With the coming of the end of June so also arrives, at least for the last two years anyway, the Insight Show. Certainly the largest showcase for the Insight and Market Research industry held in the UK and an extremely good time to catch up with friends, colleagues and potential clients. Cobalt Sky were not exhibiting this year, due to my not being appointed as Head of Business Development until the beginning of April, and as such I had two days to wander around catching up with people and taking in some of the seminars that had been planned.

The seminars were, as always, fascinating, well prepared and informative with more than a little slant toward social media and networking. I managed to take in half a dozen of the talks as well as calling by the open theatres to earwig some of the content. The seminars gave me a lot more to think about than I had imagined and I was particularly surprised to hear some of the numbers regarding smart-phones and surveys from OnePoll... Smartphones will soon outnumber pcs and will be the preferred method for capturing online research, food for thought indeed! James Turner (FreshMinds Research) also gave a fascinating insight on Social Media Monitoring and how available tools could be used to compliment existing qual and quant research. Further information on this can also be downloaded from the FreshMinds website.

The heat was not quite so unbearable as the previous year so wandering around the venue was not the horrific chore it had been in 2009. There were, as always plenty of exhibitors and it was good to see that the Thinking Shed had been able to re-use their excellent stand from last year (although at no small cost!). Lunchtime both days was taken down at the Albion pub; anyone who doesn’t know where this is should seek it out as it is well worth a visit. Tuesday lunch I had an accidental meeting which may yet turn out to be very profitable and Wednesday was spent with some of the guys from Munro/Maven. All in all convivial company, good business and a few pints to take the heat out of the day!

At the end of Day 1 came the Research Club get together although this year the RC drinks were preceeded by a most enjoyable wine and cheese offering from Research Now who had a most charming set of people dispensing drinks and cheese nibbles, they also had a gorgeous Gavi de Gavi that this particular conference goer probably had more than his fair share of! Once Research Now ran out of wine and cheese I took 5 sideways steps to the Research Club bar and continued with my jawbone and liver workout (it appears that in every photo on the Research Club Facebook page I have a drink in my hand, I can only imagine I was caught holding drinks for other people!). Highlights of the evening included Cathrene Rowell and Kevin Simpson handing out beautiful cakes made by Cathrene’s mother to celebrate the launch of their new agency “CaKe Research”... Hopefully someone will have the bright idea of launching agencies next year called Champagne or Caviar, well I can dream!