here is what I’m most looking forward to at each of them…

The description alone is catnip for me:

In this newly defined social economy we are in the middle of a revolution in market research that is creating remarkable changes in how we interact with consumers and clients. This revolution is being driven by a rapid and global technological change grounded in the Internet, in social networking, and in the adoption of mobile devices.

It is a continuous global conversation where researchers play a critical role gathering, translating and activating insights to capitalise on business opportunities where ROI is paramount.

In a space that is evolving dramatically and quickly, researchers need a multi-dimensional approach. With this in mind, ESOMAR has also taken a step forward and broken up our traditional Online event into three cutting edge digital dimensions:

1. Online Research and Data Collection
2. Social Media Research
3. Mobile Research

The agenda supports this vision, with significant tracks being given to exploring many of the emerging technologies and methods that are rapidly transforming the market research industry. For me, one of  the greatest things about ESOMAR 3D is to be able participate in a smaller event with many of the global thought leaders in our industry, particularly from Europe. People like Ray Poynter, Tom DeRuyck, Alistair Gordon, Annie Pettit, Kristin Luck, Manila Austin, Nathan Eagle, Betty Adamou, Reg Baker, and many, many more. On a personal level, these are many of the folks that I follow on social media and the opportunity to meet most of them for the first time is just too good to pass up!

If you’re going to ESOMAR 3D, let’s connect! There is a Tweet-up (Stats on the Beach) on Wednesday evening; just look for me there! I will be blogging from the event, so look for updates on all the great learnings throughout next week.

Festival of NewMR

 

The brainchild of Ray Poynter and now in it’s second year, the Festival has turned into one of the prime examples of how social media and virtual events can be combined to deliver incredible content, ongoing engagement, and cost efficiencies that are hard to beat. Comprised of The Main Stage and The Fringe, this week long effort to co-create the future of market research is simply a must attend for the industry.  Take a look at the program:

Programme – Main Stage – 3 November 2011

 

Session 1 – 00:00-02:00 (GMT)
Jeffrey Henning	Crowd-Shaped Surveys: Adapting the Experience Based on Prior Respondents	Affinnova
Annie Pettit	On Social Media Research	Research Now
Alastair Gordon	Surveys Without Scales – NewMR and Facial Imaging	Gordon & McCallum
Victoria Gamble	Taking Qualitative Online: What I wished I’d known before I started	WorkINProgress Qualitative Research

Session 2 – 03:30-05:30 (GMT)
Mike Sherman and Neil Gains	Less is More: Getting Value (Not Just Reams of Data) From Your Research	SingTel and Tapestry Works
Sue Bell	How to use discourse analysis in market research	Susan Bell Research
Christine Walker	2011 What a Disaster!	Alliance Strategic Research
Jess Whittaker and Steve Nuttall	Are social media and research meant to be together?	Buzz Numbers and Colmar Brunton

Session 3 – 07:30-09:00 (GMT)
Ray Poynter	NewMR, a view of the next two years	Vision Critical
John Griffiths	It takes two baby!	Spring Research
David Penn	Neuromania and why we need to re-humanise research	Conquest Research

Session 4 – 10:30-12:30 (GMT)
Mark Earls	Less is more: how pattern spotting can save us from ourselves	Author of HERD
John Kearon	Let’s Get Emotional About Advertising; Evidence from the frontiers of behavioural economics about how ads really work	BrainJuicer
Rosie Campbell	Case of the Dead Cat:Curiosity not to Blame	Campbell Keegan
Ian Ralph	The Rise of the Digital Shopper: New ways to shop require new ways to research	Marketing Sciences

Session 5 – 14:00-16:00 (GMT)
Robert Kozinets	TBC	Author of Netnography
Diane Hessan	Online Communities: Mistakes, Misuses and Challenges	Communispace
Paul Child	Life outside the ivory tower	Join the Dots
Felix Koch	What next? 5 predictions about the future of online co-creation	Promise Communities

Session 6 – 17:30-19:30 (GMT)
Finn Raben	TBC	ESOMAR
Bernie Malinoff	The Road to Survey Extinction	element54
Jon Puleston	The ideas that are transforming market research	GMI
Ross McLean	Digital Ethnography – Revealing Human Truths through Smartphones	Egg Strategy

Session 7 – 21:00-23:00 (GMT)
Reg Baker	Survey Gamification: Old Wine in New Bottles?	Market Strategies
Steve Rappaport	Listening as Foresight: Detecting Emergent Consumer Trends	ARF
Leslie Townsend	2016: A Market Research Odyssey	Kinesis Survey Technologies
Leigh Caldwell	Behavioural economics – new new or new old?	Inon

The Fringe is also not to be missed, with a series of great events designed to foster innovation, best practices, and young researchers. Specifically there will be:

The Insights Innovation Competition Live Judging and Award –

The votes are in and the finalists have been notified! Over 500 people voted on 15 submitted ideas in the elimination round, and on November 4th at 11:00 EST the finalists will present their ideas to our panel of judges for there chance to win $20,000, great exposure, and the chance to work with industry leaders as a mentor.

Voting is open until tonight at midnight.

• Andrew Reid, President and Founder of Vision Critical
• Bo Mattson, CEO of Cint
• Vivek Bhaskaran, CEO of Survey Analytics
• Larry Friedman, Chief Research Officer of  TNS
• Edward Appleton, European Consumer Insights Manager of AVERY DENNISON ZWECKFORM 
• Jason Anderson, Director of Global Consumer Insights at Blizzard Entertainment

Register to attend the live broadcast by clicking here. 

Training Day –

The NewMR Training Day is a new initiative designed to help, encourage and develop Young Researchers and students – across the globe. All are welcome – everyone can learn some new tricks!

To enable Young Researchers to attend we are not charging a fixed price for tickets. To attend the event you only need to register for the event by clicking here.

Date: 31 October 2011 (Monday)
Timing: 6:00am GMT Start (Sydney 5:00pm, Singapore 2:00pm, Mumbai 11:30am, Moscow 10:00am)
Geography: It’s Online
Session plan: Provided below Note: All times are GMT

Training Day Programme

Interested in Attending?

To enable Young Researchers to attend we are not charging a fixed price for tickets. To attend the event you only need to register for the event by clicking here.

Vision Critical Panel Summit –

Vision Critical, the market leader in the provider of Community Panels, is hosting a panel summit in London for research buyers, exploring the practical issues that surround community panels and NewMR.

The event will be held on 1 November, 2011 in Central London.

Speakers include:

• Ray Poynter, author of the Handbook of Online and Social Media Research
• Pete Comley, Chairman of Join the Dots and author of the Comley report
• Pfizer speaking about their community
• Phones4U talking creating engagement
• Mike Stevens, MD of research in the UK, talking about creating ‘real’ research from communities

The summit is free to research buyers.

Communispace Young Researcher Competition –

Young Researchers of the world tell us (and the rest of the world) what is

The Most Important Thing You have learnt about Market Research this year?

Summarise your answer to this question in 1 Slide and enter it in the Festival of NewMR Young Researcher competition.

The top few answers to the question will be chosen and given the opportunity to present their answer in 5 minutes on the Main Stage of the Festival of NewMR. A winner or winners will be selected from those presenting on the Main Stage – the prize pool for the winner/s is $US500.

Every young researcher who enters an idea in the competition will be given a free Ticket to the Main Stage of the Festival.

How to Enter:

1. Summarise your idea in 1 PowerPoint slide – File should be no bigger than 1 MB
2. Email the slide to [email protected]
3. Wait for confirmation from NewMR that your entry has been received

Competition Rules:

1. Young researchers, for the purposes of this competition are classified as anyone 26 years of age and under as of end of 11 October 2011.
2. Judges decisions are final.
3. Your entry is deemed complete when you have received an email from NewMR.org confirming receipt of your slide.
4. If you do not receive an email, within 24 hours confirming receipt of your entry please email [email protected]
5. Entries close – End of 31 October 2011

By the way, make sure you tune in each week to Radio NewMR, an ongoing weekly exploration of the cutting edge of market research with great guests, insightful commentary, and exclusive insight into the trends that are shaping the market research industry. You can register to listen each live broadcast here. o

MRIA Digital Conference: Some Like It Mobil

Wrapping up the season we have another virtual event on a topic near and dear to my heart; the MRIA Digtal Conference on Mobile Research. It’s going to be great!

There has been a recent tumultuous transition from the hard wired desktop to a plethora of untethered mobile devices. Mobile research is finally showing hockey stick growth or at the very least, demonstrating innovative methodology. Mobility has been facilitated by vastly improved hot technologies. iPads, Android and even Blackberry tablets are now in vogue among larger customer segments. Smart phones are becoming the norm. Generation Y lives and dies by text messaging. Larger screens and voice activation are blessed by baby boomers. All segments are potential users.

What are we learning about mobility research best practices to date?

• Is mobility research “client approved”? What do the clients think?
• Are we turning into research voyeurs? Webcams everywhere 24 /7?
• Does mobility break down the traditional qual quant barrier? Can we work together now?
• Surveys are now shorter but are they more engaging?
• Is mobility research world simply an app?
• How do we analyse all the videos?
• Does anyone care about validity and reliability anymore?

Topics to be explored

• The mobile Landscape – Who is using what and when and why and where
• What do case Studies reveal so far?
• What innovative methods are being used? (QR codes, video capture, webcams)
• How far can we go with mobile research? Where is the future?

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Confirmed Speakers

Utilizing Mobile Devices for Instantaneous Feedback in the Entertainment Industry

Edward Paul Johnson, Director of Analytics, ASE
Paul Johnson is Director of Analytics for Access, Supply, and Engagement at SSI.  Paul specializes in online sampling design and advanced analytic methods. Paul’s research based approach to identifying and recommending solutions positions him well to investigating panelist behavior; oversee data processing efforts; improve online data integrity and provide advanced analytic support to clients. Paul also actively pursuing a research agenda on survey research methods and applications of conjoint methodology and mobile data collection.  His research on research efforts have been featured regularly at ESOMAR, AAPOR, CASRO, MRA and Sawtooth events. Paul holds an MS in Statistics and BS in Actuarial Science from Brigham Young University.

Miles Wright, Director of Mobile Research
Miles Wright is the Director of Mobile Development at SSI.  He received a Bachelor Degree in Computer Engineering from Brigham Young University.  Miles joined the company in 2010 and has been influencing innovation in mobile research techniques.  He has worked on enterprise applications dealing with data management, search engine optimization and customer relationship management.

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Mobile Life: The New MR Paradigm

Leonard “Lenny” Murphy has been in the Market Research industry for over a decade in various senior levels roles, most notably as CEO of full service agency Rockhopper Research and start-up BrandScan360. Recently his attention has shifted to working with multiple organizations to help advance innovation and strategic positioning of the market research industry, most prominently as the Editor-in-Chief of the GreenBook Blog and GreenBook Research Industry Trends Report, the oldest study in the industry devoted to tracking changing trends in MR. Mr. Murphy is a key consultant to numerous market research agencies and an advisor to several technology focused start-ups via his consulting practice. Lenny serves on the Boards of the Market Research Global Alliance, the Festival of NewMR and The Merlien Institute. He is also the Chairman of the IIR Technology Driven Market Research and Merlien/GreenBook Market Research in the Mobile World conferences. Rounding out his busy life, he is the inordinately proud father of 4 children, husband to 1 wife, and slave to 2 dogs and a ferocious cat. He has lived in Atlanta, Georgia (with a few brief side excursions to less pleasant locations) since 1984. [email protected]

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Mobile Survey Invitations: Move Over SMS, Make way for QR Code

Leslie Townsend is President and Co-founder of Kinesis Survey Technologies, the industry leader for future-proof market research software solutions. She has spent her career bridging the mobile and market research worlds. Formerly Ms. Townsend served as Director of New Business Development for Codetoys, where she was responsible for international rollout of the company’s mobile survey solution. Prior to Codetoys, she founded a market research firm for telecom companies, Marketfinders, which focused upon strategic planning and new product rollouts in the mobile arena. With a desire to marry the two worlds, she recognized the need for a mobile survey solution to measure mobile commerce, engage teens, and capture purchase and consumption behaviors for many types of consumer goods. Today Ms. Townsend and Kinesis proudly support next generation market research worldwide.

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The New Motion Picture: How Mobile Devices Are Revolutionizing Consumer Research

John Williamson, CEO & Founder
John founded Qualvu in 2007 with a vision to disrupt the $6 billion qualitative research category, by taking research out of the focus group and into consumers’ lives. Qualvu provides businesses a platform to gather online video-based insights from their customers faster and more cost effectively than ever before. As Qualvu’s Chief Executive Officer, John is responsible for the company’s strategic vision and execution, and has grown Qualvu from start-up to the leader in video-based qualitative intelligence, more than tripling revenues in 2010 with over 700 projects and over 100,000 video responses. Qualvu’s clients include some of the world’s most influential brands, including Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Unilever, Chrysler, Toyota, Disney, Kellogg’s, and Yahoo!. Formerly, John was a founding partner of VerusLive, a pioneer in the field of online in-depth interview techniques. Innovations he helped design have been used by companies such as Microsoft, Ericsson and Comcast to conduct more than 1,000 webcam interviews across the globe. John also co-founded Jabbits, the world’s first video-based online Q&A community. John has held leadership positions in the technology industry, including Guardent, which was acquired by VeriSign in 2005, and eSoft, where he assisted on their IPO in 1999 and served as Managing Director of international sales in London. John has also successfully built various start-ups. He founded and ultimately sold Maxwell Express, a transportation logistics firm that pioneered development of technology-based delivery systems. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Marketing and Advertising from Southern Methodist University.

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Screaming at Squamish: How mobility research was utilized at a concert

Jason Cyr is the CEO and a co-founder of Tiipz – a social/mobile research platform that is setting it’s sights on disrupting todays market research industry. Before Tiipz Jason’s experience in research comes mostly from his background as a user-centered design and usability professional where he was (and still is) co-founder of Pareto User Experience Group, a successful user experience services company that has been operating since 2008.

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Date: Thursday Nov 17
Digital Conference delivered in real time (GotoMeeting)
Cost: $50.00
Time: Noon- 3PM EST

Online Registration is now OPEN!
Go to the MRIA Portal to register NOW.

And that’s it! 2012 will be a great year with even more events that I will be personally involved with, but after the MRIA it will be welcome break for us all we roll into the holiday season. Happy Conferencing!