QDIS Blog

Following were the 2006 Association of Independent Information Professionals award winners.

Myra T. Grenier award: Amy Rose
Gale Group award: Julie Mellon
Roger Summit scholarship award: Marge King
Sue Rugge award: Cindy Shamel
Presidents award: Will Hann

I did not attend the first timers gathering but heard there were about 25 people attending a conference for the first time.

Keynote Speech: Alice Norsworthy, Sr VP of Marketing for Royal Caribbean Int.

Alice talked about what she as a high volume purchaser of information expects from her provider. She went through a typical day and covered what information she need and this included demographic info, media trends and future options, current trends for future product development, competitive activity, fact gathering for a speech.

She then went on to outline the opportunities for Information professionals from her perspective and talked about how to get the business and then how to keep the business. She mentioned there is less of a need for descriptive reports and more of a need for prescriptive reports; less of a need for reactive reports and more of a need for proactive recommendations.

Some of the things Alice looks for in her information provider is to identification of trends and established standards; gather ideas, develop hypothesis or assumptions, determine alternatives, provide a deeper expertise on a topic, and qualitative project management.

In terms of getting the business her primary ways she identify people she works with is though recommendation of friends, personal experience, professional associations., conference attendees, internet search, and articles.

She suggested info pros identify their uniqueness and make sure we know our audience as well as build a network and credibility. The following is a list of what she valued from a researcher: knowledge of her business, responsiveness, listens and seeks to understand, simple clear answers in proper context, complete info, data “testing”, and integrity.

How to keep the business: Alice mentioned several criteria she uses to decide wether to continue to use a certain researcher. These included the information quality and quantity, adherence to standards, confidentiality, and value-added response-insight.

As an executive, she has to make bold and sometimes irreversible decisions based on limited info and possibly inaccurate forecasts. therefore there is a great need to identify hypothesis vs facts as well as have rigorous data evaluation. She also values the researcher keeping their objectivity and reliability and anticipate executive needs.

Finally, she talked about delivering the goods by fulling understanding objectives and deliverables, acknowledge the expertise of the person or company that hirer you,. She felt that secure and written communication was vital to success, as well as being on time and budget and respecting confidentiality. She likes to see clear and objective information in context and in a useful format. She also states how important it is to be available for follow-up and to report progress and problems in a timely manner.

General Session 1 Eric Seeger (Sr Consultant with Altman Weil, Inc.) and Garn Anderson (head of Energizer’s Global Business Intelligence/Competitive intelligence)

Why, when and how decision makers decide to use our services. This general session was interesting but had audio microphones problems that distracted from the presentation. One of the topics discussed was error and omissions insurance. and from their perspective working within larger companies, they stated they would not work with an independent information professional unless they had E&O insurance. Much of the talk was repetitive of what Alice had stated earlier (another good reason to be the first speaker of the day).

The talk boiled down to it being very important to build and establish a relationship of trust and honesty.

General Session 2 Vendors under the Microscope

I didn’t take many notes during this part since I had already talked to. They updated what was new and some was repeated from the training sessions on Thursday. The vendors were 10K Wizard, Dialog, Lexis-nexis, Factiva, and Skyminder.

The remainder of the day was included an ice cream asocial and open exhibits to talk one on one with the vendors as well as a “Tips on the Terrace” an informal evening of drinks and desserts and sharing around tables with each table having a facilitator and topic. It was great to be able to share ideas and in my case, educate people on what RSS is and how it might be useful to them.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow and will recap those events soon.

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