Meetings and Interview

Meetings

Like I told you in my last post, I had have a meeting with different people. Now, I would like to give you more and detailed information about the background story, the meeting and the interview. 

You will maybe ask, why we did have this meeting. I did know them all already before, because of my professional survey I sent out by email to different neuromarkting agencies in October 2012. 

The people I met on Saturday have participated on this survey and have been interested in my inquiry topic. They answered me by email and offered me support for my investigation. One off them are an expert in Marketing and neuromarketing, the other one are an  webdesigner which are interesting in neuromarketing. All of them are currently founding start-up companies based on neuromarketing.

The marketing expert suggested a phone call with me and after this talk he/she offered me to work in his/her startup-company when he/she has enough contracts for paying me. I was very glad and agreed, because I would really like to work with the results and knowledge I gained about neuromarketing during this inquiry. 

He/she hold a presentation on the EU-fundraising congress in Berlin and asked to mention me in this presentation as designer which are specialised in neurodesign. He/she also asked me to design his/her company logo until this event. Parallel to my work in the agency I did also created different logo suggestions for him/her and different business cards. He/she chose one of the logo drafts and I finished the business cards just in time for the printer, so that they had some for the congress. They have been very glad and sent me a food and wine present from La Vialla http://www.lavialla.it/de/Home_DE.asp. I have been very surprised, because I didn`t know that he/she wants to send me a gift for the logo design. 

But, I have been also very interesting in meeting the webdesigner, because she/he is also a graphic designer which is interesting in neuromarketing. So, I asked her/him for a business meeting and she/he agreed and suggested a date. We met at her/his home on Fr. 19.10.2012 at 7:30 a.m., ate pasta and spoke about neuromarketing and the usability of this to design. She/he recommended to me different books, showed me websites which are working with neuromarketing and gave me essential information about target orientated and ux-design.

So, the meeting on Saturday 17.11.2012  hasn`t been the first one, but it was the first in with this constellation. I have met everybody alone and suggested to have a group meeting so everybody could exchange their knowledge with each other, because the number of experts concerning neuromarketing are very limited. Everybody agreed, we set a date (17.11.2012 at 1:00 a.m) and met in the Restaurant MoschMosch (http://www.moschmosch.com/) which is located in Dusseldorf. This is the table we sat on. I didn`t take any picture of the participants, because I would like to save their anonymity.

The result of this meeting are that they decided to work together and combine the startup companies. So, it has been a very successful meeting for everybody. For them, because they do now work together and sharing knowledge and expertise and for me because I get many new information which I can use for my inquiry and in my future. I learned many thinks about startup companies and neuromarketing and the opportunity to link companies together for a more effective and intelligent constellation. I really hadn`t expect that, I only wanted to bring them together for knowledge exchange. But the result of this meeting surprised me.

Interview

After many hours of very interesting discussions about neuromarketing, I made an interview with the neuromarketing and marketing expert. I did already ask for permission by email and she accepted. She also read the consent form and signed it. Like Paula recommended to me I recorded the interview on audio-videotape with my laptop.For the circumstance that I had to make the interview in a restaurant, I simulated the whole interview with restaurant background noises (playing a restaurant video of youtube with my iphone) at home. The REAL Interview lasted 49 minutes, because my interviewer did answer very detailed. But I have to admit, that during the interview I realized that I had really sitting an expert in front of me. I did get the expression that she really do know nearly everything about Marketing and Neuromarketing. I was very happy to get the chance to interview such a great person with such a huge knowledge concerning this my topic. 

Back at home I realized that my laptop recorded everything perfectly. I spent nearly 3 hours listening with a headphone and brought the whole interview on paper. The result: 8 pages full of information about neuromarketing.

The Cicle is Closing

After a very inspired and great meeting on Saturday with neuromarketing experts, one sentence came all the time to my mind:

"Knowledge rests in the diversity of people."

I have to admit that I only knew this sentence and couldn't built any connection to any topic. After googling I found this:

Description of Connectivism

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Connectivism is a learning theory for the digital age. Learning has changed over the last several decades. The theories of behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism provide an effect view of learning in many environments. They fall short, however, when learning moves into informal, networked, technology-enabled arena. Some principles of connectivism:

• The integration of cognition and emotions in meaning-making is important. Thinking and emotions influence each other. A theory of learning that only considers one dimension excludes a large part of how learning happens.

• Learning has an end goal - namely the increased ability to "do something". This increased competence might be in a practical sense (i.e. developing the ability to use a new software tool or learning how to skate) or in the ability to function more effectively in a knowledge era (self-awareness, personal information management, etc.). The "whole of learning" is not only gaining skill and understanding - actuation is a needed element. Principles of motivation and rapid decision making often determine whether or not a learner will actuate known principles.

• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. A learner can exponentially improve their own learning by plugging into an existing network.

• Learning may reside in non-human appliances. Learning (in the sense that something is known, but not necessarily actuated) can rest in a community, a network, or a database.

• The capacity to know more is more critical that what is currently known. Knowing where to find information is more important than knowing information.

• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate learning. Connection making provides far greater returns on effort than simply seeking to understand a single concept.

• Learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinions.

• Learning happens in many different ways. Courses, email, communities, conversations, web search, email lists, reading blogs, etc. Courses are not the primary conduit for learning.

• Different approaches and personal skills are needed to learn effectively in today's society. For example, the ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.

• Organizational and personal learning are integrated tasks. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network and continue to provide learning for the individual. Connectivism attempts to provide an understanding of how both learners and organizations learn.

• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning.

• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate impacting the decision.

• Learning is a knowledge creation process...not only knowledge consumption. Learning tools and design methodologies should seek to capitalize on this trait of learning.

Of course!!! Suddenly I understand what this theory do really stand for. Yes, I have already read and studied that in my first semester at this Programme, but now I do REALLY understand what it means.

Source: http://www.connectivism.ca/about.html

The Adventure Inquiry

I am very sorry that I hadn't write anything during the past few weeks, but I had run out of time. Last semester I had have a part-time job and now, as a full-time worker in an agency it makes a lot of difference concerning blogging (as you can see on the number of posts). I had to work a lot (9.00 a.m to 8.00 p.m) even on the weekends. After working the whole weekend I could get a few days off work. Today are my last free day, but I will use the last hours of my free time for this post and sharing my experiences in the "ADVENTURE INQUIRY" that I had during the last weeks with you. 

It happened a lot since I started with the research for the Inquiry. After sending out my first survey to agencies which do use neuromarketing in their daily business, I got lot of positive feedback. Some offered me support and some wanted to read my findings. One participant asked me if I do already work as an graphic designer. Because I have been looking for a full-time job during this time, I answered that I have been working since 3 years parallel to my study as a graphic designer. After this information the participant asked if I would like to talk to him/her. So, the next week he/she called me and we talked a lot about neuromarketing. It turned out, that he/she was really an expert concerning neuromarketing. He/she has studied communication and marketing and has later on made a training in the medical sector. Now, he/she is studying on a University neuromarketing and will also doctorate in this expertise. I was so glad to find a person which do know so much about this topic, because I found out 1. that there aren't many neuromarketing experts 2. it is very difficult to study neuromarketing in general, because the field are very young and not many european Universities do offer this expertise. Furthermore he/she was looking for a designer which are interested in neuromarketing. He/she has been looking one over several month without success. But now he/she had found someone.

He/she told me that he/she are planning to set up a company which do offer neuromarketing services. Design shall be also a part of this services. We business meeting on the 05.09.2012 1:00 p.m in Dusseldorf (40 miles away from Cologne) to know each other and talking about the plans and ideas. I printed my Portfolio on DIN A4 cards and created a folder with the best works of mine for this meeting. It was very important for me to be very punctual for leaving the best impression. I arrived at 12:50 a.m. He/she and his/her business partner where already there. The first impression has been very positive. We talked a lot and they asked me a lot of questions. I think they wanted to check if my interest in the topic neuromarketing are genuine. But I think they checked very fast that it is. I showed them my graphic design portfolio of works. They seemed satisfied and ask me, after talking one hour, if I would like to work for them. I was suprised by this offer, but very proud and glad. Because I get a workplace just one week before, I told them this information. They told me, that this is alright, because actually they couldn`t give me a job directly, because they are now planning the new company. But I would really like to work one day for them, because I really admire the issue neuromarketing and would like to use these knowledge in my further job.

So, this was just a little extract from many experiences I made during my path "The Adventure Inquiry".