Cross-posted from The Market Research Event Blog!
It order for us to not become stagnant in our jobs and careers, or career, it’s incumbent upon us to continue to seek out the new things happening in our industry. There are lots of ways to do that, from reading industry publications, attending regional association events, watching webinars, reading blogs, being active on social media, and yes national conferences like TMRE.
No matter what sector of the industry we’re in, from qualitative face-to-face interviewing to ‘big data’ analysis, it’s always helpful to hear what other folks are doing. Not to say that for example if you’re a small qualitative shop hat you’re going to jump into the deep end of neuromarketing immediately. But you never know:
• What your clients may ask (and it’s good to be informed)
• What inspiration you might glean from other companies’ projects
• What new product or service you might learn about that would serve your company well
I know I know, we only have so many hours in the day and there can be absolute information overload.
So figure out what works for you to stay on top of the ‘hot trends’ in the industry.
Maybe it’s booking some time for yourself each Friday over lunch to watch a recorded webinar.
Perhaps you hold on to your industry publications and those become airplane reading.
It could be setting up a few minutes at the beginning and end of each day to check the #mrx Twitter feed.
And, of course, it could be spending a few ‘concentrated learning’ days at an industry conference such as #TMRE13. As luck would have it, the savvy #TMRE13 team has created an entire track called “Disruptive Technologies & New Methodologies” so there’s some concentrated learning right there!
Whatever your method, it’s good for you, your job, and your career to keep your finger on the pulse of the industry.
Cross-posted from The Market Research Event Blog!
Ok, folks, mobile’s here. No more “mobile is coming, let’s start thinking about it.”
I’m still seeing some news and blog tidbits out there that talk about mobile like it’s still a hazy vision on the horizon. Nope, it’s here and we need to focus on how we can embrace mobile for research.
Similar to MROCs, mobile is becoming less of a “thing” to be discussed as a new and emerging technology and it’s becoming just another, albeit unique, platform by which we can gather data.
Using mobile as a platform can be addressed in multiple ways, from making sure your surveys are mobile-ready to jumping in whole hog to things like mobile ethnography.
Let’s start with the simple.
You've all been to conferences and most of us will see each other at #TMRE13. I've observed that most of us bring some sort of mobile device to the conference, most commonly a smart phone or tablet. I work in the events (tradeshows and conferences) industry so I also have the chance to observe this at our own events, and we’re seeing more of this across the board. Paper notebooks are dwindling and electronic note-taking is surging.
For our own events, some of the easy “quick-fix” changes we've made to address mobile platforms for research are:
• Ensured our survey platform could render well on mobile
• Subtly shifted the way we designed surveys so they weren't a beast to answer on a mobile device (hello side-by-side matrices – I’m talking to you)
• Analyze on a regular basis on what platform(s) respondents are taking our event surveys
Now, what we’re doing is pretty standard/table stakes, but we do have an eye to how else to use mobile, and the Dunkin Donuts case that David Forbes recently highlighted here on the TMRE blog is a great one, gathering “in the moment” feedback that in that situation was critical to the insight.
Companies like Revelation are a great example of fully embracing mobile, running mobile communities via their Revelation | Next platform to really dig into mobile ethnography projects.
In the run up to #TMRE13, I also want to highlight how we can all learn more about mobile while we’re on site in Nashville. We’re in luck, there’s an entire Mobile and Social Insights track for the Monday Day One Intensives!
Hope to see you there.
