MRS 2011: A Conference In Miniatures
This is now at least three, possibly four, really good conferences in a row for the MRS - excellent work by the organisers. I’ve become enough of a conference circuit regular now to say confidently that this is my favourite event of the year.
Here’s a selection of notes, ideas, broad themes etc. I felt came out of the event. Obviously my choice of which panel or session to go to was very influenced by my own interests and what I was involved in, so this is very much not a ‘helicopter view’.
BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS: LOTS of talk about this. Nick Southgate’s session was one of the best, even though it didn’t really deliver on its promise of showcasing practical applications of behavioural economics. Only one of the three papers - about using BE in sustainable development - really dug into the topics. The other two were more about innovative research methods (Unilever and its data-collecting toothbrushes) and something more like kaizen than the application of theory from Birmingham Airport. But they were good case studies, and the variety helped the session more than hindered it. What I took out of this is that behavioural change is about controlling the decision context rather than trying to influence the decision directly.
THE GRANGE ST PAULS: This was a massive step up from the network-free, nuclear bunker venue of the last few years! It was a little smaller, and it felt a little smaller, but also busier and more vibrant - there were interesting things going on around every corner. And YOU COULD TWEET FROM IT - and people did, so if you weren’t in a session it was very easy to pick up the buzz from it.
TECHNOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR: In the last few years there has been a lot of excitement around new technological approaches to research - social media, mobile, neuromarketing. It seemed to me that at this conference the emphasis was a lot more on people and their behaviour - and technology was of interest only inasmuch as it enabled or disabled that. I’ve been on four “Online Communities” panels in a row (!) now at the MRS, and every year the topic becomes more grounded. In my first year the session had the feeling of frontier research, but this year the communities panel was probably one of the most “trad” events going - three data-heavy or case-study centred papers, very little theory. Mobile wasn’t represented at all, and the twitter buzz suggested the most engaging presentation in the Neuroscience panel was the relatively old-school look at Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Technology out, behaviour in? The excitement around behavioural economics and gaming seems to suggest so…
KEYNOTES: One of the things which really sets the MRS conference apart from rivals is its willingness to pick keynote speakers from outside the industry, who set a thematic tone for the conference and inspire the other speakers to theorise and intellectualise a bit more than researchers normally do. This year the start and end keynotes talked about innovation, trial and error, and trendspotting and the middle keynotes focused on fairness and intimacy. All four got an awful lot of discussion going. (I need to do a full post on Charles Leadbeter’s, certainly.)
OTHER RANDOM HIGHPOINTS!
- The marvellously simple agree/disagree round table workshop set up by Ayisha De Lanerolle: I will totally nick this format!
- Rachel Lawes explaining why a seal and a lion were not good animals to put on your toilet paper packaging.
- Building an imaginary city for Nike in the Brainjuicer games sesh, and sneaking in a male sauna called “The Sweat Shop”
- The “inspiring books” panel, a mix of the fascinating, the dippy and the passionate.
- The use of ROXETTE in the closing keynote
- The infographics gallery - terrific idea, even if the research biz hasn’t quite got the hang of them yet.
Well done all concerned!
