Not next week, but the week after that, Esomar Congress 2011 kicks off in Amsterdam. I was at the 2009 edition (still as a student back then), and had a serious blast. Some amazing speeches, a lot of great people, and an enormous amount of enthusiasm from everyone. While I missed last year’s edition, I’m looking forward to this year’s. I’ll be there as a blogger, covering speeches together with Betty Adamou, ESOMAR’s terrific Adam Warner (he manages this blog, so I had to mention himJ) and Erika Harriford-Mclaren. So for those of you that won’t be able to make it to Amsterdam, you’ll be kept in the loop. For those that will be there, be prepared to give your opinion. We will have camera’s, so look good J.
Anyway, while the Congress will be a blast, in its slipstream, there is another beautiful initiative. Have you heard about Fringe Factory before? It’s a group of people that’s passionate about establishing market research as a ‘hot as hell’-profession. They are on the lookout for everything edgy and fresh within the industry, and want to promote this mindset among everyone working in market research and beyond. Together with the ESOMAR Congress, they will invade Amsterdam on the 19th of September, showing the world that extraordinariness in market research is possible. As I understand from the programme, they will be playing a game of true or false with researchers, have a blind date job interview and help people in domestic conflicts with insights from research models. If that doesn’t sound creative enough for you, they’ll have breaks with live performances from researchers. I’m not sure whether beatboxing, break- or poledancing will happen, but I’m extremely looking forward to seeing the artistic talent within our industry. It might teach us all something about presenting and reporting; after all, a presentation is a performance too.
This kind of initiatives is what truly gives meaning to being together in a sector; it shows that we are passionate, and that we can learn from each other’s passion. And nothing is more ‘hot’ than a bunch of passionate people, right?
Elias Veris is a research consultant at InSites Consulting
