I’m chuffed to have been nominated for the Research Industry Council of Australia (RICA) Young Researcher Award. I’ll be presenting to a panel of judges in a couple of weeks on a topic of my choice.
It’s taken some thought to come up with a topic – I’ve been revisiting some of my previous papers and presentations for ideas. In the end, I’ve decided to present on how we can apply traditional qualitative skills to insights communities.
Why do experienced moderators choke in communities?
I’ve seen dozens of examples of experienced researchers, who run effective focus groups, have fantastic people skills, great communication skills – seem to not be able to apply these skills when they move online. Somewhere along the way, they stop dealing with people and start dealing with machines.
Technique over technology
Technology only gets you so far. Effective communities use traditional research skills.
The skills moderators use in traditional qualitative research can also be applied to communities. Because communities are about people too – not just technology.
I’ll be covering what we can do to help researchers move from traditional to online, and share some techniques that have worked well for me in the past.
The winner of the award will be announced at the AMSRS National Conference 2014, being held at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne this year.
Like most market researchers, I had the good fortune of stumbling into this career. After completing my Masters in Communication, I became an insights community manager at one of Australia’s first agencies to do online qual.
This led me to years of reading, learning, and writing about the impact of technology on market research and I've shared my ideas at industry conferences in Australia and overseas.
Now I manage the Voice of Customer program at ME.