Jon Puleston
As chairman of this year’s Digital Dimensions conference, I thought I might share a sneak preview of some of the exciting things to expect from this years event.
There has been a big shake up of the format this year, we are hoping it will be a bigger and more fulfilling experience for everyone involved. ESOMAR has introduced the new “Digital Labs” to showcase new techniques and technology solutions from around the world, with speakers from the likes of Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Nokia, Kimberly-Clark, AOL, and a range of international agency and research companies. This is one of the most prestigious line ups ever assembled for an ESOMAR digital research event so I am really excited to be involved.
I think this is a reflection of how exciting it is to be involved in the research industry right now. It almost feels like we are in the midst of a bit of a gold rush. There are so many new emerging opportunities for research. We’ve had the online revolution, the social media revolution, the mobile revolution. There have been major gains in market research theory fuelled by breakthroughs in our understanding of how the brain works and how to interact with human beings. Technology is opening up new ways of doing this on an almost daily basis. All of this has resulted in giant eruptions of data from around the world, sitting there ready for us to process and refine.
This conference will be all about how we are getting to grips with all these new opportunities.
I think this conference is the first in a few years which will not just focus on what’s new in research, but will start to unveil some of the amazing and imaginative ways in which these new opportunities are really being used and exploited.
Slowly we are getting out heads around how to profitably mine big data for insight and we have a range of really brilliant papers exploring the achievements in this area.
In the early days of social media research it was all about quantifying sentiment, but we are now learning how to do some really clever things with all this information. We can now understand how our decisions are being shaped by our social interactions and there are some great papers on this topic at this event. With the proliferating range of different technological devices there are also a host of papers exploring how we are using and engaging with these devices and how we can use them for our own research purposes.
There are such a wide range of topics being discussed at this year’s event that somehow the term 3D didn’t quite does it justice, therefore the event has been “rebranded” as “DD” Digital Dimensions…not only 3 or 5…ALL of them, a data fusion event!
Come to this conference if you want to learn about answers to some of these questions….
Are you sitting on a mountain of data and don’t know where to start processing it? Come and find out how a data analytics team managed to refine for a millions of fragmented bits of secondary mobile phone data, a compelling story of our mobile phone usage?
How can you reproduce the unique decision making frame of mind we are in when we go shopping in a survey? Learn how product testing research is being revolutionised by switching off the analytical parts of our brain to make decisions. This paper could really change the way you think about testing new products.
Have you ever confronted the challenge of conducting a global scale piece of qualitative online research? Learn from one of the leading practitioners in this field about how international qualitative research is rapidly innovating.
Could one good open ended question replace a whole survey? Find out how you can mine quantitative data from open ended feedback that rivals traditional closed survey questions.
Are you curious about whether we are all going to be using google glasses for research in the future? learn about some pioneering experiments with wearable technology
How is the internet and our interactions with social media changing our life and all the decisions we make? Learn from a detailed study of mums on the web, and new ways of interacting with consumers more profitably.
Is Facebook changing how we shop? Lean how consumers interact with a social network as they go shopping, what influence does it have?
How you can you use social media analysis to understand consumer desire? Learn ways to discover new product opportunities from studying what we talk about online.
Do you want to know what makes an image sharable? Find out what a team of researchers studying Pinterest have discovered about why some images get distributed (repined) more than others – vital insights if you want to gain more viral distribution of your visual collateral.
Could what we search for online be a potential goldmine of incite for researchers? Learn how to extract consumer insights from search engine queries.
How do you measure usability? All businesses have websites and technical systems we interact with and they live and die on how “usable” they are. So how do you go about quantifying the usability of these systems, is it possible? Find out.
How do can you fuse neuroscience and online gamification to revolutionise how you conduct research? An amazing story of a co-created new research approach.
Can we measure the power of social media? Take a first glimpse at the UK’s cross industry attempt to provide definitive guidance on the role that social media can play and how you can measure its effectiveness.
How can you better engage with multi-channel consumers? Learn about the 4 key challenges that once you champion you will be able develop communication work that yields stronger brand impact.
How fast is online and technology adoption happening in different markets around the world? New bench-marketing data across 56 countries will be revealed.
What can the analysis of terabytes of browsing log data gathered via mobile phones in emerging markets teach us about how to do better research? Learn how to best position your brand amongst emerging market consumers.
How are we dividing our attention across different devices? Lean about an international study that has uncovered the value of multiple screens for online content and advertising.
How can you use a phone to measure behaviour in the now? Find out about the latest innovations in using geodata in combination with mobile surveying to measure and assess behaviour as it happens.
You may well be in need of a digital detox at the end of this event so we have a special speaker that will unveil you why “off” is a new emotion!
See you in Stockholm the capital of Scandinavia!
Jon Puleston Programme Committee Chair
