The Future Place Blog

New version of shift happens

Karl Fisch has released an updated version of his thought provoking video Shift Happens, although it is now called Did You Know 2.0. The graphics have been improved and the tone is less US and more global. My only concern is the change to the music, which I imagine was copyright driven. The old music had a high tempo and imparted urgency, the new tune is languid and suggests (to me) delay.

56% of US favour stem cell research

56%, the proportion of US citizens who believe that research into lives is more important that saying no to stem cell research, according to the Pew Research Center. These figures have been pretty constant since 2004, and reflect most age ranges, though not the 65%+ age group. Those most opposed to stem cell research were Conservative Republicans (38% in favour), those who did not graduate high school (41%), those over 65 years old (41%), and Evangenlical Protestants (44%).

New Toys

Perhaps I should keep this quiet till I get better at it. Recently I have started using Moyea FLV Converter, and their free downloader to capture Flash videos to use in presenations and Windows Movie Maker to trim them to the length I need and to handle music files.

I suppose it had to happen, I am now trying to create my own media, but it could take a while before I get the hang of it. It is perfectly possible that I will never develop the eye for it, but it's fun. Below is my first attempt to create something for YouTube, a few pictures from my recent trip to Singapore (recent as in I got back this morning).

The 1K, 2K, 5K, and 10K Series

A few months ago I noticed a post by Seth Godin about how many ideas are only worth 50 pages, and pointing out that as a result many books are simply padded out. I would go further and say that most books are worth about 50 pages, even great books such as The Tipping Point and The Long Tail. Lesser books such as Black Swans could probably be condensed to 10 pages.

Having been kicking the idea around for a while I have decided to try and produce a series of PDFs which capture some of the ideas I have been kicking around for a while. I am thinking in terms of calling them 1K, 2K, 5K, and 10K to denote the approximate number of words. I envisage producing some of these Ks in several lengths, e.g. a 1K and 5K looking at the same topic.

Initial topics I am looking at include:

• Problems with causality?
• Why market research usually works?
• Why market research sometimes fails?
• Trends in online research
• Evaluating price

I hope to have the first couple produced by the end of July.

Initially these Ks are going to be be free, but with copyright retained. If I ever write enough of them, and if there is ever sufficient interest, I will happily sell out and let somebody publish a book - even if it has more than 50 pages and some padding!

BTW I would have put a link to Seth Godin’s post but I can find it, his blog is here.

Nightclub members pay with embedded RFID

Patrons of the Baja Club in Barcelona have the choice of easy entry and of paying by having an RFID chip embedded in their arm. This is an old story, but I have only just heard about it. Another example of the Electronic Wake.

For more information check out this 2004 article by the BBC.

The Singapore Sessions Went Well

My two session at the Research Day seemed to go down very well, with an audience of about 180 people.

All of the other presentations were good, and some of them very good. Radhecka Roy (female) and Sue Phillips of Synovate presented some really useful material contrasting how Singaporeans and UK citizens differed in terms of their usage of traditional and new media. Their findings suggested to me that when similar studies are conducted in other countries, key differences will be found. They also include a YouTube clip of a local actor/singer/comedian signing a song title “Sungapurians”, the clip is included at the bottom this post. Some of the references in the song lost me, but I was taken by the humour of the bits I could follow, and by the passion of it.

Ian Stewart of MTV gave a useful presentation that showed how widely Web 2.0 is understood in Singapore. One of MTVs findings was that Asians increasingly prefer Asian actors and music. Stewart showed that increasingly Asians preferred cultural facets of their own culture, or at least their region’s culture.

In the panel session, Isis Shek of MTV joined the platform and talked about Second Life, from a user’s point of view. Isis said she was in second life about 5 hours a day!

Keith Hughes of Merlinco – Wow! What a hinterland!

Many years ago a UK politician called Dennis Healy said that every good politician should have an hinterland, i.e. other aspects of their life about which they were passionate, rather than be one-dimensional politicians. I have long thought the same thing is true of market researchers. I am convinced that we do our day job better when we have other passions, be it climbing, charity work, music, or whatever.

Keith Hughes, Chief Development Officer at market research software company Merlinco, has just shown that he has a truly awesome hinterland. MrWeb reports that Keith has won MOJO music award for his work with Universal Music for its Complete Mowtown Singles Volume 6 1966, which Keith co-produced.

Keith has been working with Universal for ten years producing re-mastered versions of the Motown classics. Well done Keith, an inspiration to us all.

Which country has the most English speakers?

The idea for this bit of research came from Karl Fisch’s video, Shift Happens. I had a look around the web and the best estimates I cam up with were

1. India, largely the result of the British Empire
2. USA, despite winning their independence from the British Empire over 200 years ago
3. China, largely the result of a policy to promote English
4. Nigeria, again a result of the British Empire
5. UK, despite having had many monarchs over the last 1000 years whose own language was French or German

However, it is widely predicted that China will soon move to the number one position in this league table. I suspect that this news is good news for those of us who struggle to speak one language, never mind several. Given the shifts in power I have felt that the language of the near future would be either English or Mandarin. But with China upping the stakes for English I suspect that it will remain the language for international commerce and for much of the Web.

However, I suspect that Chinese only websites will increasingly feature in the Internet’s top ten. At present there are two Chinese web sites in Alexa’s top 10. Baidu, a search engine, is ranked at number 7, and QQ, an IM site, is ranked at number 10.

Preparing for Singapore

I am beset by two conflicting emotions at the moment. Firstly, excitement at the fact that I am giving two major presentations on Thursday in Singapore, to the Annual Research Day (many thanks to Colmar Brunton for sponsoring my trip). Secondly, desperation, as I rush round trying to finish everything that needs to be finished before I head off to Heathrow airport. Unfortunately, this is not exactly the first time that an overseas trip has created this conflict of emotions – I am reminded of the old saying “If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done here!”. No wonder I usually sleep so well on the plane.

The first presentation focuses on the Mega Shifts that are affecting the Global economy, the marketing world, and the research world. The second presentation is titled Research 2.0, but in fact it draws on all the new and growing trends in research from semiotics to video-based ethnography, from Discrete Choice Models to blog mining and online communities. But, I shall argue in a later post, the term Research 2.0 is morphing to all research that is focused on indivuals as opposed to means, medians, modes and segments.

I hope to have some new interesting material to report on my return from Singapore. Indeed I am sure that I will. I usually leave any gathering or conference with the feeling that I have learned much more than I have shared - despite my best efforts on the sharing front.

China takes the next step towards the moon

China View reports that China is developing a new range of rockets capable of carrying a much larger payload, up from the current 9.5 tons to 25 tons. China appears committed to pressing ahead with plans for a space station and to reach the moon.

If and when China launch a space station will people will politely say well done, and perhaps worry about the financial and environmental waste. But if and when China reach the moon, people will recognise that the change in the world order is well under way.

China currently expects to land a rover on the moon in about 2012 and to be able to fly rovers home at some point after that.