September 21, 2003
Frost & Sullivan CI & Market Research Conference in Boston
The picture depicts a couple of soon-to-be-sunburned Aurora staff out for a day of sailing on Boston Harbor (courtesy Frost & Sullivan, which was producing a CI/MR conference this week in Boston), taken Sunday 21 September 2003. My "baby" brother Derek is on the right – he’s Executive Director of Aurora’s Recon Intelligence Outsourcing Bureau (i.e., our research & analysis business) – and the one on the left is me... I know, it’s a rough life. But, I have to say, this was a great time – Boston had a great week lined up for a CI conference, despite narrowly missing the hurricane that slammed the Carolinas late the previous week. Postseason baseball fever was peaking as the Boston Red Sox were thinking of making a realistic run at a berth in the World Series, potentially putting them up against another perennial favorite, the Chicago Cubs. So, competition was in the air.
In prepping for the conference, I’d produced an interview piece with three of Frost’s conference faculty - Diana Mastel (from Toys R Us), Brian Bonazzoli (from Hewlett-Packard) and Wayne Rosenkrans (from AstraZeneca) that I heard from many of you out there was excellent – well, that’s the easiest way to be a decent writer – that is, do an amalgam interview piece where you don’t actually have to write… but seriously, thanks to Diana, Wayne and Brian – great seeing you all in Boston and nice job with your respective presentations as well!
I spent the week with clients for the most part – sorry everybody, I’m starting a "World Tour" here in the next few weeks, so it’ll take some time for me to follow up with you. Finally, on Wednesday, as the conference wound down after three pretty sensational days of presentations and networking, I wrapped up the week moderating the Vendor-Audience Crossfire Panel on Intelligence Software with three vendors on one side and three CI software users on the other. We only had 45 minutes, but hammered through almost a dozen questions in that time – everything from the role of the IT department… to how much you should spend on CI software… to which apps are the best for particular intelligence needs. It was a TON of fun and big thanks go out to Ken, Merrill, Paul, Mike, Jordan and Richard.
Hope to see you back at the next F&S CI event – somewhere on the East Coast (TBD) 16-20 May 2004. Derek’s got a trip report online as well in October’s Recon CI Newsletter.
- Arik
Posted by Arik Johnson at September 21, 2003 02:26 PM | TrackBack
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