IIEX West Recap: Key Takeaways with Margaret Mariani

Greenbook’s inaugural IIEX West brought together the insights community for two days of innovation, collaboration, and fresh perspectives on the future of the industry. In this special event recap, Karen Lynch is joined by Margaret Mariani to reflect on the highlights, standout sessions, and conversations that made the event memorable. They explore the growing convergence of market research, UX, CX, and data science, the evolving role of AI in research, and the importance of challenging traditional ways of thinking.

They also revisit key discussions on synthetic data, research methodologies, respondent quality, and practical innovation, along with highlights from the Insight Innovation Competition. Beyond the sessions and technology, they reflect on the collaborative spirit and community connections that made the first IIEX West such a standout event.

Key Discussion Points

• The Highlights of IIEX West: Reflections on the energy, venue, community connections, and collaborative spirit that made Greenbook’s first IIEX West event special, along with a look ahead to next year.
• The Convergence of the Insights Industry: How market research, UX, CX, and data science are breaking down traditional silos, creating new opportunities for collaboration and elevating the role of insights in organizational decision-making.
• Emerging Trends and Innovations in Research: Key takeaways from sessions exploring AI-powered research, synthetic data, AI moderation, practical applications of AI, and the importance of keeping human judgment in the research process.
• Rethinking the Future of Work and Research: Standout ideas from Microsoft, Space Doctors, Expedia, Airbnb, Applebee’s, and others on challenging assumptions, embracing new ways of working, and bringing more innovative thinking into organizations.
• Celebrating Industry Innovation and Community: Highlights from the Insight Innovation Competition, including the winners Datacy and Enlightn, emerging approaches to respondent recruitment and data quality, and the collaborative spirit among this year’s finalists.

Resources & Links

• Greenbook Insight Innovation Competition
• IIEX Events
• Datacy
• Enlightn

You can reach out to Margaret Mariani on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Margaret Mariani for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

[Karen Lynch] Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. This is a super special edition. I'm your host, Karen Lynch, as you know, and I'm excited to be debriefing our very first, our inaugural IIEX West with my partner in crime, my speaker scout, my lead co-chair, Margaret Mariani. Margaret, your first time joining me on the Greenbook Podcast. Welcome.

[Margaret Mariani] Thank you. Thank you. I'm a little bit nervous here and there, but excited to be here.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. For those of you who don't know, Margaret has been really busting her butt helping me across all of our events, really working to kind of find speakers, adding them to the funnel, recruiting some herself, hopping on the phone, really doing a lot behind the scenes to help me out since I am a programming team of one these days. And then coming to the events, getting live on stage with me and really filling in everywhere where I can't be because I certainly can't be everywhere. And if you go to any of these events, you know that I am pulled in many, many directions, which is why when it comes to debriefing the event, I have to do them with somebody else. And Margaret, you probably were able to get to a few more things than me to say the very least. So I'm excited to be debriefing this with you. I mean, can we just start off by saying what an amazing event?

[Margaret Mariani] It was so great. The energy. That was my biggest takeaway when I was going through my notes, like how many happy faces, how many new friends. It wasn't even just connections for business. I found friendships that were happening and, just, I mean, I don't know if it was the weather, if it was the water, but I think all of it together, that was really special along the way. 

[Karen Lynch] It was extraordinary. The venue that we found right on San Francisco Bay overlooking the Bay Bridge was spectacular. When you walked in, you just instantly had this sense of, oh, this is really on brand for us. This feels good. Everybody felt it. As soon as you walked in, it felt like because it was a cruise ship terminal that had been repurposed into our event space, it felt like the place where we could talk about innovation because we were using a space that was designed for a different purpose in a new way, which is sort of what disruptive thinking is all about. We were all a bit invigorated anyway. And yeah, there were people that had never been to an IIEX before. People were grateful that we brought our event to the West coast for the first time. People were like simmering with excitement, and gratitude, and the spirit of collaboration that we like so much. And it was palpable in the air. It was really cool, huh?

[Margaret Mariani] Absolutely. It was just great headspace, lots of smiles. And just, I mean, amazing weather. I mean, we got so lucky along the way, eating outside, we had food trucks outside both days and people were just hanging out at picnic benches with new people. It was really spectacular. And already a lot of folks already can't wait until the next one. So, can't wait until next year.

[Karen Lynch] So, spoiler alert, there will be one next year. We will be announcing the dates probably pretty soon, as soon as we sign that contract. So, um, just, you know, we will do it again. We will do it again. So if you have FOMO, at this point, don't worry, it'll happen again. We're really excited. And if you want to speak, stay tuned for the call for speakers when that comes out in a couple of months. As soon as we wrap this up, we're going to be switching all of our focus to not just our APAC event, but of course, North America and Europe as well. But yeah, let's, let's share with everybody what we learned at this particular event, because there was a lot, we have a lot of key takeaways and I figured I'd share one and then you can either build on it or share another. But, you know, one of the ones that I want to share, I actually saw on LinkedIn this morning. Margaret and I both flew back… Full disclosure: we are recording this on October 30th, kind of two days after the event. We flew home on October 29th, the day after the event, to record this as soon as possible so that we can get it in production. And it is going to be airing on, I think Emma just said November 9th, right? So, it'll be turned around for our next launch date. But I'm scouring LinkedIn. I'm checking out other people's debriefs of the event. I love when people do that, but Alexandra Frankel, who is the founder at a company called Autograph, who I did not meet on site, although based on what she's sharing on LinkedIn, I wish I really had talked to her. Her LinkedIn post says, "Thank you Greenbook for bringing the AI-forward Insights community together in an incredible venue (pictured).” She shares this beautiful picture, which spectacular. I agree. Her key takeaway from the event: everything is blending, AI, and human, and quant, and qual, and MRX, and UX, and research, and data science. And I thought, yes, we felt that, right? We felt the convergence of all of these disciplines, not only people talking about the blending of market research, and UX. and CX, et cetera, et cetera, and AI, and data science, and decision-making, breaking down of silos, figuring out how different functions can collaborate. There was this blending, intentional blending, new ways of doing business, new platforms designed to do business that way. And that, I think, her key takeaway was one of my key takeaways. I don't know if you picked up on that as well.

[Margaret Mariani] I mean, that's one of my biggest one. We had Mirena and Linda at Expedia sharing, breaking down the silos and they, I even took it, they did a hashtag standing sync where they had a standing sync moment and that's how two different departments, supported by two different groups, marketing and product design, living on different floors. And then they created this bridge together and they watered it. They showed all these great imageries and stuff, but they had a standing sync. And now they brought in different insight departments to come in as a collective, to come with one point of view, especially in these larger strategic initiatives, which just elevates insights into a higher, just a louder voice. Then we had Maya who kicked off our entire event.

[Karen Lynch] Exactly.

[Margaret Mariani] She was great. And she talked about how UX, CX, MR, everyone just speaks a slightly different dialect, but we're saying very similar things and how that's starting to converge. And that human is still in the middle of all these choice making decisions that exist.

[Karen Lynch] So, it’s funny. Hers was called Beyond the Title: Building Bridges Across Insights. And I wish I had made the connection in that moment about all these building bridges across these different pillars and all that with the bridge that we were looking at out there. That would have been a genius way to wrap up the event.

[Margaret Mariani] I didn't get it until you said it right now. I was like, yeah that’s really good actually.

[Karen Lynch] That would have been a great “aha,” but that's what happens. Sometimes you need things to simmer over two days. But yes, the metaphor of the bridge. So everybody remember the bridge that we were looking at and remember how important it is to build those bridges that Maya kicked us off with. Maya actually was somebody that I had talked to pre research and pre event. She was somebody that I had talked to a year and a half ago when the event was a simmer of an idea. She was somebody I had conducted research with to say, let's talk about whether we should even do this event in the first place. So, she was part of my inspiration for whether we should even bring the event to the West coast. So, she was the first person I spoke to when we decided to bring the event out there. And I said, okay, we're doing this based on your input. We've designed this event largely with this qualitative research that we had done in advance. We've designed it largely based on that feedback. Would you like to speak at it? And she said yes. And then we ultimately put her in the lead spot. So, thank you, Maya.

[Margaret Mariani] Thank you, Maya. You’re awesome. Perfect way to kick us off.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's another theme that you picked up on Margaret?

[Margaret Mariani] I had in here too, let’s see, just practical ideas people could bring actually back into the office right away, like just tangible things. Sabrina at NETGEAR talked about this librarian. She is a team of one and she built a librarian using AI and kind of unveiled a little bit about how she did it and gave people those tools to kind of go back and start doing that internally. Then we also had Susan over at Airbnb, Susan Blank, who talked about, this is so cool for me because Miro, and Figma, and other co-collaborative tools, not with consumers necessarily, but with your internal stakeholders along any research process and how she literally broke it down step-by-step and which points of the process she uses these tools and how she does it. And I thought that was great. And I know when we spoke a little earlier, Karen, you really mentioned the Space Doctors and Microsoft as well, sharing that kind of framework. And I thought this framework as well about rethinking not just AI as what do you do, but what is the impact overall, like true frameworks we could be using already in the office.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. So let's hover on that space doctors talk because it's how the event wrapped. And it was one of those talks that will stay with me a long time, largely because it was the most provocative I think of all of the talks. I'm really glad we ended with it. I hope that the people that were sitting there take some of these questions with them and mull them around. And let me give you an example. What they did, so this was Jordana Young from Microsoft and Julius Colwyn from Space Doctors, they partner together and they do this kind of innovative thinking, this sort of practice where they take an assumption. And one example that they used was everyone needs a clearly defined role. And I mean, that's an assumption I've had. In the workplace, if you don't have clearly defined roles and responsibilities, that causes a lot of workplace tension. Everybody needs to understand exactly what's expected of them for, you know, good work performance. Anyway, that's an assumption that I have in the workplace that I think a lot of us do. Well, what happens when scaled with AI? So AI comes in, disrupts that and then roles start to blur, right?m So, engineers can design, designers can code, output increases, but quality stagnates. So, then there's a “what if,” and that's where we're questioning our assumptions because AI gets involved, right? So, what if roles start to be defined differently, right? What if roles were defined around judgment and accountability with shared quality standards across disciplines? And all of the sudden you say to yourself, hold up, we're going to redefine roles. What if? What if roles were not defined the same way they've always been with the same types of job titles? And that's where I think, you know, you have the big “ahas.” What if we do things differently now that AI is on the scene and we stop using the same packages that we've always had.

[Margaret Mariani] …mode of thinking because they talked about how the value of productivity is going to be redefined and there's a detention in that. So, it's not just about what if assumptions, it is a cultural reality, so you need to rethink things differently.So ,coming back with that mindset is really, I just think powerful. Yeah.

[Karen Lynch] The value of everything that we're doing is shifting and the value that we get from AI is shifting. Therefore test and check all of your assumptions and find the new opportunities. So, perfect way to end an event like this. But we get ahead of ourselves. Let's get back into some of it. Obviously we talked a lot about, it was hard to avoid AI, right? It's everywhere. And, you know, you and I kind of whispered in each other's ear, I think during that last track, about how many people say, oh, there's so much AI and look, yes, there is so much AI, but we’re not the only industry where there's so much AI. AI is, yes, it is the new way of working. And so, there are people that are still doing research without AI, but…

[Margaret Mariani] I don't know who is. Like, I think we all are at some capacity.

[Karen Lynch] We're using AI in some capacity. We may not be using AI research tools, but we are using AI in our workflows. Right? So, I don't understand necessarily, the mindset of somebody who is resistant to where AI is showing up in our work right now, because it is baked in at this point.

[Margaret Mariani] It's baked, and it's real, and it's coming in in different ways. I think there's a lot of efficiencies of AI. I think we talked a lot about the pro just, I guess the boundary points or like how far people could take it at the place that exists. Vera at Warner Bros. was awesome as well, because she shared using AI to produce creative stimuli so they can go and test some scenarios. And this was for middle market America storytelling to figure out kind of where stories for Warner Bros. in the future could go and for which of their properties would it make sense. So, big strategic decisions. But my favorite part of technology and where that's heading, and this is as someone who's a Polish American and, you know, would watch English movies in Poland, and the lips never matched up with the words. And there's a visual dubbing now, which you can take someone's like… there was a Swedish film that she showed and the lips actually matched the dub, which that to me was mind blowing. I know that doesn't have to do completely with research, but that is stimuli that's going out into the marketplace and you can get a different kind of read on things as well, more on the content. Yeah, so it's everywhere. But I mean, AI with quant too, I think was something that came up, which I found really fascinating being in the facilitation space more, you always hear AI moderated, you know, moderators or AI moderators, but now it's also an AI in quant and looking at max diff and a lot of different factors in that space. And that looks like it has a lot of potential as well.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. Yeah. And certainly we'll talk about the AI moderated qual in a minute because that was a big, and, you know, we had a lot of vendors that are in that space. But I do want to shout out Flavia Stoian from Candescent who kicked off day two with building her AI native insights function. That was a really interesting talk, again, morning of day two. Just really interesting to see because it's a new startup, Candescent is a new startup. They'd never done it any other way. So, super interesting for kind of legacy companies to look at how somebody who's never done it any other way is starting it today. And I think there are some great lessons in that and something for all of us to think about as more and more startups are joining, you know, the world of CPG, or finance or, anything else they're starting from scratch with today's tools and it's like a whole new world, right?

[Margaret Mariani] She said a great line that I wrote down, but she says it's become a natural part of how we work, that AI. And I was like, yeah, I mean, that's just the way it is. And now it's just finding the most effective way for it to be the most natural extension of how we work. It's not replacing us. It's just how we work.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. And I would be a poor kind of facilitator of this conversation talking about AI if we didn't hover for just a hot second on your interview with Cici at TikTok.

[Margaret Mariani] Yeah, both the fireside chats were so much fun.

[Karen Lynch] Let's talk about CiCi's first because we saw what's happening in the world of influencing retail purchases with AI creation in social platforms and how influencers are really using AI to, um…

[Margaret Mariani] Develop creative.

[Karen Lynch] Develop creative and changing kind of the rules of retail.

[Margaret Mariani] Yeah. And one of my biggest takeaways from her, too, is just the process of retail, right? That purchase funnel we're so familiar with all lives in one space. Like you do everything from discovery to convergence all in a matter of moments. That's insane. It's true. But when you do it, you're not thinking about it, but that's what really, as a creator, and she works a lot with agencies and creators, that's what you have to think about from a journey perspective. It's in a moment, you have to capture all these touch points along the journey. And yeah, she's using AI a lot. I mean, that one example she shared of that man and woman was pushing AI like as far as it could be, but that's where it's headed. We're just scratching the surface.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. Yeah. What was interesting about that… this probably is speaking specifically to the people that were there and saw that video clip that she shared that CiCi shared… as I was watching it and I was thinking to myself, oh, it's so obviously AI, I was still getting sucked into the story. And I found that the most interesting thing is that I was like, oh, it's so AI. I'm drawn into the story and I'm trying to see where it goes. And I'm thinking to myself, is he good? Is he bad? Are they in a relationship? And I'm like, wow, I'm getting vested in the characters, even though I know they're AI. I found my reaction to the AI story fascinating.

[Margaret Mariani] That is really interesting because it was blatantly obvious they were AI facial features and stuff, but the storytelling part, yeah. I'm with you. And this is, again, just the very beginning of it along the way.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about the other fireside chat you did, and then we'll get back into any other themes and we still have so much more to talk about. And here we are like 20 minutes in. I really do want to talk about your interview about the challenger mindset.

[Margaret Mariani] Yeah. With Jinghuan Liu From Applebee's. She was amazing. One of my favorites, I mean, just so cool. And I love a challenger mindset just from my agency days. I've worked on so many challenger brands and they're just so much fun. How much fun is it to take down the big guy? Like, you know, David and Goliath. But all around this challenger mindset, being curiosity driven which we hear often, I think at IIEX. That is something that is really special about our collective community. We, I say this lovingly, we're a bunch of nerds in the best way possible. And that's one of my favorite things about us and me, but we are also so darn curious. So I think we all kind of have a little bit of a challenger mindset DNA just being in this space. But I loved… she's also a runner and a long distance runner, and having this kind of very disciplined approach to a challenger mindset where she taught… and it had me kind of reexamine and rethink my deliverables, even as a human is kind of like making sure that you produce the same thing every week or every month. And that you kind of are collectively, you're just getting better and better and better, but you're just delivering on that promise. So, she was fantastic. I mean, I was doing it, so it was kind of in the moment, but what did you hear just kind of on the opposite end?

[Karen Lynch] No, just that, you know, what was inspiring about it was the dedication to the goal and the hard work and commitment towards getting there, and kind of the inspiration for the team, and the drive, and the determination. I felt the fire that she was kind of putting into all of that work. And that's what really my big takeaway was, was sort of like, wow, that is like inspiring her whole team. I felt like there was a passion that I could feel it. I could feel it, you know, in what she was saying and what I'm sure must simmer up in the workplace.

[Margaret Mariani] It's definitely a culture at Applebee’s, something that she passionately kind of is, I think a touch point on. The other big thing for me, for her conversation, thinking about a challenger mindset is I love that they don't have a ton of money to do research, right? Just, I mean, just to do new research. So she talked about it as finding insights, finding data and stories along the edges of existing data. So really kind of diving in, seeing, trying to find things to uncover. And just reminded me a lot of like, even when I worked on Audi many moons ago, we worked on this A3 launch and we had to find nuggets in just whatever we had. And she just kind of reminded me of that. And I'm like, you really do, you work with what you have and you make it work so much harder, and you just really just try to find some gold in everything you have.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. I really want to talk about the round tables. Are there other big themes?

[Margaret Mariani] My other big theme is FOMO. Karen, I miss so much. So, I apologize to everyone, everyone’s name I haven't mentioned. There were so many, and I saw so many faces and like, oh my God, I wanted to go see your thing. I'm so sorry. So, I miss so many because I can only be in so many places at once. And part of IIEX and being live and not having them all recorded and shared, it's just kind of why you have to be there along the way, I guess.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. I should say there was quite a bit about synthetic data and where we are with it. That much I do know. And I've seen some write-ups about it as well. You know, obviously synthetic is there, it's happening. And, you know, the technology is just getting stronger and stronger. It's a really big deal. And then I did just see, you know, other people talking about it. There's somebody who posted, a woman named Gina Robello, who is, you know, just on LinkedIn, her kind of takeaway is talking about, you know, AI augmentation, but not replacing, you know, kind of humans in the loop. So that idea is still out there. Like AI is a part of it. I'm sure, you know, synthetic is on here. It's great for exploring, but it's not a replacement. So we're still holding onto that, you know, like AI, synthetic, real, obviously you and I talked about it…

[Margaret Mariani] For certain projects and then those big strategic ones, people are like, we can't, we have to do our more traditional methodologies.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. Her takeaway was NETGEAR and SAP both showed AI librarians are in place to trace every answer back to its source. So, your past research is, you know, an asset that's being used and needs to be, you know, findable. So, thank you, Gina, for finding those things for Margaret and I because I wasn't at those two talks. So, I appreciate that. But we really do need to talk about AI moderation, right? So, we had our title sponsor, Listen.

[Margaret Mariani] That’s where I got my hat, by the way.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah, that’s the hat. Researching the hat. We had Outset on the premises and we had Conveo on premises and, you know, we have other kind of AI tools, AI native tools that have, you know, video research, which is sort of a type of qual, even if it's not necessarily moderation, you know, some qualitative content, some qualitative type research…

[Margaret Mariani] Some social media listening that’s now incorporating AI into it.

[Karen Lynch] So, using kind of AI analysis, you know, paired with some qualitative methods. Google’s using it with Listen and other… I think it was Knit was up there with…

[Margaret Mariani] With Flex, right?

[Karen Lynch] Yes, with Flex. I think that what we're seeing with that is it's gaining traction. It's adding flexibility. It's freeing up time for strategy. It is a tool that is scalable. It's adding speed. And yes, there's still humans in the loop. These aren't replacements, but they are very viable methodologies, and the tools are good.

[Margaret Mariani] Naomi at Google said this, and it was in our session with Listen Labs, specifically. And it was around the kind of fast research and how these methodologies allow for quickness and speed, right? Which just is what it is. But she specifically said faster research lets her and her team say yes to more questions.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. Yeah. Great quote.

[Margaret Mariani] So, there’s a spot and a place for this kind of methodology, more AI powered. And then there's that also by her saying yes, opens the door and space for those bigger, not bigger, but deeper, in-depth questions that require more human, less AI. And that, I thought, was interesting from a bandwidth perspective as a department and as a resource that is going to, I mean, who doesn't want to be part of an organization where like, no, yeah, I can help you. I can help you. Let me get this pulled. It's from more AI powered, but then we get bigger things along the way, bigger asks.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. I think what's important for… the audience knows my background in qualitative research. The audience doesn't know your background in qualitative research, although you also have your sprinkling of strategy on top of it. So you're, I would say probably hybrid because you're also a strategist. But I also want to segue into our round tables with the amazing qualitative researchers and some strategists as well, but the qualitative researchers that facilitated those round tables, because they were a hot commodity. Full tables both days. 16 topics. And those topics ranged from… let me pull them up. We had topics on day one, you know, we had beyond NPS, we had data quality topics. We had research ops. We had the startup mentality. We had UX and MRX convergence. We had AI ethics and governance, behavioral economics, you know, customer experience design. I mean, storytelling, we had 16 different topics. The tables were packed each day, full, full tables. Next year we're going to have to make tables bigger. Moderated, not sponsored. They were a big hit. We're so glad we brought those back again.

[Margaret Mariani] I mean, IIEX, the thing that I love about this or, you know, this kind of offering from Greenbook is it's an exchange. It’s in the name. And this was truly like brought to life. It was the embodiment of that word. So, it was so cool just to see how people were just… there were no PowerPoints, no slides, people had pen and paper, were talking, were just engaging with one another and exchanging ideas. So, it was really refreshing and it kind of grew almost from day one to day two. I felt like it was even more packed, but it was awesome to see. Really cool.

[Karen Lynch] It was amazing. Yeah. So, thanks to all of you who stepped up to that ask when I asked people to step in for that. I'm really quite happy and pleased with all of you. And I'm grateful that you all said yes. So, thank you for that. We have to talk about the competition, but what else, before we do some of that, what else, what else, what else, what are we missing in our recap here?

[Margaret Mariani] Oh, huge. Andrew at Eli Lilly.

[Karen Lynch] I can't believe it. You even reminded me that we had to do that. And I forgot yet again. Okay. Uh, how do I even begin to recap this?

[Margaret Mariani] It's something I could never do. That's my recap. It was incredible guys. Just absolutely incredible.

[Karen Lynch] You know, before we got on, I even pulled it back up and now I've closed that tab. So, I can't look at it again. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Andrew Embry from Eli Lilly. Amazing researcher, by the way, innovative thinker, spoken word poet. So, we will have the link. We will be sharing it. We videotaped, I went to Jay Tye, we have our own videographer, but I went up to Jay Tye at 10k humans, who's been doing these video interviews that you've probably seen all over LinkedIn. We have a partnership with them. And I said, Jay, you're going to need to put a mic on Andrew and record what he's about to do for us. And he goes sort of was like, why? And I'm like, you're just going to have to trust me on this one. So, he, you know, propped up his mic front and center and he was blown away. Andrew launched into a spoken word poem. Now, he and I talked about this back prior to North America, knew it was coming, looked at a few different iterations of this poem. I knew it was coming. I heard the drafts. I knew it was coming, but what I didn't see was the performance of it, so I had only heard the audio clips. So, what a mic drop way to start a day. It was all about the future of, and you know, who the future is for…

[Margaret Mariani] And how we're a part of the future and just the definition of that. But the delivery. Yeah. Karen, I mean, just the delivery with kind of this beat of the spoken word to the action. And I mean, it was so cool. So powerful. And the word I just keep using is ballsy because there's no way I could ever, I don't think I could ever do that. 

[Karen Lynch] Amazing. And to paraphrase… oh, I found it. You know, the future belongs to the dreamers, the builders, the thinkers, the experimenters, the brave, the leaders, and then fast forward, the future belongs to people like you, the future belongs to us. You know, goosebumps. Like it was amazing

[Margaret Mariani] And perfect for Greenbook because you guys are all about the future of insights and future. So, it was perfect.

[Karen Lynch] I mean, just really the thought leaders in our industry and the people with a growth mindset. Oh! Growth mindset. The trees, can I talk about the trees?

[Margaret Mariani] The trees! I can't believe I didn't even bring that up when we were talking about stuff earlier, our forest, the Greenbook forest.

[Karen Lynch] I mean, the thing about this event is I feel like this event reached like the epitome of what IIEX is. And it just all came together. And now is sort of like a gold standard for us. And I think everybody there felt that. There's an organization called EcoMatcher that Bernice Klaassen brought to our attention and they plant trees on behalf of individuals. And so they came to us with this opportunity for us to plant trees. Well, we didn't do the planting, to have trees planted for each individual that registered for this event. So we now have a Greenbook forest in Guatemala with 600 trees planted. And each attendee got an email with a link where they can click to see their tree that was planted. We each have one. It's sort of like, remember when there was this period of time where you could you know, buy a star and you could name your star, or you could like buy a cow somewhere or a goat or, you know, something. Anyway. So, we all have trees. You can go in and name your tree. I have a cute little pine tree in the forest.

[Margaret Mariani] And you can see our farmer too, and the community that it's impacting as well, because it's helping us globally, but also locally.

[Karen Lynch] It’s called the Greenbook forest, so we now have 600 trees in the Greenbook forest to kind of help offset the impact of deforestation in the area. And anyway, we're in conversation to see if we can scale that up because we really would love to see this Greenbook forest grow. So, while you are growing, all of you with a growth mindset, while you are growing your knowledge, and your toolbox, and your network and all of the IIEX events, we are hopefully going to keep growing this forest. And we are so grateful that that's going on. Really, I mean, every now and then I am moved to tears at our event and that was that.

[Margaret Mariani] And that's big for me too. Like when we're talking with folks and asking them, hey, you want to speak? And folks are like, what do you, what can I speak about? These are great examples. Andrew, he just used one of his hidden talents and shared it with us. You know, this idea came from someone as well. If there's an idea you have, please share it with myself, with Karen. Don't ever think like there's no topic. There is. I'm telling you somewhere in your Rolodex of yourself and your own personal life. There's something that everybody wants to hear about along the way. And that's what makes these things really special.

[Karen Lynch] Yep. Because innovation is all about new thinking. And we have open minds. All right. So, before our competition kicked off, we did a panel with what happens after you win. I just want to shout out to the five winners from the past five years at North America, specifically, because Electric Twin, again, I think they were on site, but they didn't have their CEO and founder or their CEO and/or founder there. But we had Dana Kim from Highlight, and Andi Govindia from Riviter, and Alfred Wahlforss from Listen Labs, and Rashed Chowdhury from Orchard Insights, and Ange Taylor from AddMaple. I was able to sit all five of them down and talk about kind of their founder or CEO journey since their win and they shared, you know, little nuggets. We'll probably be writing an article about that because there are way too many sound bites to capture than just this debrief could handle, but it's all about, you know, what winning the award kind of empowered them to do. How they all are in a different place, you know, challenges that you face, but really how you overcome them and really how it fueled them on. So, that kicked off, then we went into the competition and we had five amazing startups share, you know, they have five minutes to pitch their company. And so, we had Katy Yates from Datacy, Adrien Vermeirsch from Enlightn. We had Judith Rose from EXPLNERS, Robert Tinterov from PriceAgent, and Theodore Sofianos from TestCartAI. So, they all had their five minutes and, you know, I am strict, you know, five minutes. And when it's time, I simply say it's time, or that's time. And I end it. And then one of three things happens. There's crowdsource voting for the Audience Favorite Award. The judges who sifted through all the applicants to whittle it down to the five finalists, they cast their final vote. The ones who are on site cast their final vote. The judges that are not on site had already cast it for their one out of… once they realized who the top five were. And then Greenbook, at the end of day one, we go behind closed doors. The Greenbook leadership team goes behind closed doors and we choose who we believe is for the Industry Impact Award. And so everybody's looking for something different, right? The audience is looking for kind of the company that resonated the most with them. The experts are looking for kind of a scalable solution, something that they think is ready to go to market, something that they think, you know, is worthy of potentially investment or something that the market itself is really going to be looking for. Kind of almost like a financial viability standpoint. And then what we're looking for on the Greenbook leadership team is… because we're tapped into, you know, kind of the industry and the trends and the challenges, we're looking for something that really is addressing an industry need, you know, what is something that we are highly aware of and pain points. Yeah. Pain points and a gap, something that needs to be looked to. And it has happened that we've introduced the three awards this year. So, at both North America and Europe, there were two winners across the three awards. So, this event was no different. Datacy won two out of the three. They won both the Experts Choice Award and the Audience Favorite Award. So look up Datacy.com. They are a solution for measuring and optimizing today's customer journey all the way from discovery to decision. So, it’s kind of a cool customer journey platform. Check it out. And again, it resonated, Katy did a stellar job resonating with both the audience and also the experts. So, hats off to them. You will be hearing more from them, I'm sure. And then Greenbook in our powwow, we went with the company Enlightn because it was a big innovation in the way we get to respondents. It's not the same sort of way of getting to a panel where we recruit from. It's a different way of getting to respondents, a whole new way of getting to the individuals who go into studies. It's kind of a verified model where people come in in a different way. It's almost like reverse engineering. It's a different way of engineering the people that come into our studies.

[Margaret Mariani] Isn’t it first like hand raisers, they go out and find folks.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. And it's a different kind of profiled quality check matched to your study as opposed to like anonymous traffic into your study.

[Margaret Mariani] Correct.

[Karen Lynch] It's a completely different innovation in the world of recruiting that we've not yet seen.

[Margaret Mariani] That’s so needed.

[Karen Lynch] So needed. As opposed to the current solutions for quality, which we need these quality solutions, the current solutions are quality checks on who's been, you know, kind of fed and pushed in.

[Margaret Mariani] Yeah.

[Karen Lynch] This is a whole different way of getting at them. So, we recognize that we desperately need to bring trust to the equation because we've broken some trust. So that's why we, yeah.

[Margaret Mariani] And freshness, like it was so cool. I can't wait to check them out even further. Yeah.

[Karen Lynch] So, yeah. So, those were the winners of the competition. So, really fun to see what they're doing. And I just want to point out something that happened, which was both a surprise and part of the unique spirit that we saw at this event. This was the first of the three events, and I hope this is a trend that we see, and maybe we can encourage, maybe we can foster it, but after the winners were announced, you know, Katy comes back up to get the grand prize, the big check. And then they all came up on stage for a group photo, even those who hadn't won anything, without really being asked to. They just naturally came up as a cohort for a photo with Katy. It just touched me in a way I hadn't seen that before. Mostly people had kind of milled away and, you know, let the winners kind of team come up. But I think they also knew that Katy was there alone. And they just showed up to support her.

[Margaret Mariani] I didn’t even know that. It felt so natural when I watched it. I was one of the ones taking photos down below.

[Karen Lynch] Who would have known that that didn't happen at North America or Europe. And I'm not saying that the other companies at North America and Europe wouldn't have, if asked, I believe they would have.

[Margaret Mariani] It was just the spirit.

[Karen Lynch] It was just the spirit of IIEX West was so open, and collaborative, and supportive. It was the first time it really felt like a cohort. And to the point where now I want to bake that in now, I want to kind of say, here's what we would like to see happen. And almost foster this cohort feeling of lean on each other, moving forward, you guys really support each other because…

[Margaret Mariani] I love that word. It's like the cohort of what are we in 2026.

[Karen Lynch] Europe, 2026. Like just really, it was really nice to see. So, you know, that's what makes them all winners in my book. It was really amazing to see.

[Margaret Mariani] We always need supporters along the way, someone to call on this journey, whatever part of the journey, whatever challenges. If you grow really fast, or slow, or whatever happens. Long marathon. So, that cohort idea is so powerful.

[Karen Lynch] Yeah. Cool. Very cool.

[Margaret Mariani] But again, the energy and the spirit of West, that was like the… and what we started off with, it was so incredibly special. And that was like the first thing I wrote down and just, I mean, there are no words. It was just a feeling and it was really special to see and feel.

[Karen Lynch] It was. Well, and part of it being so special, Margaret, was having you there. So, thank you for joining us and being a part of this team.

[Margaret Mariani] Of course. Thank you, Karen, for having me.

[Karen Lynch] Well, and thank you for this debrief. Really, you are the right person for that job. So, I’m so glad.

[Margaret Mariani] Well, I wish I went to everyone's session. If somebody can duplicate myself and Karen so it allows us to go to all the tracks, that would be amazing.

[Karen Lynch] Seriously, if I… you know, we never say never, right. But I'm pretty sure everybody who was at that event knows how badly I wish I could be cloned at this event, because I really do need to be in six places at once. So anyway, thank you to everybody. Thank you everybody who attended, who sponsored and exhibited, or spoke, thank you to everybody who made the event the success it was really appreciate it.

[Margaret Mariani] And thank you, Karen, for kind of leading us all there.

[Karen Lynch] You're very welcome. You're very welcome. Well, that's our show. That's our show. Thanks again, Margaret.

[Margaret Mariani] Thanks. Bye guys.

[Karen Lynch] I want to thank you, Emma, for always being, you know, the producer that you are. I really appreciate it. Thank you to Big Bad Audio for doing what you do. And then all of our listeners, whether you were at IIEX West or not, we will see you next time on the Greenbook Podcast. Take care. Bye-bye.