A Few Quick Notes On The AMA MRC

First, did you hear the big news yesterday that e-Rewards (Now Research Now) acquired Peanut Labs? As Kristin Luck said on Twitter, “Now THAT is an acquisition my friends!” ; it will be interesting to hear the buzz on this today from the AMA MRC attendees.

I’ll write more later, but a few things standout:

• Infosurv- Predictive Markets is a very cool emerging technique and these guys seem to have a great product. I’ll write about this methodology in greater depth this week, but for a sneak peek at one of the leaders in the field check them out at www.infosurv.com
• Netbase- A Social Media Research solution designed by researchers for researchers. These guys are advised by some of the biggest names on the client side and claim to have the best semantic analyzer out thre. I’ll be following them in the future as well, but for now you can find them at www.netbase.com
• Intrepid- Coolest booth at the event, and darn nice and smart folks. I wrote about them yesterday, and I am more impressed now. Look for great things from these folks.

The presentation by Gayle Lloyd, Head of Product Research and Customer Intelligence, Batesville Casket Company on “The The Bold Researcher” was simply fantastic. She should rise to the top on the speaker circuit, and I wish I had her as a client! Here is an excerpt:

Researchers of the future will need to be savvy business people first and researchers second.  The mantra “think like a business person act like a purveyor of information” will be the key to getting a seat at the table and keeping that seat. The skills to be a good researcher go way beyond data analysis. The researcher of the future will need to be a strategic and creative thinker, knowledge management guru, confident and most of all fearless and willing to go where no researcher has gone before and that’s just for starter.

That’s all for now, gotta fight Atlanta traffic to get to the conference. More to come later.