Vivid/Heartbeat Trends Presentation 25 September

Went to this great session today organised for clients by market research consultants Heartbeat Trends and Vivid. The session was looking at trends based on both quantitative and qualitative research. Here are my notes.

Heartbeat Trends What's Next Study:

• Gen X and Gen Y are different – can't speak to them all the same
  
• Kidfluence: Gen X often lumped together but in reality are very different, by 2011 most couples will not have children
  
• Better to divide those with kids and those without – as are vastly different, cannot target both using the same strategy
  
• Glass wall dividing work and family will break as employers need to recognise that their male workers are active fathers
  
• Division between work and family life is striking fatheres and they are starting to think more like mothers in regards to kids, esp. when at work
  
• Little Emperors: people say they want big families, but what they want to provide means they really can only have one child and therefore this new generatioon will be even more spoiled. Single child families are on the rise, these kids will be a more driven, confident and empowered generation than today's kids. Current Gen Y will be nothing compared to little emperors! I want it and I want it now
  
• Future of health: discontent with healthcare system, expectation that they will be treated straight away – no waiting
  
• Future food: a lot more people are growing their own food in order to feel connected to the earth, accessible gardens will be on the rise, local green grocers – people are really thinking about where food comes from and where food does not come from
  
• Green is good: everyone doing something and all have inconsistencies in their behaviour, the water issue has galvanised Australians, parents are the most passionate of all and want to instil in their kids responsible behaviour and understanding
  
• Most people are doing something, e.g. 66% of Victorian households are composting and vast majority of Australians are recycling, people can name what they're doing, however are they really? The next study will look at actual behaviour
  

Heartbeat Trends Gen Y Living Needs Study:

• Live in a very secular society
  
• Affiliation beyond inner circle – adults (Boomers etc) fear that language is being lost and the way Gen Y communicates is not real communication. For Gen Y it's about true communication in different forms. Need to remember that language has always and is always changing and will continue to do so
  
• E-filliation: Gen Y have affiliation 24/7 and is borderless, are emotionally powerful relationships, less guarded and more open in communication as won't see them face-to-face so feel comfortable doing this. Works in active and passive ways, in passive way remind Gen y that they are affiliated, confirmation that someone cares even if just a text message notification. It is quantity not quality that counts
  
• Easy friendships, online connections
  
• Questing (philanthropy) behaviour, armchair activism, support social issues
  
• Status: influence of American culture, look at change in the TV show 90201 – when it was on 10 (??) years ago it was an aspirational show, now it seems we can all live like that now; Gen Y a conspicuous generation, a move away from Australians egalitarian value – more hedonistic
  
• Release: an antidote, explosive release –vent frustrations and lose control. The "Soprano Syndrome" – kind of cool with a great lifestyle. They can be quite violnet
  
• What are their media choices?? Are pushing the boundaries to extremes. They love programs that push buttons on social sensitivities (Family Guy, South Park are examples of this)
  
• Constantly change and they are are masters of change
  

Heartbeat Trends New Women Clutterbuster Study:

• What is cutting through all the advertising for women?
  
• Let your guard down: women are sceptical about claims and very savvy and don't take it as face value. They love catalogues, therefore should be more magazine-like, women find them a compelling medium and soemthing they take ythe tim to read, are doing these behaviours online at Lasoo.com where you can search and compare catalogues, they want to beat retailers at their own game
  
• Engage in permission marketing: Brand Power® style is what they want
  
• News sells – if you have genuine news they will listen, cut to the chase (don't like Zoot Review® ads for example as not "authentic")
  
• Advice from a friend – word of mouth is a powerful influence on women, they now regard Sally from Brand Power® as dependable advice, not pushing and likeable, friendly, approachable (Lesson: choose a celebrity this way – someone that people feel if you run across them in the street they'll stop for a chat. They like nice people)
  
• Drop their guard when they are not the obvious target for the ad
  
• Love seeing active and involved men in advertising
  
• Family time: let go and make us laugh, ads should show us having fun as families and being together
  
• Family life is seldom perfect and should be shown as such in ads, women like to see "aspirational reality", need to show the mess, like to see stuff-ups and imperfections. The IKEA and Cottee's cordial ads were cited as good examples of this
  
• Inclusivity: single parents are the biggest minority in Australia and they turn off when seeing the "perfect family" in ads as it's not them
  
• Moral compass: they have strong moral values. However, don't want TV junk food ads banned as they see managing that issue as their role as mothers, the one area they did want looked at was over-sexualisation of children and body image
  

And that's when I had to leave – fantastic session guys!

Open Government: Future Trends

Went to this great talk/discussion on Friday with the folks from Cisco and assorted others. Richard Allan, the Director of Government Affairs, Cisco UK, spoke about his experiences and where open government is and may be going in the UK. The major points/links I took from his talk were:

• Using screen scraping tools to re-purpose government data – this is how TheyWorkForYou started, using already available data in a more user-friendly format. Interestingly UK MPs now link to this site from their own websites as it's become so useful. There is an Australian version of this in Beta – check it out at OpenAustralia. Richard also gave other examples of people developing tools that use other sites, such as the LA Public Library feeding off Amazon so that you can run a tool while searching a book on Amazon to see if the public library has it instead. Richard stated that these types of applications are developed as people (often activists) aren't satisfied with what is available so go off and create their own portals and apps.
  
• Directionlessgovernment website – scapes both the "official" government portal and Google to demonstrate who gives better search results (try searching on pensions as Richard demonstrated and see what it returns!)
  
• Governments should provide re-usable data, not websites – this is something we have been talking about at the Museum with our website rebuild – seeing it as a platform for others to use and re-purpose rather than a static website of information from Museum to user.
  
• UK Civil Service online participation guidelines – these are really straightforward and sensible (note I used the directionless site and got straight there using the Google link not the UK gov portal link!). We've has some discussions on this issue in the museum sector, so great to see these, which will help our museum in particular as we're developing something similar for staff here.
  
• Other sites: netmums a large online information and sharing network; ratemycop where you can search for and upload information about police officers (love their tagline You have the right to remain informed!).
  

Here's the links I promised to send to people – seems easier to post them here for all to share:

• Museums and Web Paper I co-authored reporting on several Museum studies of online behaviour, has data from an survey I did about what Australians were doing online and the qualitative follow-up studies
  
• Our Dinosaurs Fan page on Facebook – this is where I uploaded the feedback I was getting from two groups we were working with
  
• Thoughts on web trends post
  
• Paper about museums using Facebook to communicate with their members
  
• Paper summarising the Brooklyn Museum's approach to social media and the web
  
• Frankie Roberto's paper where he gathered museum data via an FOI request and re-purposed it – Richard, Frankie is a cool guy and worth talking to when you get back home. Frankie works at the Science Museum and his blog is useful too
  
• Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's (TMAG) Facebook page and TMAGgots group – just a small taste of what's out there in the museums and Facebook world
  
• The World Without Oil Alternate Rality Game (ARG): this game involved 1800 signed up players and 60000 observers and used collective imagining, storytelling and real-life simulations in response to a fictional, but plausible, event, namely, an oil shock. Responses provided useful insight into oil policy and oil use and the game was a stimulus for changed actions in the 'real' world lives of participants.
  

Thanks Martin and Cisco – I really enjoyed myself.

Thoughts on web trends 2008

Have been reading some sites looking at trends in the web world for 2008 (thanks mostly to Russ and Phil). Here’s what I’ve learned and how I think these trends apply to museums.
1. The rise of mobile technologies: Does this mean museum websites will need to operate on a range of mobile platforms? Do we encourage content from people wherever they happen to be? There is enormous potential I see for fieldwork/fieldguides that are updated live by people who are actually there researching/seeing the world as it happens - just one idea, I’m sure there are heaps of others.
2. Archiving: How to archive the massive amounts of information that not only comes via email, but posted on sites such as MySpace and Facebook. How do you archive work-related conversations, posts, links etc, that are starting to amass on these sites? I strongly believe that good old paper is the way to go (just reinforced as I re-read Plutarch’s Fall of the Roman Republic preserved for all that time on paper...)
3. E-learning tools are more accessible and easy to use: Larry Ferlazzo’s website lists the 14 best web applications for education. Many of these could be used by museums in their online learning programs, or at least stream content to them somehow?
4. Organisational issues: “Managers [and employees?] will need to be more creative and less obsessed with cost and efficiency” and “Stop competing against your competitors [as] your traditional rivals aren’t your biggest worry” – these come from BusinessWeek’s Innovation Predictions 2008. There a many lessons for museums in working together which is often easier to do in the online world. Bigger funding pots will come from partnership programs in the future I believe. The skills that I posted here about Knowledge Workers could form part of a checklist for future organisational development? The McKinsey Quarterly eight trends to watch article also has a wealth of insights into organisational issues and the web.
5. Collaboration: The Guardian’s Top 10 trends for 2008 include interesting insights into how companies will collaborate more with their online users and work differently with them. Museums have the opportunities to tap into a huge resource of “armchair experts” to add rich content and commentary to their online offerings – have a look at the article Open Source Science which discussed this some time ago. Not a new idea I know but the tools of the web will enable collaboration to be undertaken more easily, quickly and efficiently (and cheaply!!). The McKinsey article also discusses this issue and provides an example of Amazon enabling other businesses to use its services and in turn reaps the benefits of new applications and developments.
6. The rise of co-creation and (I also think) of an informed and active citizenry on a global scale: Nina Simon’s post outlines a challenge for co-creation to find the right questions. She references this wonderful site – The World Question Centre. Will co-creation become the new buzz term replacing social media and Web 2.0? I have also posted a range of links on my del.icio.us site of organisations that are ones to look out for in terms of active citizenry. You can search for them using the tag “climatechangeARC”.
7. Mash-ups: Now I understand what this term means couldn’t help but use it! The McKinsey article discusses data integration under Managing capital and assets as part of “leveraging information in new ways”. For museums the challenge will be to store and share data – will we have the courage and foresight to insist on using tools and systems that will enable easy data sharing across our institutions?
8. Search, analytics and measurement will become increasingly important: CMS Watch’s Twelve Predictions for 2008 discusses this (as well as several other gems). We are seeing discussions about user-led searching, particularly with the Powerhouse Museum’s OPAC 2.0 (here’s the most recent blog post about it, trackback from there for more). There are also useful discussions about web analytics on Seb’s blog. Museums will need to get serious and go beyond measuring numbers to detailing interactions and experiences – something that audience researchers have successfully moved to in looking at visitors’ physical experiences. Perhaps a future new role for those of use working in this field?
9. Gadgets and gizmos: Have a look at the Sydney Morning Herald and BBC websites. I want a Chumby!
10. Finally, again from CMS Watch which is worth reproducing in full here: “What should you do? Keep focussed on specific business objectives. Someone in your enterprise should be thinking about The Next Big Thing, but not at the expense of undertaking the hard work of real information and process analysis today.” As mentioned in an earlier post, Peter Drucker discussed these ideas in his book Managing in Turbulent Times (which on re-reading is so relevant to today even though it was written in 1980!).
I know there are many more so feel free to add your thoughts.