Archive for November, 2011

We find that Kristen is a great source of entertainment.   She is an endless stream of quotables.   Let us provide another example.

Early in the conference Kristen could be heard saying, “I am not presenting and I don’t care.”

Right.

That will be the day.

But Kristen made a quick recovery:    She reported that she will be presenting at the Best of ESOMAR in San Francisco, ESOMAR 3D, and on and on.   We are quite impressed and proud of our friend.   But when the day comes that she doesn’t care about presenting that will be a sad day indeed.   Let’s face it, she is a presentation junky.

ESOMAR picks the best venues, has the best dinner party, and has the most fanfare of any conference we attend.  The sessions can be memorable as well.   One in particular resonates with us.   The question from the audience related to a comment from a panel that stated that we had not worked from representative samples for a long time—thirty years.   Thus the audience member asked if being consistent didn’t hide possible changes in the underlying sample frame that might represent valuable changes in sentiment.   If in fact the predilection to purchase dropped but was stabilized by researchers seeking to have consistent data, when is it that the dangerous trend would be discovered?  The response from the panel was nothing less than, “In the sales data.”

A memorable comment indeed.   We suggest that it should be a rally cry for all researchers.  This came from a powerful end user who simply made it clear that what we do was of diminishing value as they would rather purchase data that might potentially mask a dangerous trend rather than pursue the collection of accurate data that would protect us all.

Our view is that the failure of the sample frame to be reflective of real changes in the data is our worst enemy.   Everytime an important trend is missed our credibility goes out with the numbers.

No analyst looking back on such an important oversight would blame the purchasing agent who wouldn’t pay for something short of excellence.

According to one of the travel guides the only thing in Amsterdam that is worse than the accumulated dog feces is the silent attack of thousands of bicycles.   Okay not thousands, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.   Everyone rides a bike there.   This doesn’t take your smartest statistician to figure out.   One bike parking garage alone, filled to capacity, seemingly boasted that it was limited to 3000 bikes.

The streets are clogged with them all chained together in bicycle chaos.   Some hang over the many bridges and others simply fall into the canals.   One lofty tour guide reported to us that some 100,000 bicycles are stolen and then dumped into the 2500 miles of canals every year.

Bicycles don’t have motors.   Silently they come upon you at break neck speeds.   Often they carry children in baskets.   The whole family is out there to get about town.    Seemingly, no pedestrian is safe as the bicycles come at you from every direction.   Yours truly was nearly part of three accidents on the first day or two.   Then you become wise.   You either rent a bike yourself and become part of the assailants themselves or you simply walk along clinging to protective devices like trees.  It’s a tough job but I’d rather cross the street at 42^nd and Broadway in Manhattan than brave a side street in Amsterdam.

…at least when we arrived at 5:00 in the morning on Saturday.   We had no idea where to go so we just walked.   The place looked as if a giant party had left the place in a glass, litter and foul mess.   It makes sense:  the place had not quite cleaned up after the happenings of the night before.   The garbage trucks had barely ventured out, probably discouraged by the slow rain and darkness.   Nothing was open for us to hide in and we had severe cases of jet lag.   There is nothing like a red eye from JFK to burn you out.   The buildings seemed to be swaying in the grim grey light.  Some leaned in to the street others side to side.   The canals were clogged with refuse.   We wanted to take the next plane out of there.

We struggled for hours trying to convince ourselves that we hadn’t made a huge mistake.   There was no place for us to have a warm breakfast.   There were lots of coffee shops (please don’t think Starbucks) but none were open.

The first breakfast appeared available around 9:30.  It all seemed like a nightmare. But after the sun rose and people started to appear and we did more exploring around the city, Amsterdam showed us what it was really all about.  It was a wonderful city!