About a 2 min. read.
The single most asked question was “do you know how I can get a ticket to the Quirks Event NYC?” Conferences like Quirks NYC are hot, sell out early and have a wait list, so get a ticket by registering early! For those who weren’t there, here are the top takeaways from Quirks NYC 2023:
- Vanguard’s Clint Jenkin, PhD, spoke about the building blocks of relationships: affection, trust, empathy and collaboration. How will you consider the role of in-person and online as you think about dimensions of presence at work, in your research and in your broader community?
- Affective Presence – how are you positively (or negatively) impacting others by your presence?
- Liminal Space – what is happening to you in-between spaces (e.g., unforeseen opportunities of your commute or a waiting area, a disruption between spaces or a place between work and home)?
- Mirroring – have you noticed how you and others often unconsciously use mimicry to establish similarities? Non-verbal cues have been disrupted by online lag, so are you noticing more in-person?
- Pheromones– what chemical signatures (scents) of people are contributing to your experience of those people?
- Most sessions featured AI as a component of research. The key themes that ran through the AI-focused presentations included:
- The Power of AI to Transform the Industry: With its intuitive, texting-style interface, its ubiquitous accessibility (no/low cost), and its ability to learn and succinctly crystallize ideas, generative AI is creating new benefits (can do more, better & faster, at lower cost), pain points (AI hallucinations), as well as implications for privacy/walled gardens, effectiveness, efficiency, and risk.
- Roles of people and the machine: AI is an assistant. It’s a co-pilot (to use Microsoft’s branding). AI isn’t an “or” tool. It’s an “and” tool, where people are assisted by its vast offerings, and yet they can safeguard walled gardens/privacy, ensure sound fundamentals, recognize any gross fabrication (AI hallucinations).
- Powerful benefits of AI: With AI, clients and agencies will be able to identify, scope and synthesize more data, better, faster and with less cost and effort than ever before.
- Pinterest’s Daron Sharps, PhD spoke about how and when inspiration strikes us, her significant expert qualitative and quantitative research, and her AI semiotic analysis that determined the most prevalent visual themes, giving Pinterest unique insights about color palette. The ability to incorporate multiple methods throughout the learning program is vital in the coming year.
What plans do you have to connect, innovate, and grow? While AI learns by consuming terabytes of data, those at the Quirks conference learned from the many track sessions, from conference sponsors, and from serendipitous bumping into one another (often at the CMB-sponsored café which provided that liminal, or “in between” space for attendees to gather!). Big thanks to Quirks for another successful production! Reach out to us with any questions you have, or to discuss more.
