London, eMetrics, and an Observation

I’ll be in London next week for a whirlwind 46 hours, coming for eMetrics and staying for the company.

I’m looking forward to talking to Lovett to carry on where we left off two weeks ago. I’ll be talking more about Villanueva and linking in Earned Media Value (EMV), as well as talking about the differentiation in the definition. I’d like to meet up with Andy Lepki who does the analytics over at The Guardian. There are a few tweeple on the list. If you’re at eMetrics London too, don’t be a stranger. I don’t know nearly enough of you.

I took in the British Election coverage on BBC World – garnering scorn for how much of it took up the DVR the next day. (I fell asleep at 1:30am to the delightful droning of polite voices going on about swings and stats.)

I observed, both through the BBC’s website, and through the great 3D room, just how the British handle information complexity. The UK’s 650 is more than Canada’s 308 seats, and naturally, I wanted to see how they handle twice the complexity in the same space. Using this notion of ‘swings’, they can explain, relatively easily, why different seats change hands. The linkage between a national public opinion sample and the local riding level is made pretty clearly. And, they highlight regional seats and use that model to predict whether or not a seat is at risk. It’s not totally predictive – but it’s good enough.

There are lessons there. And perhaps the future of analytics. As I’ve joked in the past – eventually you’re going to need an analyst standing in front of a massive animated board with 90 seconds to get a point across. Maybe the future is a 3D room.

So, it’s a pleasant coincidence that I’m heading over with the UK on the mind. See you there.