(Vivek Banerji, McKinsey, in his speech about Polymaths - multitalented persons)
The qualitative conference has been the shining star in the ESOMAR universe for a number of years and I suppose it had to come to somewhat of a halt some time. In many respects, this years conference in Istanbul took a step back from previous years and became sort of an in-between conference in more than one way. But don't get me wrong; the quality of the conference and the presentations just went from magnificent to great; no less.
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The most in-between factor was of course that the conference was arranged in Istanbul, between Europe and Asia. Not that you really notice the difference - conference hotels are the same all over the world and the ESOMAR staff comes from Amsterdam every time to ensure a perfect organisation, but the symbolic value is high. To me and my wallet, it also feels strange to be in a city where you never really can tell if you are in the rich or the poor part of the world.
One of the things that worked really well at the conference: the program committee.
Just as important to me, was that ESOMAR right now is in between offices in Amsterdam, which meant the two leading ladies of the organisation, Véronique Jeannin and Anna Alù, couldn't come. Their replacements of course did a wonderful job, technically, but contributing to the spirit of a conference is a quite different thing.
Contentwise it felt like this years conference was somewhere between the online revolution and some future upheaval we can't imagine yet. As Nicole Reinhold from Philips in Holland brilliantly put it during a panel discussion; a few years ago, "internet" or "online" was in the title of almost every paper at the conference. Now it has taken its rightful place as a media, not a method, and forms a natural but not outstanding part of many presentations.
Alex Johnston from JigSaw Research didn't talk about research at all, but about how to get clients more engaged in research. Together with Vivek at the top, he represents the succesful second day where most speakers didn't present a case or a method but a specific topic for inspiration.
In fact, very few presentations were about method per se, but more about application of method and about ways of thinking about and approaching research problems. I believe many delegates found this direction good - it is not likely that a conference can be filled with truly new methods years on end.
The decline in focus on method perhaps didn't have anything to do with it, but it was striking how certain methods were mentioned almost all the time - Ethnography in particular - whereas some were almost forgotten: Neuroscience, Eyescanning, traditional focusgroups, traditional face-to-face interviews. The exaggerated love for Ethnography reached a quite annoying point after a while, particularly as it became obvious that most of the speakers had done nothing at all close to the true sense of the word of Ethnography. Visiting a familys home to see how they select which TV program to see, is NOT Ethnography. I would call it a Safari group, but I could stretch it to observation inspired by ethnography. It thus came as a relief when two young conference debutantes, Judith Staig and Rose Tomlins from GfK NOP in UK, began their presentation by proclaiming: "We are not Ethnographers!" With such an honest start, it is no wonder that they went on to do one of the very best presentations at the conference.
More like this please! The real ethnographer is of course Margaret Mead, a devoted researcher that would have a hard time fitting into todays commercial research world.
ESOMAR has a good habit of trying new formats for interaction and presentations at conferences, but this year ended up in between successes. The panel discussions mainly only dealt with the broad and obvious issues and lacked the precise and sharp topics and questions needed to extract great new thinking from the debaters. Having smart people on stage is absolutely no guarantee for interesting debates. As mentioned above, Nicole Reinhold was an exception, otherwise no debaters did themselves justice.
Compared to the vivid and highly creative World Cafe in Paris last year, the group discussions late Tuesday afternoon this year was almost a failure. Not just because more than half of the delegates didn't even bother to attend and not just because the start got quite chaotic because of miscommunication between program committee members, but because the discussions failed to really engage and bring forth exiciting new thoughts.
I counted to slightly more than 150 in the official delegates list, but never to more than around 100 in the conference auditoritum.
It was also a middle year in terms of number of attendees. Around 150 is neither bad nor good but it is a long way from the record figures of almost 250 in Paris last year. If many delegates is a priority - and why shouldn't it be? - ESOMAR must start to draw conclusions about where it is best to host conferences. It certainly has a lot of symbolic value to move conferences around to different countries, but when it comes to deciding to travel or not, it is money, time and potential for other job-related activities that talk. There are many direct and cheap connections from all over the world to cities like Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, London, New York, Bangkok and Tokyo on a scale that few other cities can match. A central location in Europe also has the advantage of offering train connections to many potential delegates. It is nice to see new cities, of course, but the figures speak for themselves: More delegates from the UK than from Turkey, despite the distance and when it comes to neighboring countries: two from Greece, one from Georgia, one from Ukraine and one from Egypt. Not exactly a crowd!
Two nations with relatively many delegates compared to population: two of three Finns to the left (best among the Nordic countries) and one out of 14 Belgians to the right.
It is also sad that not more client side researchers have found this conference, particularly as much of the discussions and presentations were directed towards them. It is strange to sit and discuss what clients want or hear presentations about how to apply everyday methods, with almost no clients in the room.
This was indeed Frits Spangenbergs last conference performance as ESOMAR President. Thanks for two good years!
Henrik Hall
SMRN