A summary report of the ground we covered at the second face to face meeting which took place on Feb 23 2010. Brainjuicer took us in from the cold and provided some yummy Chinese eats delivered halfway through. Thanks to them.

3 areas discussed during the meeting. We were lucky enough to have David Bausola aka zeroinfluencer on twitter who is the creative mind behind the demographic replicators - bots which are part twitter/blogfeed part very primitive AI. With the help of Nick one of his developers David introduced us to some of his bots. These pick up on emotion, can forward links to video clips and Amazon books. And attract followers and feedback. They even pick up GPS references and wander around google maps. We spotted one of them down Rathbone Place not half a mile away!  From David's briefing we discussed how these might be used in market research. My personal favrourite is as a decoy for pulling out feedback from others. One of my favourite quotes of the evening was asking about whether people knew they were participating in research to which the answer was well they're not respondents - we haven't recruited them - they just showed up and posted/tweeted. The bots are already being used in research projects but this is hush hush and still under wraps.

Topic 2 was led by Riva Elliot who wanted some ideas for a paper she is giving in the Far East about how to use audience segmentation to attract advertising budget to publications or even individual journalists blogging for a living. We discussed some of the emerging models - the citizen journalism producing a daily newspaper in Korea, Russell Davies association with the newspaper project producing a kind of personalised mashed up newspaper using spare capacity in the newsprint industry, the recent study which Mesh ran for BBC news about how programming and website are being used in combination for executives on the move. How Monocle uses cheap infomercials on its website to drive site visitors to its printed features. And lastly Gawker and the business model behind a blog network which is serving ads. This is a great example of how Cloud members bring a vast amount of experience and connections to the table in a relatively short time. One of the exciting things about this group is that while the central topic is research the expertise is much more diverse than that.

Topic 3 very briefly was my going through the main ideas in my written paper for the MRS conference next month to get some feedback for how best to present them using powerpoint in about 15 minutes! Also whether it would be technically feasible to co present with a DGR research bot. The jury is still out on that one!

Thanks to everyone who came to Cloud 2 - this is a very abbreviated account which left me grateful for the diversity and creativity of those who came - we have room for plenty more but those who were there more than filled the space! Cloud of Knowing is turning into a fascinating series of conversations.

The next meeting Cloud3 is likely to be run at the end of March or after Easter in the early part of April. Keep the ideas coming.