Konrad von Finckenstein, chairman of the CRTC, went before committee yesterday and made the remark: “The vast majority of Internet users should not be asked to subsidize a small minority of heavy users.” I take issue with Finckenstein’s statement. For one, the vast majority of Internet users subsidize a number minority. Urban customers, who are comparatively cheaper to connect with bandwidth, pay more to subsidize rural customers, who are comparatively more expense to connect. Didn’t the CRTC pass fees last year, forcing the vast majority of us to subsidize the viewing habits of the small minority of people who watch the CBC, Flashpoint, and DeGrassi? Isn’t the CRTC mandating the subsidization of something called “Canadian New Media”? Seems to me[…]
If you’re following a Canadian tech entrepreneur or scientist on Twitter, you might be noticing the #stopthemeter hashtag and statements questioning something called the #CRTC. The CRTC is the regulatory body responsible for regulating radio, television, and Internet Service Providers in Canada. On paper, Canada has six or seven major teleco’s. These are divided up by region. Telus and Shaw compete in the West. Rogers and Bell compete in Ontario. Videotron and whoever competes in Quebec. There are regional variants and government monopolies in the smaller provinces. Canada is peppered with duopolies – which are, in effect what economists might call natural monopolies. A complicating factor is that Canada is a massive country with a very dispersed rural population. These[…]
If you’re a web analyst or a data scientist, developer, or otherwise deeply involved with web analytics, you should strongly consider pledging to the Code of Ethics. This Code of Ethics is a social compact. Choices were made in authoring this code. Among the biggest challenges Lovett and Peterson had in steering this through a large group of people was balancing several of them – between specificity and generalization, one set of values and another set of values, and fending off the natural tendency of analysts to enumerate 55,000 technologies and their appropriate uses. It’s something that is relatively easy to internalize and has a timeless quality. Anything that is worth pledging has to stand for something. It doesn’t bind[…]
The space is tremendously fragmented because social itself if fragmented, unstructured, and ill behaved. Broadly, there’s ‘listening’, which has its origins in the PR space, and then there’s marketing performance, which has its origins in the analytics space. Although there are nearly 250 (+) ‘listening’ companies out there, none of them will have a solution that fits your unique set of circumstances, biases, and needs. You are simply not a PR person. Web analysts entering into social should be prepared to confront fragmentation and complexity on a level that they have yet to experience. If you work in an enterprise with more than 150 people, you will rapidly reach a stage where you will not be able to keep pace[…]
ETL stands for Extract, Transform and Load. They’re the three vital steps most analysts do before Analyze, Investigate and Storytell. Most of the time, the ET’ing is done for us. You log into a tool and hit export. The Loading part, getting the data into a format where it can be statistically analyzed or presented in a culturally acceptable way, is longer. And it’s where we spend too much time. But not today. I’m unpacking a tricky T problem. In an attempt to fully automate an algorithm further and unlock an area of possibility, involves a tricky operation of flattening lists of lists of lists, which, sadly for me, are also composed of lists. It’s tricky. There are functions that[…]
An insight is: New information Executable Causes action Profit results With that piece of jargon unpacked, the next one is ‘convenient reasoning’. Convenient reasoning is: An existing heuristic, hunch, feeling, belief, or instinct The seeking of validation or evidence Evidence to the contrary or modifying the position will be rejected Convenient reasoning differs from a hypothesis. A hypothesis is rejected if it’s proven wrong. No amount of evidence to the contrary will ever deter a convenient reasoner. Building cases in support of a project, plan, or prospect is an incredibly important skill. Rallying persuasive evidence is a key part of that. A whole industry was built around the provision of convenient facts. It’s an essential skill. Perhaps there would be[…]
Just as some people define they’re identity by what they buy, some people define themselves by the tools that they use. There’s a certain cache about using the ACH. Or being an OCP. Or knowing enough to choose select instead of forward regression. Or the use of Bayesian methods. Coremetrics against Omniture. Google Analytics over Webtrends. R over SPSS. Graffle over Visio. And so on. There’s a large degree of tool centricity in three communities: web analytics, data mining, and marketing science. The irrational judgements about people in each of those communities, based on the degree of sophistication of tools, is dangerous. Worse – it’s detrimental. It’s detrimental because it narrows your view. For one, different tools are right for[…]
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.
The NCDM was a pretty good show by most criterion. I got to meet a whole new set of people. I wasn’t treated horribly for not knowing their language. I learned a lot. I really enjoyed so many of the people I met – including a 12 hour stay in the airport with two people who I hope become really great allies. I really enjoyed the Kiwis (New Zealanders). I thank Emma Warrillow for the invite and keeping the dialogue between web analysts and data miners going. I’m troubled by some of the problems I see for web analysts. I’m energized by some of the problems that are common, and that are interesting. That is to say, I see it[…]
It’s warmer today. Two points from Day 3: When pressed on what DM’ers thought of web analysts, some made comparisons to ‘convenient reasoning’. The comparison wasn’t made in a nice voice. That should actually really concern you if you’re a web analyst. Broad concern about devils in details on FTC ‘do not track’ list. Reflections: I have a much better understanding of the problems that face DM’ers, compared to the problems facing WA’s. Not all of them are interesting problems. Some of them are solvable if DM’ers and analysts work together. The linkage between ‘insight’ and ‘innovation’ has been finally, for the absolute first time in my mind, been completely made. I may actually calm down about the use of[…]