NPG Firms Launch CLAIR to Mine Tech Forums

Austin, Texas-based firm The Next Practices Group (NPG) is launching a proprietary service for B2B tech and health tech brands, using AI and data science to sift actionable intelligence on ideas and trends from technology leader communities.

The new CLAIR service (Community Learning AI Research), offered through subsidiary firms 104 West and Ringer Sciences, locates discussions about technology in public forums, development communities and other online discussion groups, which the company says are often the first places new ideas are developed, debated and discussed, among smaller groups of experts. NPG says 'fragmented conversations in niche communities' are used by innovators to share ideas, learn about failures and help each other figure out problems, but can easily be missed by traditional monitoring platforms.

The data parsed and analysed by CLAIR includes niche, community-specific channels like GitHub and Discord, that may not be necessarily conversational but more behavioral; and platforms like LinkedIn which the firm says 'have largely been black boxes because of data restrictions'.

NPG Chair Bob Pearson (pictured) says of the new solution: 'The growing usage of complex technologies - from AI to blockchain to augmented reality to quantum computing to myriad digital health technologies - is expanding the number of unique communities that are not traditionally monitored in any methodical way. Depending on where and who is driving a new technology, we must be as fluent in understanding what is happening in Discord or Telegram, as we are in Tom's Hardware or Stack Overflow'.

Web sites: www.104west.com , www.ringersciences.com and www.nextpracticesgroup.com .