The much awaited MRS congress is in full swing. Awaited because the British research organisation this year even more than before tries to renew the congress concept with new formats, subjects and types of speakers. During the first day, it has become apparent that there are not only much to gain from daring - you risk a lot too.
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Tom Ewing ended his five minute "Idea Rush" presentation with saying that it is not always the content that matters - entertaining can be just as important. It became all too apparent when I got back to the "normal" 20-minute presentations, which are actually still on offer at this upside-down-conference. What should normally have been very interesting presentations about hot topics, had suddenly turned bland, yes almost boring.
Ray Poynter had his own presentation too, together with his client from the Home Office, and was of course the best "ordinary" presenter, not the least because he dared to say that he probably didn't charge enough for the extremely extensive work his company had done.
Still, the new formats have not been all success, but it would of course have been unfair to expect that. We had to wait for the last, shivering hour of the first congress day, to experience the stuff that people would talk about during the evening. Too bad then that these two jewel formats only received half an hour each. Ray Poynter finished the day with a sure hit - a repeat of the Pecha Kucha session "When I run the research industry" which he pioneered last year. It is a close shave, but I believe this years three entries were even better than last years. It is first of all amazing how advanced insights these young people, some of them very new to the industry, have about the future of our profession, but most of all, plenty of much more experienced speakers have a lot to learn about preparations and about taking presentations seriously. If these guys can be so splendid with 20 slides in 6 minutes and 40 seconds, why couldn't more of the ordinary speakers be interesting and engaging when they have the freedom to set up their presentations as they wish?
Two Pecha Kucha pilots from MESH Planning proved that the regrowth is excellent at Fionas company.
It took a while for me to understand the concept of Room 101, the second last session, but once I got the idea, it was both thoughtprovoking and amusing. The concept is obviously based on a popular TV show, where ideas or phenomena are put forward to a moderator who then interrogates the proponent, and the audience finally decides to either thrown the concept in the dust bin, i e Room 101, or keep it. Rightly handled, this is an excellent way of exploring dusty old features of the industry which we take for granted but perhaps could do without. The research debrief, as it is used today; as an end rather than a starting point, almost ended up in Room 101, which it, in my view, would have deserved after a brilliant case put forth by the proponent.
Yes, professional respondents should end up in Room 101!
The fact that it is taken for granted that the audience is familiar with concepts like Room 101 or with a keynote speaker like Robert Winston, goes to prove that this congress, sadly enough, is a purely national matter for the UK and that it has no ambitions to be anything more. This is not the least strange as it seems to me like attendance figures are declining. The delegates list includes some 400-450 names, but many of those only come for one of the two days. Attracting an international audience should not have to be that hard, given that London is an attractive place to go to as a market researcher, that the presenters all speak good English (some a bit too fast for my taste though) and that this in many respects is the worlds best congress (sorry ESOMAR, your program simply doesn't match this, it doesn't help that your networking is better).
Busy day for Robert Winston - interviewed both on stage and afterwards by the conference film makers.
Speaking of Robert Winston, obviously famous scientist and member of the House of Lords. He got the honour to open up the day, but not as speaker, but together with Rebecca Wynberg who interviewed him. This is a concept that I have seen before, but it is not as common as to be a certain success. The concept is risky and depends a lot on the ability of the interviewer to guide the discussion. Rebecca handled the situation well, but failed to get me as a foreigner to be excitied. I got the feeling that Robert pretty much covered the issues he normally talks about, which is not market research.
These are not zombies, so obviously this is not the graveyard.
A session that got really exciting, but only for the few who had dared to come, was "The Graveyard slot", where Roy Langmaid, Konstantin Pinaev and Christopher Heimann had promised to demonstrate that the audience need not fall asleep immediately after lunch. After having everyone stand up, take off their shoes (!) and do all sorts of strange excercises, the risk was nonexistent. I talked to Christopher afterwards, who said they normally do longer sessions than the 30 minutes we got - even full days - which could explain why I felt we almost hadn't started when the session was over. I also felt that the implications for market research wasn't pointed out clearly enough. The session was mainly built up on physical sensations and thus became a very clear reminder that our focus on text, speech and reason, should perhaps not have the prominent position above body and feelings that it enjoys today.
Andrew Needham with his message and his prop.
The "Ideas rush" I mentioned to start with, was yet another of all those new formats and is perhaps the one that needs more working on until next year. I want it to come back, but with speakers who are much more well prepared. I also question the limit to just one slide, as the best presenters cheated and used up to five slides (depending on how you count). The idea presenters must be made to realise how fast five minutes go and that you can't wait to present your idea to the bitter end - when the risk is imminent that you run out of time before you get that far.
It must have been a while since these guys played with balloons last time.
While many idea rushers performed more poorly than expected, given their level of experience and expertise, Andrew Needham once again proved that he is one of the hopes for the future of this industry (check our report from Innovate in Copenhagen last year for more on him). Not only did he use prop in the form of balloons that we were made to blow up and eventually smash, he hammered out his 1% message in a way that no one who was there will ever forget it. The idea to focus on your most advanced customers in ressearch is not new, but why bother when Andrew delivered it in such an entertaining way.
Why are there so few exhibitors...
...and why do they believe that we are more interested in massage and winetasting than in market research?
While the excellent programme chairs Simon Lidington and Nick Coates together with their session chairs, did all they could to make the day memorable, large parts of the MRS and the hotel staff did their best to mess it up. The Riverbank Plaza is really not a good place to arrange a conference like this and it doesn't get better with unneccesary queues for coffee, no phone coverage in large parts of the buidling, constant invitations to fill out a bad questionnaire about the conference, surprises as to where drinks or lunch or coffee were to be served, etc. It doesn't help if all the sessions are fantastic - the entirety must work if you shall get a perfect conference.
Henrik Hall
SMRN