Forget what the research says. What do you think??

I was chatting with an acquaintance who is getting ready to speak at a conference. He'll be covering all the usual hot topics: SaaS, Web 2.0, mobile web access, etc - in the context of how they affect the web hosting landscape. I was surprised when he asked if I know of any research he could use to back up his claim that these are significant trends.

Research? What research?? First of all, of course they're significant trends. What is there to back up? More importantly, many people in his audience will have traveled thousands of miles to attend his session. Why would they want to hear him recite Garter and IDC reports? They could buy those online and read them at home!

As a conference speaker, his responsibility (I think) is to share what *he* thinks are important developments - and lead a discussion on how best to adapt to (or profit from) a changing marketplace.

Speaking of speaking at conferences, David Snead and I have a panel on how to be on the web hosting upside at ISPCON. We're getting together tomorrow to make the slides, which probably won't include any analyst research.

Comments

[Jason Yau]

Isabel,

I agree 100%. While the research reports are usually well-written and informative, I rarely find them to be on the cutting edge. Conferences covering topics like Office 2.0 are far too ahead of analyst coverage to make any reports useful. For traditional, well-defined areas, institutional research is great for getting a quick read on the market. Otherwise, conferences and discussions with experts are essential to get a handle on the true pulse of a product area.

[Isabel Wang]

Thanks, Jason! I've always thought "will people use it?" is a better question than "where is it in the hype cycle/on the magic quadrant/etc". Ford didn't start making cars because he read that horses would be passe? It's one thing to understand the market, but there'd be no progress if nobody looked beyond current solutions.