Sean Jordan, Insights Researcher

I respect that getting a bunch of people here to speak was part of the marketing strategy. And many of the panelists would have been awesome speakers on their own!

I'll provide constructive feedback through the survey. And hey, they asked us to share our opinions on social media, so I did!

I do an event for my clients every 2 years and I am laser-focused on making sure it's a great use of their time (and my own). It's not easy and it requires a lot of effort and focus.

The key is engaging content, and that's where XDay was lacking for me. Lots of panels, not enough insights.

Thus ends my #xday2025 experience.

I like QuestionPro. It's a good platform.

I'm appreciative of the effort the marketing team put into the event and inviting me to speak.

I made some connections and had some fun.

Sure, I'm a bit critical. But I do appreciate the work they put in to the event!

Telling a story about a guy named Capt. Dave who was on the USS Endeavor, Amanda Lannert talks about how business is about accepting ideas from everyone at every level of the organization, not just the upper management

This talk has both nothing & everything to do with insights research!

#xday2025

I'm enjoying this talk because she's talking about her story and not just a bunch of bland business talk.

Jellyvision crashed in 2000 after their gaming phase and had to come back from the brink, pivoting to complex and meaningful work with their signature creative approach to things.

#xday2025

Let's see if Amanda from Jellyvision has a good closing talk!

She referenced empathy in her opening line, so that's a good start!

(I'm a sucker for people talking about caring about other people instead of how to make lines go up!)

#xday2025

One interesting idea suggested (they attribute it to Jeff Bezos) is starting meetings with customer stories.

QuestionPro's CEO says they do that in their weekly meeting by inviting a customer every week for 10 min to speak about whatever.

I'm on board with that!

#xday2025

This book is written by one of the speakers. It's $45!

Sounds like it has some wild stories in it, though, like a customer chasing him out of a business with a wrench. Might have to see if I can get it from the library.

#xday2025

The talk right now is really about three things:

1) Customer centricity is vital to EX and CX success
2) Managers are often too distant from customers to be centered on their needs
3) We have to monitor performance to see it grow

Which are good (if obvious) things to remember, I guess?
#xday2025

The reason I'm so skeptical of LLMs and genAI is that the models are just a cool statistical trick.

They guess very reliably what credible output looks like based on huge amounts of training data.

But that output is wrong so often that the effect wears off once you notice the flaws.

#xday2025

I'll be interested to hear this talk from Amanda Lannert of Jellyvision - the creative agency that created the You Don't Know Jack games series in the 1990s!

The speakers are unironically anthropomorphizing AI while talking about how we need to use a human touch. It's a "work spouse" or "brainstorming partner".

But I would add it's also a sycophant and a plagiarism generator and often wrong, and we need to think of it as a tool that WILL fail

#xday2025

I missed most of the panel on AI but I suspect I probably really didn't. It's getting to be such a tedious topic.

One speaker just said "We are the biggest barrier" to AI adoption and I think we actually need to understand we are the brakes.

#xday2025

This is a good panel. We all feel the frustration of bad data, and we need to spend a lot more time as an industry thinking about data quality, from sourcing to coding to analysis to interpretation to reporting.

#xday2025

Sitting in the data quality panel now.

Talking about data fraud is a rich topic. GenAI has wrecked things, but data quality is still the major issue.

Poor quality data and fraud are major concerns for research professionals!

#xday2025

My panel went well! We were so pleased to have a video from Cecil at QuestionPro, the sales guy who really engaged us with great questions and stellar listening.

We are all here because he invited us to be on the panel to share our experience!

#xday2025

Found one of the scavenger hunt guys! Looking for the others.

#xday2025

I was kind of hoping this keynote would go a bit deeper than saying, "It's all about the customer," but ah well.

#xday2025

Ryan Barry makes a good point about how upper leaders need to either be a part of the flow or get out of the way instead of making a hierarchy felt across the room.

#xday2025

Talking about myopia with customers, Ryan Barry just said he has to remind his team that "Customers don't just think about AppCues all day."

It's so strange they need to be reminded of that!

Also, what's AppCues? I seriously never heard of them before today.

www.appcues.com

#xday2025

I agree with the people focus and the need for leadership that Ryan Barry is articulating now.

These skills are important no matter what technology we have at hand!

#xday2025

I find it so jarring when a keynote speaker talks about the importance of authentic interactions with real people right after talking about his excitement for Agentic AI.

We all know customers hate talking to AI bots and want to talk to real people. Let's not lose that perspective!

#xday2025

Our keynote speaker came on stage to "Golden" by Huntr/x, so I guess KPOP Demon Hunters has officially peaked if it's being referenced at corporate conferences!

Let's see what he has to say.

#xday2025

I don't mind posting critiques on Bsky because I know no one is reading anyhow, lol.

There are like 200 people here at #xday2025 and at least 20% seem to be QuestionPro folks.

And Bsky wasn't on their approved social media icons anyhow.

I'm guarded about a tech platform I rely on for my business telling me they want to take a moonshot.

The one Vivek is pitching is Agentic AI which... Good luck, fellas. The tech isn't there yet and it's why I'm still using Google Assistant, not Gemini.

#xday2025

Vivek is now talking about the uncertainty of the future with this striking dichotomy about AI's potential.

#xday2025

Here's the CEO of QuestionPro, Vivek Bhaskaran, showing his original garage startup from 2025.

But that story was short lived. Now we're on to the product explanation. *Sigh*

#xday2025

I got second place in the QPro trivia competition. (It gave me a weird name because I didn't put mine in on time)

Unfortunately, we're not playing horseshoes, so I didn't win anything for being close!

#xday2025

I'm attending the QuestionPro Xday seminar today. And I'm also a speaker!

Thankfully, only a couple of the sessions today are about AI. That's a nice change!

#xday2025

Are you an #insights researcher? I am too! And here's a starter pack for a bunch of us who are part of the #MRxPros community!

#marketing #research #mrx #cx #marketingresearch