How have I not heard of this group? Anyways, I'm Annie. I"m a social media researcher who is actually a market researcher. I was on the CASRO, MRA, and ESOMAR social media research guidelines committee. Not sure how often I'll stop by but glad to meet all of you.

Can I just say I very much enjoyed the cloud6 session yesterday. Thanks to the presenters, lots of interesting ideas.

Cloud 6 is on the starting blocks - taking place Thursday Mary 19th at Insight Research 6.30 for 7pm - our speakers are Tom Ewing Head of Social Media at Cantar - talking about online identity and Franceso D'Orazzio Research Director of the co-creation agency Face. Put it in your diaries now!

STOP PRESS Ray Poynter's most excellent webinar format of NewMR continues to spiral out covering topic after topic and bringing speakers together from all over the world. March 8th he is planning a 3 session online fest about text analytics. Inconceivable that Cloud of Knowing should let an opportunity like that pass! I (that's John Griffiths) have offered a couple of suggestions for presentations but that's not to stop any one else in the group from emailing Ray and making some suggestions of their own. Mail Ray ray.poynter@thefutureplace.com - but be quick - you have until Feb 15th (that's tomorrow!) and go here to find out more about the event: http://newmr.org/page/listening-2011

I found the session really interesting and thanks John and Mark for your presentations and Surinder for filming and Francesco for hosting.

My main point is about the semantic web just a few watch outs on privacy. Of course the architecture is still moving at a glacial pace and applications have yet to prove themselves but some sort of upgrade to the way the internet works in order to make data smarter is probably going to happen so I think it is always worth being kept aware of what W3C is up to.

There are two semantic web applications that could have opposite effects on the ease and utility of gathering and analysis of web content.

Firstly, semantics is mainly about disambiguating online entities to improve search accuracy but also in order to facilitate the mashing up of individual data bits. The idea of giving people unique resource identifiers will allow their digital traces to be brought together from their various avatars and identified with one single individual. This would potentially allow the meanderings of web users to build up a picture of their net activity independent of any one interest area or domain. FOAF and other ontologies will also show their relationship with others - though his has massive privacy issues that I do not think i have seen addressed by the W3C.

Of course this allows far more behavioural data about individuals to be cached and for this to create a much fuller profile. It also allows associated content to be identified more rigorously through tagging. The connections between people can be shown and then people should be more easily sorted into typologies as curators, content creators vs fans and bystanders by looking at infographics of their net activity in the round.

Secondly, the 2010 book "Pull" by David Siegel - nicely following the trend for punchy Anglo Saxon action verbs (Nudge, Bounce etc etc) - shows how identity might be structured in the future. In this book he postulates the notion of the personal data locker. The idea is that you set yourself to engage in passive commerce by setting out all relevant information about your preferences and allowing relevant offers to come to you. it is a complete turnaround from the way we current bat away unsolicited approaches. It will be programmed through ontologies not only with all your preferences but also works with the idea of the policy aware web. in this the user sets the terms on which he or she will engage with types of online agents (including market researchers or DGR bots!). As Siegel writes: "You can store all your private information securely in your data locker and give access to your information following the principle of least privilege - you give out only the informatoin necessary to conduct a transaction. As he says "In the Pull era you are at the centre; web site get your identity credentials by permission and authentification, rather than by asking you to fill out forms". The question here is whether web users will restrict their disclosure of information, whether they will send out chaff to mislead the algorithms or whether, as expected, the lure of more accurate offers and the chance to meet like minded people and communities will cause them to protocol the release of more personal info.

The implication of this change would be huge as the market research industry would be faced with digital citadels guarding all information about users. If this happened, the centralization of voluntary data would be a treasure trove of info but would this cause some people to make their online profiles much less permeable?

Surinders film is up on youtube. You can catch Mark's presentation on the Visions page on the site here.

thanks to Francesco D'Orazzio and Face for hospitality at Cloud 5 last night. And thanks to Mark Earls for social context illumination and inspiration.

Cloud 5 is on the starting blocks Tuesday Feb 1st Our theme will be about the influence of context. Mark Earls is going to be talking to us about choices: Independent Choices vs. Social Choices: how can you tell? So that's Social context then. And I am expecting to talk about online content as contextual and behavioural data traces - can we get more from the data if we stop trying to treat it like regular research content? Location Face: 7, Midford Place, London W1T 5BG at the top end of Tottenham Ct Road 6.30 for 7pm

Just to tip you off that the Cloud of Knowing paper which I gave at the MRS 2010 conference this year got awarded Best New Thinking. I hadn't expected it because the competition was tough this year but I take it as an award for the group as a whole since the ideas came directly from the papers discussion and inventiveness of group members. We're not done yet - Cloud 5 our next meeting is planning for January. I am wondering if we should try to borrow an online facilitiy and do an online meet which would allow people outside of London to join in.

Just a reminder that the presentations from Cloud 4 can both be found in the Scriptorium now. And we have a bonus. Thanks to Surinder Siama who filmed Annelies Verhaeghe's presentation you can see Annelies deliver her presentation on Crowd sourcing analysis. In the Vision area!

thanks to everyone who came last Wednesday night to Cloud 4. You can get hold of my deck in the Scriptorium - Communities of interpretation and the cloud4 page is my summary of the discussion. I hope Annelies will share her presentation very soon.

Official notification that Cloud 4 is happening on the evening of Wed Sept 22nd from 6.30 at Insites Consulting 338 Euston Road where there will be papers presented on the theme of Crowd sourcing interpretation. Previous announcement of 24th was an error - my brain was addled - no excuses - I should have given the post the overnight test and double checked before sending. The correct date is I repeat Sept 22nd. Hope to see you there - let me know if you can make it so we get numbers straight john.griffiths@paab.biz

First time I have thought of Robbie as a Researcher must tell the Scots who could do with following his inspiration more closely !

Its good to listen but even better to talk; the papers at Cloud 3 were interesting and the conversation stimulating. I have just added 3 papers to the scriptorium:

A list of (mainly free) listening & tracking tools, for amateur experimentation, the ARF document 'The Promise of Listening', (full of case studies) and an article from Research Magazine on 'Learning how to Listen' about integrating listening into a broader qualitative program.

And just a note on part of the discussion about the role of researchers - should we be dispassionately objective or advocates of the brand? Research commissioning is nearly always a political (small p) activity within a company and my guideline for dealing with this has been to stay true to the brand itself. Like a parent with a teenage child, this means giving praise where its due and also commenting on the possible consequences of misbehaviour; while allowing the brand to make its own choices. I think we are most useful giving an external perspective; doing a Robbie Burns: "Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, To see oursel's as others see us" (sorry about the accent)

Good session last night everyone. Here is my semantic web article that I am presenting at Sem Tech in SF in June: http://bit.ly/aKylFI I'm no expert, just attempting to see through the fog to some possible futures. Tom Woodnutt gave a really salutary corrective to this last night in terms of thinking of what MR needs to do to prepare for this future. Cheers. Chris

thanks to everyone who came last night to Cloud 3 - lively discussion and many different perspectives - I'll post Tom and Tom's conference papers up in the Scriptorium immediately but hope to be able to link to their presentations v soon. And will add a Cloud 3 page to attempt to summarise some of the discussion - all members have been made editors so you are welcome wiki style to make additions or amends to the Cloud 3 page based on your take on Cloud 3

Just a reminder that Cloud 3 is tonight at 6.30! Hall & Partners 82 Charing Cross Rd - just by Cambridge Circus - Tom Ewing and Tom Woodnutt are sharing papers.

Cloud 3 is on the skids - we are meeting at Hall & Partners offices 82 Charing Cross Road 6.30 Thurs May 13th. Tom Ewing of Cantar and Tom Woodnutt will be presenting papers. Both were speakers at the MRS conference.

The ppt and the pdf of the written paper have now been posted in the scriptorium. You can see it on the brown toolbar above.

Sorry - a long interval but thought I should remind you that (rather embarassingly) I am giving some output from the group when I am only too aware we have only met on a couple of occasions. At the MRS conference today in the session called the Future of Research. John Kearon one of the members of this group has kindly let me namecheck the fact that Brainjuicer are experimenting with research robots - one of the topics of this group. We discussed these at our last meeting under the title DGRs or demographic replicators. Brainjuicer's robots are to be called Digividuals and they are using these on a project with Kraft. I will report back on response to the presentation and hope we can arrange the next meet: Cloud3 in April.

Just to tip you off that Cloud 2 is on the skids and is happening tomorrow night that's Tuesday 23rd at Brainjuicer's offices 13 Margaret Street, London just northeast of Oxford Circus. Topics: DGRs demographic replicators - David Bausola the proud parent will be introducing us to them. Riva wants some input to a paper she is doing for an up and coming conference. And I am hoping for input for shaping my paper Cloud of Knowing into a 15 minute summary for the market research society annual conference next month. Be there!

And the paper is in - thanks to everyone who helped with their comments and feedback. It would be good to fix a date for the next Cloud of Knowing meeting. Partly to talk about what to say at the conference but because it would be terrific to spend a bit of time talking about the impact of demographic replicators (DGRs) as research bots

Right then - sorry it has been so long in coming. The deadline is end of play on Monday. That's for me to put the paper in. So what I wanted to do was to finish this draft and circulate it to the cloud of knowing group over the weekend. To get your suggestions, criticisms and other comments. It feels rather journalistic at present and not sufficiently referenced. I suggest that I will wait for feedback until 11am GMT and then press on with the feedback I get to make it look pretty and hang together a bit more in time to post it Monday night Feb 1st. Here's hoping that a couple of you will have time to read it and make suggestions. Either here on the webjam. Or direct to me john.griffiths@paab.biz The draft file is in the scriptorium as Cloud of Knowing first draft . Thanks for your help!!

Just to tip you off that I am doing a webinar on the themes of Cloud of Knowing for the IE business school. Will blog about how this goes. Then I start drafting the paper for the MRS conference. Deadline end of January

MRS 2010 conference - Cloud of Knowing gets a slot. I just heard that our topic has made it into the session entitled The Future of Research. Congratulations all round. This is getting rather serious. I had pitched this as a session when they seem to want a paper. What do you think we should do with this opportunity?? Nothing like a deadline..