The first two presentations at the conference this morning have helped me to understand what it is that I'm finding so disquieting about this conference. What we are hearing is not the usual kind of research conference presentation. What we are hearing are stories. No data. No experiments. No hypothesis testing. Just stories. Oral blog posts from the podium with some neat visuals by people who are smart and articulate.
OK, so I probably am exaggerating some but it makes me wonder whether this is where the current emphasis on "storytelling" is taking us as an industry. And, of course, is that a bad thing? Are we really connecting the dots or just making unconnected leaps of logic to get to a view point? In my previous post I worried that we are too focused on "just the facts, ma'am" as a deliverable. We probably should be just as worried about wonderfully-sounding insights that are disconnected from those facts.
Comments
4 responses to “Storytelling comes to the conference podium”
Hi Reg, I beg to differ. The problem is not the presence of storytelling, nor even a disassociation from the facts. The weakness, IMHO, is the absence of dissent and debate.
The process of dialectics, where opposing points of view are put forwarded and argued for in debate is great way of seeking clarity and understanding – especially if people stick to a few basic rules, such as evidence trumps opinion.
When we only had a few conferences, everybody who had the resources and the motivation went to ESOMAR, CASRO, MRS etc and a variety of views, from the curmudgeon (no offence meant) to the dedicated seeker of fashion were there.
Now we have specialist media, specialist channels and specialist conferences. At a conference on neuromarketing, or behavioural economics, or mobile research, the people most likely to attend are the faithful and perhaps the gullible, and the dialectics don’t take place.
What we need are more contrary people at these events. Indeed there may be a future in hiring curmudgeons to attend events to play the role of shouting out when the emperor has no clothes (or in modern parlance when the guru’s clothes are virtual).
Hi Ray — I’m not sure you have ever “begged” to differ. But that aside, I think I may have stumbled into agreement with you in a subsequent post, “Why does it work?”
Think we may agree for once Reg
There are too many money exchangers in the MR temple. Many of these have absolutely no knowledge of basic research methodology. It’s ok to make a trade off when you know that you are making one. But some of these are making way too many and don’t even know it.
I’m still optimistic though, as I believe the future is Big Data, analytics should win in end.
That was sound very interesting,Most of the time when i am going to some conference we are always talking about the data and some survey which can help a lot of business.In Finland country there are a lot of services that give a business an opportunity to know his surroundings most of them are doing online survey and collect the data for analyzing.Anyway nice one.