The last couple of days Joeri, Frank (two of my co-workers at InSites Consulting) and myself were attending the ESOMAR QUALITATIVE conference in Istanbul.

The first two days we followed workshops on ethnography (which is a hot topic at the moment) and new trends in qualitative research. It is always interesting to keep on track with trends in certain research domains and to chat about it with colleagues from around the globe. Very inspiring days, who will definitely evolve into research innovations at our ForwaR&D Lab! Of course, we will keep you posted on that one…

During the conference itself, it was a pleasure to hear that – working at an agency who moved all their qualitative research online – a lot of research companies worldwide are starting to embrace online methods in a certain way… Moreover, they show great believe in the online methodology!

On the first conference day, Joeri presented our paper on user-generated ethnography together with Veerle Colin from MTV Networks. The audience really liked the fact that we translated traditional ethnography to an online environment by using a 360 degrees approach (following participants both online and offline by using different kinds of new web technologies).

The last day of our stay in Istanbul (which is a wonderful city by the way) I presented on online community research. Bert Van Wassenhove from ONE Agency (with whom we partner in the ‘Future Talking’ project – a research community about the future of new media and technologies) was my co-presenter. We showed the InSites philosophy on facilitating the ongoing connection between companies and participants to create better brands and products by combining tools from our Connected Research toolbox.

Some general take-aways from the conference: the boundaries between quantitative and qualitative research are becoming fuzzier by the day (we are moving to some kind of ‘fusion research’), new qualitative analysis techniques are winning importance (semiotics for example, due to the growing importance of the visual aspect in contemporary society) and observational research (both in the online and the offline world) is part of the future of marketing research.

More info about the papers? Contact me: tom@insites.eu!