Well, another conference is over, perhaps our best ever. A great roster of speakers, a room full of engaged attendees and a great location was a terrific formula for a memorable conference. Some highlights from the various sessions:

Lenny Murphy, Editor-in-Chief of the Greenbook blog opened with a wide sweep discussing the waves of changes rocking the market research world. Pulling from the GRIT survey, his discussion with emerging and established players, as well as his itinerant investigation, he was able to convincingly make the case that change in the MR industry is happening. Now. He talked about emerging technologies such as mobile, social media and text analytics and how academic expertise was a key to unlocking a future of new ideas. It was a perfect set-up for the group of academic presentations that were to follow.

Over the past year I’ve blogged about the things that I think will drive the future of Market Research and I’m pleased to announce that for our Frontiers of Research annual conference (May 8th, in NYC, view full agenda or register) we have assembled speakers who will drive that conversation forward. The conference will cover the full spectrum of buzz-worthy topics (Behavioral Economics, Neuroscience, Gamification, Predictive Analytics). And the focus, as always, will be on ideas presented in an easy to understand way (no math!). With speakers from four Ivy League schools, and presentations that range from poker to motion picture box office, this should be an informative and enjoyable day.

Leonard Murphy will set the table by calling on his extensive knowledge of the industry to illuminate how academia can and is driving us forward. Anyone who follows his blog knows that he is not only one of the most knowledgeable industry leaders around, but that he has a provocative view of where we are heading.

Recently I was invited to attend a neuroscience conference at Temple University in Philadelphia, organized by their Center for Neural Decision Making, along with MIT and the University of Michigan. It turned out to be a very interesting experience with excellent speakers, great interactions and a terrific panel discussion. Some highlights:

• Michael Norton of Harvard spoke with humor about the sensitive topic of racial paralysis. This is the tendency of people to refrain from making any decisions when faced with a situation where they could potentially be perceived as racist. His approach used data from experiments, surveys and neural imaging, a nice way to triangulate the results.