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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260922T120000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260922T124500
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SUMMARY:ICG Book Group: The Rules That Make Us by Oliver Sweet
DESCRIPTION:Please join us for this Book Group session where we have the privilege of welcoming our author to talk more about the book and join in our discussions about it.\n \nCulture has got a lot to answer for these days. Culture wars\, woke culture\, and cancel culture (to name a few!) have made the world feel chaotic. And that change is real – culture is no longer linear\, progressive and predictable\, and instead has become divergent\, oppositional\, and unpredictable. \nWhile this is easy to see in politics and society\, the same issue applies to organisations and brands. By using an accessible model for understanding culture – The Cultural Trinity – we can find ways to both analyse and change culture in simple\, accessible ways. \nOliver Sweet is one of the world’s leading business anthropologists\, helping brands like Coke\, IKEA\, Google and Dyson\, as well as foundations and governments\, decode why people really do what they do. His book\, The Rules That Make US\, is a rethink of human behaviour\, showing that life\, business and society are driven less by psychology and more by culture. \nRegister for this session here \nYou don’t have to have read the book to attend but we encourage you to do so!  \nOliver Sweet | LinkedIn \n 
URL:https://theicg.co.uk/event/icg-book-group-the-rules-that-make-us-by-oliver-sweet/
CATEGORIES:ICG Event
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260930T130000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260930T133000
DTSTAMP:20261014T001517
CREATED:20260909T162059Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260909T162122Z
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SUMMARY:Why AI flattens qual data towards the average answer\, and what it takes to stop it
DESCRIPTION:We welcome Alex Charlton\, True Stories\, to this Pitch Perfect.  \n  \nAn LLM is a plausibility engine\, not a truth engine. It hands you the most convincing-sounding answer\, not necessarily the true one. Point it at your qual transcripts and it works from whatever it happens to surface – there is no stratified sampling across your dataset\, no language balancing stopping the Spanish groups being drowned out by the English ones. What comes back is the middle of the distribution\, fluently written\, with the odd\, difficult\, interesting participant quietly gone. \nEven qual tools that do promise stratified sampling\, simply place similar quotes in piles\, then label the piles. This is data summarisation\, not the analysis our clients pay us for. And then there’s the question of how we combine our own (human) intelligence with the artificial intelligence we’re working with. This is a minefield in and of itself. \nNone of this can be fixed by better prompting. The fix has to live in the architecture around the model. \nBy joining this session\, expect a working demonstration\, some lessons learnt along the way\, and a sharper set of questions to put to any vendor who tells you their tool “understands” your data. \nAlex Charlton \nAlex Charlton is founder and Managing Director of True Stories. He specialises in qual research and previously founded two London-based insight agencies\, Essential Research and Craft. Frustrated that the AI tools arriving in research were built by engineers who had never moderated a group\, he spent nearly two years building the alternative himself – writing the platform alongside AI rather than briefing a development team\, so that every architectural decision was made by someone who knows what good qual research looks like. True Stories launched in January 2026 and is now used by insight teams across four continents. He works from Medellín\, Colombia. \nTrue Stories \nTrue Stories is an AI-powered analysis platform for qualitative research. It was built by a career qual researcher\, and the design assumption throughout is that the researcher stays in charge: the platform does the reading\, the retrieval and the structured analysis\, and you lead the analysis\, assisted by AI. \nWhere other AI tools summarise data\, True Stories analyses: drawing on 200+ marketing\, consumer psychology and behavioural science frameworks to build a bespoke analysis pathway for each project. Analyses draw evenly across your data rather than sampling whatever the model finds most quotable\, work in your participants’ original language without translating the nuance out\, and carry confidence ratings. You can interrogate any output conversationally\, push on it\, then fold the conversation back into a revised analysis. Once analysis is complete\, your project reports are generated automatically and include: a written mini-report\, a story-driven debrief narrative\, and an editable PowerPoint deck. \nTrue Stories: Human Intelligence. Amplified. \n \nwww.truestories.earth \n  \nRegister for this event here
URL:https://theicg.co.uk/event/1-why-ai-flattens-qual-data-towards-the-average-answer-and-what-it-takes-to-stop-it/
CATEGORIES:ICG Event,Lunch&Learn
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261007T100000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261007T103000
DTSTAMP:20261014T001517
CREATED:20260603T100407Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260818T132910Z
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SUMMARY:ICG's Annual General Meeting
DESCRIPTION:Join us to hear about what we’ve achieved\, our plans for the future and our financial situation. \nA great opportunity to ask us any questions and make suggestions for the organisation. \nLogin here (no need to pre-register)\n 
URL:https://theicg.co.uk/event/icgs-annual-general-meeting/
CATEGORIES:ICG Event
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261202T120000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261202T124500
DTSTAMP:20261014T001517
CREATED:20261008T090448Z
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SUMMARY:BOOK GROUP: 'A Travel Guide to Connection' by Jonathan Newman
DESCRIPTION:This Book Group will be run by the book’s author – and ICG member! – Dr Jonathan Newman.  \nYou don’t have to have read the book but we encourage you to do so. \nA relaxed 45-minute session designed to spark your thinking and join in discussions. \n \nA Travel Guide to Connection is an introduction to conducting ethnography and a way to see your own life with new perspectives.\nIt shows routes and strategies to explore what it means to be a relational human being in a profoundly interconnected world. \nChapters consider: who we are as we meet and live among others; how bodies and senses inform our understanding of ourselves and each other; how we live together with other species and technologies or objects; and how we form relationships with time\, space and transcendent experiences. It also asks readers to explore the ethical dimensions of their research journeys and the value of looking into the discomforts of their own position. \nThe book serves as a methodological toolkit\, an unorthodox introduction to anthropology\, stimuli for creatives and a hammer to break you out of your bubble. \nDr. Jonathan Newman is a social anthropologist\, researcher\, author and podcaster dedicated to uncovering the hidden human layers of our world. As the Director of Deep Research\, he has spent years helping companies – including Amazon\, TikTok\, YouTube\, Uber\, and Adobe – connect to human lives and needs. \nJonathan’s research is as diverse as it is profound\, taking him into the cultural trenches of everything from global coffee and the cannabis industry to the inner workings of education and the international arms trade. \nHis insights are across academic journals\, trade publications and international media\, and he is a speaker at global conferences\, industry trade shows and festivals. \nWhether navigating a corporate culture or a remote community\, Jonathan lives by the core philosophy of his latest book: to let go of preconceptions\, embrace the unknown with continuous empathetic curiosity and allow deep listening and kindness to lead the way. \n“Newman’s brilliant book is a fun\, engaging invitation to see the world afresh. With clarity and wit\, it shows how an anthropological sensibility – meeting difference with curiosity rather than judgment – is exactly what we need in a time of disconnection and division. \nGwen Burnyeat\, University of Oxford \n  \n“This exceptional book fundamentally shifts how we experience the ordinary. \nIt takes us on a journey of connection with what we thought we knew. This changes everything. Few books so powerfully transform how we perceive the world around us. It is a must read.” \n– Steffi Bednarek\, Centre for Climate Psychology \n  \n‘This book is brilliant: humorous\, thought-provoking\, sensitive and surprising. It makes you think differently and challenges prejudices you may not even have realised you held. It invites you to imagine how the dragonfly perceives the world\, the messages a chair sends out and what it must be like to exist using only a sense of smell. Once read it will never leave you and you will see the world differently” Katherine Richards\, Designer \n  \nThe Book | Jonathan Newman – A Travel Guide to Connection \nRegister for this event here 
URL:https://theicg.co.uk/event/book-group-a-travel-guide-to-connection-by-jonathan-newman/
CATEGORIES:ICG Event
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261204T130000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261204T170000
DTSTAMP:20261014T001517
CREATED:20261012T112713Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261012T112713Z
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SUMMARY:ICG London Christmas Party
DESCRIPTION:Excited to announce that tickets are now available for our Christmas Party.\nSpecial thanks to our event sponsors\, Massive Wave Research\, Norstat and Ovation MR. \n  \nTickets here \n  \n 
URL:https://theicg.co.uk/event/icg-london-christmas-party/
LOCATION:Anomalous Space\, 36 Pentonville Road\, London\, N19HF\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:ICG Event
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