The Future Place Blog

Technorati’s Decline

Max Kalehoff has a really interesting blog item about the troubles facing Technorati. For a while Technorati was the definitive source on what was happening in the blogosphere. But in the world of Web 2.0 nothing seems to survive at the top for very long. The twin forces of technological developments and fashion tend to ensure that market leaders are rapidly dethroned – making the task of knowing when to sell even harder.

Pecha Kucha a great hit at MRS Conference

The last session today of the first day of the MRS Conference was a great hit with audience. The slot was a Pecha Kucha session with five speakers talking about the theme “and that’s why I love market research”.

Most of the first day was drab and navel gazing. The contrast with the PK session could not have been greater. The five speakers (Jo-Ann Foo, Rich Shaw, Kat Slater, James Morris, and Liz Judson) had just one previous conference appearance between them, two of them were under 24 years old, and all five oozed interest and humour. Watch out for these names, they are going to be major players in the future of our profession!

The MRS should be praised for putting this innovative and risky session in the main conference room, albeit at a somewhat late hour. We need to seek out new talent, and give them a chance to shine.

Disappearing land lines

On Friday I was presenting to the inaugural Danish Market Research Evening in Copenhagen, which was a follow-up to the Swedish Market Research Day, which was held on the Thursday in Stockholm. One of the first papers was an interesting presentation by Jakob Preisler of Zapera.

One of Preisler’s early slides showed how members of panels are drawn from a small pool of the population. The first slice that Preisler removed was the 8% who do not have access to phones (panels in Denmark are frequently recruited by phone) – by which Presisler was referring principally to the socially excluded and the odd.

However, it seemed to me that Presiler was potentially missing another group, households that have a mobile phone but no land line. I asked one or two Danish researchers during the coffee break about this issue, and they felt that these households would be pretty rare in Denmark. This seemed unlikely to me, so at the start of my presentation (after the coffee break) I started by asking the audience a question.

I asked the room of about 140 delegates “How many of you live in a house, flat or apartment which has one or more mobile phones, but no land lines?” Almost half the room put their hands up!

We all need to be aware that land lines are becoming rarer.

MR Space continures to grow

MR Space continues to attract new memebrs and should pass the 300 mark later this week. Conversations are beginning to grow, but so are issues about how to scale things like job adverts. People are beginning to play with different widgets, such as the badge below:

Visit Market Research Space

OpenSocial is getting closer

A report on Cnet shows that the OpenSocial revolution is getting closer. OpenSocial is a standard created by Google and supported by most of the Social Networks (but not Facebook yet) that will allow for much greater interoperability and data portability.

OpenSocial has the potential to be a disruptive technology that will turbo-charge the move towards making most of the web take on social characteristics. Marketers and market researchers need to prepare to be deluged in data.

We need to keep in mind TS Eliot' warning
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

Great link to Lessig Presentation

Presentation Zen has a great link to a more recent Lawrence Lessig Free Culture presentation. Lessig is seen by many as a real pathfinder in the area of engaging presentations, and it behoves all of us to be familiar with his style and approach - even though we will probably want to adapt it for our uses.

Why globalisation is good

The Economist has an interesting opinion piece arguing that globalisation is, in general, good for Europe.

The article contains a really good example of why China's increased production capabilities are good for the West. An iPod is sold in the USA for US$299, with US citizens reaping the low cost benefit of China's production. Of the US$299, just US$4 stays in China, with US$160 going to US companies that design, transport, and retail iPods.

Back at the start of the 19th Century David Ricardo showed how international trade between two countries could make the populations of both countries better off. However, the dislocations caused by changes in balance of trade can cause real problems. (I grew up in the Nottinghamshire coal fields decimated by changes in trade coupled with the determination of the Government to break the trade unions). The challenge for economists and Governments is to work out how to deal with those who are hurt by free trade, rather than hurt everybody by restricting trade.

When policticians shun logic

One of the themes that has been occurring in commentary over the last couple of years is a concern that the age of reason may be coming to an end, typified by Francis Wheen's book "How Mumbo Jumbo Took Over the World".

I have just heard a radio interview, on the BBC's radio 4, that shows just how bankrupt intellectual rigour has becomes for some members of the UK Government. The interview was between the BBC luminary John Humphrey and Labour Minister Ed Milliband. Milliband made the assertion that the Conservatives were different from Labour could not be trusted because philosophically the Conservatives wanted smaller Government. Humphreys made the point that the implication was that Labour favoured larger Government, Milliband denied it meant that. He wanted to portray a view that the Conservatives wanted smaller government than Labour, but Labour did not want  larger government than the Conservatives.

One wishes that the problem was that Milliband was intellectually challenged, but that is not the case, he is very bright. The problem is that he, and many like him, have ditched the need to be intellectually coherent. The main problem with this is that it means that the facts and logic cannot be used to change people's minds or to develop courses for the future.