Speaking of focus groups (and for the reader with a shorter-than-three-week attention span, we were), I think they're a lot of fun to participate in. As should be obvious by my mere existence as a weblogger, I like telling people what I think, and it's even better when they want to listen. When they're willing to pay me to do it, well, I'm sold.

Being in a market researcher's focus group pool is a lot like being a movie extra with an agent in the '80s: You fill out a long questionnaire to define your demographic to a tee, then when you least expect it, you get a call from the company, calling to you action. Okay, so it's more like being a sleeper fo the KGB but, you know, same difference.

I'd participated in a few focus groups over the years for this company called Larry Weiss & Co. From the first time when I filled out all the paperwork, they've got my name wrong, and no matter how many times I corrected them, that my name was Kevin Fox, and my company name was Fury Solutions (or later, Fury Media Services, or now, simply Fury.com), at the end of the day I'd still get an honorarium check made out to Kevin Fury. My bank has yet to bat an eye. Maybe they're aware of my rockstar status.

Larry Weiss clearly must have been aware of my rockstar status in July of '98 when they offered me $200 to participate in a two-hour focus group on a new hardware product.

I loved working in downtown San Francisco, feeling like I was part of something when I walk outside and saw all the other businesspeople walking around. Staying a little late in the office, then walking over to the market researchers five blocks away, I was a little smug. I'm effectively getting paid double for the day, and I get to tell people what I think! (This was pre-blogging, when I wasn't used to having people wanting to hear what I think. ;-) )

Even working late, I still arrived a bit early for my group. I sat in the waiting area, pecking at the veggies and dip that an earlier me would not have recognized as the remaindered leavings from the 'inner sanctum' of groups earlier in the day.

Sitting in the lounge, trying to pull meaning from three month old copies of Men's Fitness, People, and Psychology Today, I'd eye the other participants as they trickled in. Geek... Geek... Exec... Geek... ...Mara??

...

I couldn't be sure. To be fair, it had been nearly four months since the Levi's group. Was this the same person? Or was she just another instantiation of this prototype in my head, linked to the Mara I saw four months ago by a shared similarity to the prototype, and a similarity in circumstance? Was it that this was the first time I'd been to a focus group since then? Was one part of my mind already thinking about her while the other part was leafing through the body bulker ads in the fitness mag?

...

She walked in, ate a carrot stick, and took a seat on the other side of the room. I looked back at my magazine. It only took a second to remember that, my own experiences notwithstanding, to her I was 'Just Another Stranger' (JAS). That is, if this person was Mara at all...