The Landmark Blog

Muriphobia and the Southwest Marketing Research Educational Forum

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I learned a new word today.  The word is donnée and refers to the core elements of a story, your assumptions on life that make you what you are, your basic facts, the premise of a story, the "what-if" that drives you.  I'm hoping that if I use the word donnée often enough today, it will become part of my vernacular.  I love words.  That's most likely part of my donnée.

The other day, I realized that another part of my donnée is that I'm just a tad bit prissy...at least according to my wife...not that there's anything wrong with that.  My biggest fear, the thing that startles the H - E - Double Hockey Sticks out of me, is not public speaking (Glossophobia), it's not Geniophobia (the fear of chins), it's not Albuminurophobia (the fear of kidney disease), or even Xanthophobia (the fear of the color yellow).  I'm a muriphobiac, or brutally afraid of mice.  Yes...mice.  I like to blame my parents for it.  When I see a mouse, my very first reaction is to scream like a school-girl, jump on the nearest chair, and then attempt to stomp the thing into a bloody mess. 

I love to be outdoors.  I enjoy hiking, used to love mountain biking (too old & lazy now), and spend half my life on soccer fields.  There's nothing more soothing than sitting outdoors in the mountains and kicking back.  The outdoors, however, are not conducive for mouse avoidance.  My wife and I recently saw the Sound of Music on an outdoor stage at the Sundance Resort (the mountain resort in Utah owned by Robert Redford).  It was an awesome experience sitting outdoors watching the play and hanging with my wife...with the exception of the guy next to me that wouldn't stop singing at the top of his lungs...Cuckoo...Cuckoo...and an attack by a killer chipmunk, lizard-mouse the size of an oversized rat that attacked me (insert jump & scream & stomp in the middle of the play, followed by hysterical laughter by my wife who saw nothing).  Yea...I'm a little prissy for a man who's six feet tall and comes from a blue collar background.

Park City, UT is one of my favorite places on earth.  It's the perfect blend of being outdoors, not having to camp, great restaurants, outdoor activities, shopping, and mouse avoidance.  The 2011 SWMRA Educational Forum was held in Park City, UT this year and the setting was awesome.  The Canyons Resort, where the conference was held, is the perfect place for an intimate educational event, relaxation in the cool climate, and the perfect place to take in the outdoors with its views of the mountains and it's skiing trails, the gondola in the background and all the granolas walking around...who actually bathed.

One measure of an industry networking event is the food and beverage.  It's great to catch up with your marketing research friends and associates.  It's even better to meet new people, and find new clients, but if the food and beverages stink, there's too little food or too little to drink, or the food is gross; the networking function becomes a miserable failure.  Survey said...GOOD FOOD (I don't drink so I can't comment on the beverages.)  Although...I'm not so sure what I thought of the caviar covered cucumbers.  Well...yes I do know what I think...YOU'RE EATING FISH OVARIES! BLECH!  STOP THE MADNESS!  I realize that many people like caviar, but just to educate the public...caviar is fish roe.  Let's connect the dots...fish roe is defined on Wikipedia: Roe or hard roe is the fully ripe internal ovaries or egg masses of fish.  Do you really want to eat that?  I'd say that you DO NOT.  Some would argue this was the best item on the menu; I enjoyed the other food items very much.

Another measure of conference success is the quality of the educational content.  For me, I'd give the content 3 out of 4 stars (sorry, just being honest).

• Vaughn Mordecai, of Discovery Research Group, spoke to us on the "Secret Sauce" behind social media research.  He was charming, funny, good-looking, fed us treats, entertained us, provided us with all the information we would ever want to know about social media research, told us how to set up social media solutions for our organizations, wasn't too analyticy but was analyticy enough, and was the perfect key-note speaker.  He did swimmingly.  ACTUALLY, this is me so I shouldn't probably comment on how well I did and how effective I presented the material.  I hoped the attendees learned something and that it helped their companies.  I think it did.  The presentation can be found on Slideshare at this link: http://www.slideshare.net/DiscoRes/swmra-ef-2011. 

• Bob Goodwin, the Marketing Research Director from Lifetime Products, spoke on his wealth of experience conducting and analyzing, data generated for a company that may not have been "traditionally" thought of as a market research driven organization.  Have you ever heard an interesting speaker who actually spent some time talking about Conjoints?  No...I hadn't either until I attended this session.  Though I'm associated with an organization that conducts mostly quantitative research, I found his qualitative research stories particularly interesting...especially those that "encouraged" (forced) his vendors to build facilities to fit and test Lifetime Product sheds inside their focus group facilities. 

• I am PRC Certified through the Marketing Research Association.  I've endured more "legal credits" than I'd ever hope for.  Taking nothing away from these presenters, but how often is this information compelling, engaging, and in many cases...in the least bit interesting.  Most times, the content presented is about as interesting as watching facial hair grow.  Until...In walked Helen Christakos, an Intellectual Property Attorney from Greenberg Traurig.  I can honestly say that her presentation was one of the most interesting I've witnessed in our industry.  Yes, it was filled with the "sky is falling" analogies, and the "you will get sued if you do this" threats, along with the "government will fine you" warnings.  But, I did walk away with useful information for my business, that could be applied to my organization and it was interesting in the process.  Cha-Ching. 

• Do you know Ted?  Ted Talks.  TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design, and according to Wikipedia, hosts a "global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate 'ideas worth spreading.'" In 2005, TED began posting all of their talks online for free, and these guys (and girls) are brilliant. This session contained three Ted Talks and was good conceptually, but, for me fell flat on execution.  I'd rather listen to someone at the front of a room who might not be quite as innovative (maybe even a little dumb) that I can ask questions of, than watch a video from a genius who wasn't in the room.  Unfortunately, others seemed to feel somewhat similarly as the attendance at this session was a little bit lower than the other three (although it could have been because it was the last session of the day and folks were leaving to catch flights.)  I did come away with some very good websites from these talks but the format left me wanting more.

All in all, the educational content was good.  I walked away knowing about four new websites that I've enjoyed looking at (see Squareup.com; CrowdCompass.com; Gapminder.org; and the music website that may kill all other music websites - Spotify.com).  I connected with some industry friends, met some new people, and didn't see any mice.  All I could ask for from a couple of workdays.