Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Some pictures

I have been walking up and down from my Hotel on 8th Avenue and 36th Street to Time Square which is on 7th Avenue (or thereabouts) and 44th Street. This is where the ARF convention is being held. Not a terribly long walk but a wonderful photo opportunity. Many photos in fact. And I took them all on my little baby Canon S90. In case you are wondering, the S90 is basically aCanon G11, only with a better lens and a much smaller body. But don't take my word for it. Here is what Ken Rockwell says about my camera.

Why do I trust Ken Rockwell? There are three simple reasons:

1 He has no agenda. He is not on any brand's payroll.
2 On his site he points out the good and bad in all camera brands and, unlike me, he seems brand agnostic.
3 I shared his link with several friends including my brother in law. Together we have made it into our benchmark destination when exploring anything to do with cameras. Remember the four step selection post? Without benchmarking, I can't select a final choice. And brother in law's collaboration/complicity adds to the fun of the browsing journey and provides backup when I need to persuade my wife to spend money on a yet another camera or lens we don't really need.

Enjoy the photos and please note, they are straight off the SD card. No photoshopping or retouching whatsoever. Oh, and as a rule I never use flash.











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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Telling any story you want


I have flu. And I'm supposed to be flying to the ARF conference in New York very early tomorrow.

At 2am this morning, I woke up covered in sweat and shivering. While in this state I managed to reach for my iPhone, attach the headphones and begin YouTube-ing. I stumbled across a man called, Charlie Brooker. And above is just one many fantastic broadcasts.

Watch it and think hard. As ethnographic researchers, clients engage with us to benefit from a) our experience, b) our subjective point of view and c) our ability to apply learnings to their business. Subjectivity and intuition, however, is only acceptable if you have a full grasp of all of your material/data. My challenge to you is: how can you possibly have a complete grasp if you are working alone with your data? The story/themes/hypotheses, surely, begin to form in the field. And how you cut and dice your film is governed by your these formations in the field. In other words, you only look for material to support your themes. And the footage above illustrates how easily this can be done.

Is there a safety mechanism to stop this from happening? Yes. It's called collaboration. Or involving lots of different people with different agendas in your process.

If you like this clip, here is another, Charlie Brooker clip which I thing is fantastic.



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Thursday, March 18, 2010

My brother in law sent me this


I was interviewing a chap once, he now works for Intel in Ireland, and he spoke at length about how marketing is increasingly about creating a dialogue with your consumers. Not sure if this can be called a dialogue, so what do we call it?


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Monday, March 8, 2010

App in action


We made a short film to try to bring it all to life. Would love your thoughts. You can see the Web App which accompanies it here.
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The John Griffiths Show interview



















A fun interview all about research Apps including, of course, my very own one. And sorry if I sound like a Dalek stuck in a toilet.


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Our Web Application


Before you play the clip above, imagine that you have been in the field conducting ethno-explorations using our App (yes, it has to be our App). You return to your desk and all of your captured events are set out neatly... now you can play the clip.

Remember also this what I call a skeletal beta version. The final version will be much more sophisticated. But if you have any comments/suggestions on what you have seen or would like to test the Beta version, drop me a quick note.


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