1 August 2017
Day of [R]evolution
If you have attendees lining up at the door an hour or more before they're due to open???then you know that there's a good conference in the offing. So it was at AQR's [R]evolution this summer, held at the Wellcome Collection in Euston.
The organisers of this year’s conference tried to provide a little something for everyone, and the feedback afterwards showed that they’d achieved their aim. The day opened with introductions from Sarah Jenkins…and then we were off.
Packed schedule
The day as a whole produced “a sense of changing trends,” says Judith Comyn, “from the respondent to the participant.” And this is, after all, what this conference has always been designed to do. Sessions that stuck in her mind include the Apprentice papers, one that presented research as entertainment, and several on online communities (one carrying out Skype interviews with young people and even un-moderated groups).
Andy Dexter ‘s paper on Brexit — a session chaired by Peter Totman — won the award for best contribution on the day, and he gained so many plaudits he gave us another tour of his slides recently on Facebook Live. Chatting to delegates afterwards, this was some of the feedback: “I thought his session was absolutely brilliant,” says Sarah O’Brien. “What a good presenter: it was really challenging, and he put it over in such an interesting way. It took a couple of weeks before I asked myself why we were given a quant paper in a qualitative conference.”
Asking the big questions
Richard Gush found this session (on fear and loathing in Brexit land) particularly interesting. “Dr Marie-Claude Gervais and Andy both raised excellent questions about the future of research,” he says. “These were not only in terms of who we speak to, but also how our insight is then used to influence decision making. These big questions are really what these conferences are about, and we don’t speak about them enough.”
The morning also included a session on recruitment, chaired by Ken Parker and featuring Becki Harrison, Charlotte Neild, James Diggle and Ia Croxton, and another on mentoring with Lydia Fuller and Keisha Herbert, before we emerged — ravenous after all that brain activity — to a well-deserved and delicious lunch. The one note to organisers: more places to sit next time, please.
The afternoon kicked off with the ever popular Qualitative Apprentice, chaired by Caroline Hayter. We had three worthy contestants: Oliver Barker from Razor Research, Hannah Mills, Ipsos ECE and Dub’s Dr John Joseph Whittle. In Niall Smith’s eyes, the key session, in many ways, was that of the winner: Hannah Mills’ presentation about reciprocity — about giving more of yourself to your participants. “This presentation encapsulated what felt like the overarching theme of the conference, that of humanising research and treating participants, researchers and clients, as people first,” he says.