Back at CASRO. First up is Craig Overpeck and he's going to talk about ISO. I'm a huge ISO fan and have blogged about it many times. I'm going to let this opportunity to do it again pass.
Now there is a panel of mostly former Harris Interactive employees who are going to talk about DIY. Efrain Ribeiro from Lightspeed is up first. He thinks DIY companies often are innovating and a place to look at new ways of doing things. Now Phil Garland from Survey Monkey. His argument seems to be that designing questionnaires and fielding them is an automation task that MR should embrace. Eventually it's an argument about where MR adds value. Next up is Ryan Smith from Qualtrics. I'm not sure what his point was. Now Randy Thomas from GfK, whose wife seems to understand the central issue, i.e., Randy's job may be at risk. Maybe she should be on the panel. But Randy is talking about the key issue having to do with the expertise needed to design and field a good questionnaire. That tends to be my argument as well, but one could make an argument that MR firms are not as good at these things as they should be. Finally, George Terhanian from Toluna. He told three stories that seem to come down to, "DIY is a nice idea because it can automate and democratize research."
So we have two people who run panels (not much of a threat from DIY and could probably go to DIY in a heart beat), two people who sell DIY services or software, and Randy Thomas who has spent his career studying questionnaire design. Two guys in hard sell mode, two guys who probably don't care much, and my buddy Randy.
Is it time for lunch yet?