I'm finally back and caught up after ESOMAR Online Research 2009.  It was great to meet and hang out with fellow Twitter folks from the research industry, including @jhenning, @sawchuckMR, @duey23, @tomewing, @ZebraBites, @steveaugust, @katetribe, @shailibhatt (and many more...).  

I won't go into a full recap of the conference presentations, since Jeffrey Henning of Vovici (@jhenning) did a great job of that on Vovici's blog, but I will highlight a few of the takeaways I had during the conference...

• Research insights through social media can be harnessed...somehow - The feeling seems to be that consumer insights are out there just by mining through various blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, public communities, etc...  A few presentations even demonstrated how this has happened already.  However, judging by the questions from the audience about what kind of text mining software people are using, there seems to be little knowledge in the way of how exactly researchers go about capturing these insights.  Furthermore, many seem to question how they can use this unstructured feedback (and what value it actually provides to organizations), given that there is little understanding of who is really providing the feedback.  This seems to be true for both vendors and end-users of this information.  For example, during one social media-related presentation a researcher from John Deere stood up and told the crowd that his management wouldn't authorize spending on this type of research without some kind of clear return on investment.  It's this type of feedback that makes me think pure monitoring of social media (without some form of structured follow-up to identify the implications for a company's targeted segments) has a ways to go as an accepted research method.
• Web 2.0 is more than just hype - Admittedly, I was a bit surprised to see this on the conference agenda given that talk about Web 2.0 seems to be very "2006" to me...  However, Steve August, Tom Ewing and Anthony Hamelle did a great job given the topic, and the pecha kucha format was really entertaining.  I think Steve's presentation captured it well when he demonstrated the power of Web 2.0 to provide access to the 99% of life that occurs outside the research study (and used a great image/metaphor to really drive the point home). 
  
• MROCs are here to stay - Of most interest to me was the idea that MROCs are clearly here to stay.  However, the question now becomes how the industry adopts different approaches for using the methodology, and how we collectively define the best practices for running MROCs.  I heard a few people mention how the conversation around MROCs now mirrors much of what happened with panels years ago (and still continues to this day).  For example, one of the MROC presentations by Ray Poynter of the Future Place UK focused on how participants feel when they are participating in online research communities (which I'll be sure to blog about soon).  I was a bit surprised to see the "multi-client MROC" introduced as a "new" methodology in one presentation, given that this is something PluggedIN and other MROC vendors have been doing for a few years now.  However, the presentation highlighted the flexibility of the approach, and demonstrated how some vendors are really trying to push the limits of what you can do with a MROC.  For example, some companies are firmly taking MROCs in the direction of innovation and NPD, even labeling them as "Innovation Research Communities."
• Qualitative might be gaining more prominence in the industry - Maybe it's just the fact that they re-structured the Online Panel Conference to focus on more than just quantitative methods, but I got the sense that qual seems to be experiencing a bit of a surge in the industry, particularly since much of the unstructured feedback that occurs through social media is qualitative in nature.  At one point a conference attendee stood up and questioned how a shareholder in a research company can justify these types of investments given that qualitative represents such a small part of the overall industry... 
  

Admittedly, my takeaways are more from the perspective of a qual researcher.  There were also great presentations on surveys through mobile devices, online quality and survey standards.  All-in-all, it was a great conference that helped me (and many others there) get a much better grasp of what is happening in the online research realm. 

--Matt

@mattpluggedin