I know it’s only October, but I’m already thinking about 2010. When fall rolls around we finalize the editorial calendar for the coming year, adding topics, deleting some, moving others around. I’ve garnered a number of story ideas from phone calls and conversations with readers at conferences, via e-mail and through our reader survey but I’m still hungry for more.

Thus I chose to devote this month’s Trade Talk to our upcoming editorial calendar and some changes in our offerings that I hope will increase our capacity to serve as a voice for researchers.

Many things will stay the same for 2010: two issues focused on qualitative research (May and December); two on online research (January and July); and returning topics such as ethnographic research (February), advertising research (April), health care/pharma research (June), customer satisfaction (October) and international research (November).

Among the things changing: our report on our second-annual research salary survey will move to July (from August this year); we have moved our focus on the hospitality industry to March; and we added a focus on financial services/insurance industry research to the October issue.

I’m excited about two of the new topics we’ve added for 2010. The first, mobile interviewing (June) is one I’ve seen pop up more and more in the media and on the docket at industry conferences. Same goes for social media research and marketing, which we have added to the slate for the August issue.

In addition to welcoming Content Editor Emily Goon to our editorial department last year (now there are two of us!), which gave us the capability to do more staff-generated articles based on reader suggestions, we are also expanding our e-newsletter to be twice-monthly, thereby increasing our need for (and space available to publish) interesting, research-related content for the e-newsletter.

Historically, since the magazine’s mission has been to help readers do research more effectively, most of our articles have been written by those of you in the industry, the practitioners out there doing research day in and day out. That won’t change. While Emily and I hope to have more of our bylines in the print magazine and e-newsletters, our focus remains on having Quirk’s, in all its forms, function as a peer-to-peer information exchange.

All of this is my long-winded way of saying that I would love to hear from you with any story ideas you may have, either for us to pursue or for you to submit for consideration.

We’re not looking for any new columnists (it’s amazing how many “Hey, how about if I write a column for you guys?”-type pitches we get in a year) but with the expanded e-newsletter schedule, and the flexibility that the e-newsletter format adds, we are no longer limited to requiring prospective authors to hit our preferred 1,500-word count for articles.

Prior to adding the e-newsletter, we didn’t really have a venue for some of the shorter-form (1,000 words or fewer) articles that readers have submitted. But now, things like a 500-word thought-piece on the changing role of research, or a short journal entry-style story on a recent ethnography project you conducted could be excellent candidates for publication in the e-newsletter.

Really, just about any idea related to marketing research is of interest to us, as long as it’s not promotional toward a research company’s proprietary products or services. Case studies of successful (or unsuccessful!) research projects; explorations of new or established research techniques; lessons learned or knowledge gleaned; joys or frustrations; never-agains or wish-I-would-haves - it’s all fair game.

You can reach me at 651-379-6200 or at joe@quirks.com. Emily can be reached at the same number or at emily@quirks.com. We will also be at the IIR Market Research Event in Las Vegas this month, so feel free to stop by our booth for a chat. We would love to hear from you!