An insight is: New information Executable Causes action Profitable Or, more detailed, an insight is: A piece of information that you didn’t know before, which – Can feasibly executed, culturally acceptable and of a scale relevant to the firm, and – Causes a decision to be made that wouldn’t have been made otherwise, and – Results in profit or a sustainable competitive advantage I’m finally happy with this definition. It aligns with the best innovation rhetoric very nicely and is generalizable to both design thinking and analytics communities.
Category: Analytics
It’s surprising how little time I’ve spent analyzing PowerPoint with the same rigor as social and the web. It’s amazing how that dissociation happens. There’s a set of methods that apply to these mediums over here, and a set of methods that apply to this set over here. And you can go along not even being aware of it. On Thursday, Nadia, Heather and I were remarking how a specific POV looked after Paul gotten his hands on it. The content was all there. The content was actually the same. It just looked more persuasive. Naturally, writing persuasive content is a cornerstone of marketing – so suddenly – powerpoint becomes an object of curiosity. We enumerated all the things that[…]
I’ve had a fairly rough 9 days with a very troublesome model. My original hypotheses are rejected. A piece of the world doesn’t really work the way that I expected. The great news is that I’m forced to look beyond the clean dataset and write new hypotheses. Even failures can be great. However, it doesn’t make for good commercial reading. Instead of having that nice, clean, nugget: Brands that did x realized y. There’s a much messier message: Neither a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i , j, k, l, m, n, nor p had a significant impact on y. That messier message works among marketing scientists. Usually a sound of surprise. Then acceptance when they see the[…]
The obvious agenda of the next Toronto Web Analytics Wednesday is pretty obvious. When passionate developers get together, they usually hack. What happens when passionate analysts get together? That’s the question. I’ve put out a pretty basic call – bring 25 copies of a single sheet of paper to the next WAW. Have 3 bullet points and supporting data. Be prepared to distribute it and talk about what you found. It is indeed homework prior to the next one. It’s an opportunity for analysts to move beyond talking about web analytics to sharing what they do. There are loads of open data sets out there, with very, very rich datasets. Never before has there been so much opportunity. To that[…]
Eric Peterson kicked off a debate about a Web Analytics Code of Ethics. You can read about it here. Here’s my comment: 1. What is the maximum length (word count, characters, bullet points) that a Code of Ethics can be before it becomes ineffective? 2. What is the minimum and maximum lengths (word count, characters, bullet points) that a Code of Ethics has to be before it becomes ineffective at PR-marketing objectives? 3. Should a Code of Ethics make explicit references to technology types? If the purpose is to create an actionable Code of Ethics, and if practitioners are going to live it, then it has to be compact, memorable and timeless. It is beyond my capability to remember and[…]
We ought to tell stories with data. Stories are hugely effective for a number of reasons. They’re easy to tell. They’re easy to remember. They’re easy for other people to remember. They’re easy for other people to tell. They’re a very fluid idea transmission device. They’re rewarding to craft – especially with data. The antagonist doesn’t always have to be human. In fact, it might be nature itself that’s the antagonist. And you can cast whoever you want as the protagonist. In sum – perhaps if we want some of our communication to be more effective from time to time, we ought to tell stories. Tell me, do you think it’s appropriate for an analyst to craft stories?
Much discussion and fun was had at the July 28th installment of web analytics wednesday Toronto (#WAWTO). There was a large variety of folks who turned out – from some of the best developers in the city, some of the best strategists, and some of the best analysts and measurement scientists. Name drop commences: Attendees included June Li, Maciek Adwent, Jenn Fong-Adwent, Mark Dykeman, Dave Hamel, Glinski, Alex Brasil, Mike Fiorillo, Jose Davilla, Romy Klaus (in from London!), Lida and Mike Sukmanowski, Gar, and the whole Syncapse Measurement Science team – among many others. I counted some 45 attendees at the apogee. Thank you all for making it an excellent evening. Name drop ends. There are no stated agendas at[…]
The next WAW Toronto will be on July 28. It’s being held on the second floor of Bar Wellington. It’s free to attend and You can sign up to attend here. The invite: “Developers make it possible to measure anything, statisticians and dataminers work models, IAs finesse interfaces, analysts mash and managers action. Effective Analytics takes an orchestra. Lets talk to each other and see whats possible.” Historically, WAW’s attract a strong contingent of web analysts, social analysts (many from Syncapse), IA’s, a few dev’s, recruiters, vendors, and yes, two dataminers. And it’s a great mix. Let’s keep that mix and expand it. Additional invites to business strategists, eScientists, Marketing Scientists, and specialized developers.
The Syncapse Measurement Science team put together an experiment on sentiment analysis, as applied to social media measurement. As promised: Link to the White Paper: syncapse-sentiment-analysis Link to the Data Set: The Geurilla Analytics Project _ Sentiment The paper will speak for itself. We can discuss it here and on Twitter.
Communities played an important part in the online gaming experience during the early 2000’s, and I think there are lessons in there for today. Time for a story. It’ll be fun and egregiously self-deprecating. My first Real Time Simulation (RTS) game was Age of Empires I, back in 1998 or so. And I loved playing it online. Problem was – the online experience really sucked because most of the players were jerks. The experience sucked and the game lagged like hell. By 2000 I had joined my first gaming community. They were referred to as gaming clans, and you could identify its members by having a telltale tag at the front of a name. MNPE_username, JCV_username…and so on. There was[…]