Sound familiar?

From TechDirt’s Mike Masnick.

This podcast accompanies our article in the Oct ‘09 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.

I had the privilege of chatting with inventor, entrepreneur and futurologist Ray Kurzweil recently. Here’s the full conversation in podcast form. (The full writeup will appear in October’s issue of Research World.)

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TechCrunch50 in San Francisco is fast becoming one of the premier places to launch a technology startup if you’re looking for exposure, customers or funding.

In fact, one of the companies that presented at the inaugural event a couple years ago just announced that they had been bought for a considerable sum.

So we were watching the live stream of this year’s event when the startup Affective Interfaces started to pique our interest.

Based on the work of facial coding expert Paul Ekman (recently popularised in the hit TV series Lie to Me), AI has built a system that monitors facial expressions in real time and on a mass scale (via webcams). They claim the system provides a much more accurate and sensitive indication of, among other things, an ads. likelihood of success.

The presentation didn’t go as well as it could have done – the presenter spent too much time talking and not enough time showing ‘compelling’ videos. But then, in a scene reminiscent of Dragon’s Den, a couple of judges on the expert panel started to recognise the potential. Those enlightened judges were publishing entrepreneur Tim O’Reilly and senior Google exec Bradley Horowitz.

But while these judges know tech, they’re not experts in human behaviour. So we decided to get Jai Haissman, AI’s founder and CEO, to chat with Conquest Research’s David Penn, someone who knows a thing or two about the reliability of interpreting emotions and non-verbal cues. This is a pretty geeky podcast, but we hope you find it stimulating nonetheless.

Affective Interfaces is keen to reach out to potential partners, customers and funders (they’re self-funded). We regard them as an exciting addition to the world of new research and so encourage you to engage with them (as you’ll hear in the podcast they’ve already had a good amount of interest from the event).

VCs and corporate M&A folk: this could become a very special company.

 STARRING 

• Jai Haissman, founder and CEO, Affective Interfaces
• David Penn, MD, Conquest Research

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Our article in the Sep ‘09 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.

Sony founder, Akio Morita, once said: “Curiosity is the key to creativity.” So, given how curious researchers are, we decided to speak to some client-side researchers to discover ways in which they have used creativity to amplify the value of research.

 
The Listener
Dr. Simon Roberts, Lead, Design/Social Science, Digital Health Europe, Intel

Roberts’ solution has been to turn some of his findings and insights into well-produced booklets and brochures, something he did for a recent global ageing study with hundreds of in-depth interviews: “Let’s put it all in a booklet and make sure that every person in the organisation for whom this is relevant gets a copy on their desk. We can also use it externally to tell a story about our work.”

Pop here for the rest of the article – available only for a limited time – and do subscribe to Research World magazine.

John Kearon, Chief Juicer at BrainJuicer, explains how he is turning research on its head by shifting the focus from asking people to explain their own behaviour, to using peoples’ innate social abilities to comment on the behaviour of others.

A pioneer in the use of wisdom of crowds in research (since 2004), he also reveals the results of experiments in mass ethnography, mass anthropology and co-creation.

Filmed at the BrainJuicer/HSBC London Summerfest in June 2009 (disclosure: we produced the vid).

More videos from this event here.

This is the second part of our seven-part series on HR and talent.

This week, Danny Wain looks at how to draw inspiration from Google to innovate in HR and talent management.

Remember, each episode is a mere 2-3 mins long, short enough for the busiest managers or talent folks. And do drop us a line if you’re interested in sponsoring this series.

You can find out more about what Danny does here. Next episode goes up next week.

Faris Yakob, EVP and chief technology strategist at ad. agency McCann Erickson, takes us through his six rules of social media engagement which he believes brands should follow to offer something more meaningful and powerful to people.

Filmed at the BrainJuicer/HSBC London Summerfest in June 2009 (disclosure: we produced the vid).

More videos from this event here.

Mark Earls, author of Herd, talks about why copying is the important new paradigm for encouraging behavioural change.

Filmed at the BrainJuicer/HSBC London Summerfest in June 2009 (disclosure: we produced the vid).

More videos from this event here

Our article in the Nov ‘08 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.

In an age where innovation is de rigeur, we look into how well qualitative is keeping up with the times.

But far from being a Luddite, Forrest is innovating, it just takes him a while to acknowledge this. And that’s not dissimilar from the initial reaction we get from others we spoke to.
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BrainJuicer’s Chief Juicer John Kearon is a regular on the conference circuit.

After noticing that many events tend to mainly attract agencies, he began to wonder whether there was a way to significantly increase the client quotient.

Well, a few weeks ago he ran his inaugural Oktoberfest, a one-day event in London and Amsterdam with a hand-picked line up of ‘innovators’ as speakers. Each intimate gathering attracted over 100 clients.

The events were free and in true bootstrap fashion John partnered with Unilever and Philips to host the events and provide refreshments.

John Griffiths blogged about the London event. And we were asked to film, the result being the 17m highlight clip below (from 6hrs worth of material) which we hope you enjoy.

 STARRING 

• Andrew Gaule, Founder, The H-I Network
• BV Pradeep, Dove team, Unilever
• Jaroslav Cir, CMI director, Rexona (Unilever)
• John Kearon, Chief Juicer, BrainJuicer
• Mark Earls, Herdmeister, Herd Consulting
• Michael Spencer, MD, Sound Strategies

London:

Amsterdam Conference