This is a continuation of a response to: Joseph Carrabis, A Vexing Problem, Part 4, Post 2 My previous entry dealt with language issues and why an analytics argument won’t work with any audience. Surely, it must work with pure marketing scientists? Or no dice? My previous entry dealt with language issues and why an analytics argument won’t work with any audience. Here I’ll mix in cultural learning and how working memory affects how we interact with clients. It turns out that most people are not only prisoners to language, most people are also prisoners to what they’ve learned, how they learned it and the last time they used it. (And at some point (tha mi duil na dhia) I[…]
It’s similar to when I was 4, learning how to read numbers, with all the numbers sprawled out in front me on my great-grandmothers kitchen floor – and being intensely frustrated that I’d never remember how to say and write ALL 30 numbers (I had gaps in my knowledge too, I knew of 33, somebody’s age, and 23, a bus number, but 24, for some reason, which wasn’t represented on a piece of paper.) Numbers were just like letters and phonetics — I didn’t see 12 as being 10 plus 2, no more than one recognized five (5) as being 3 plus 2. The numbers were actually memorized as symbols or in clumps, similar to how an accent aigu (e[…]
Not really an interesting discussion, but it’s one I’ve been having way too often as of late: pageview paradigm or event paradigm? Most web analytics software will only capture ‘pageviews’ unless you torture it. That is- the script will fire only when the page as a whole is loaded, with no additional information forked over about all the cool functionality that might exist once that page is loaded. For most large websites, we go along with the old pageview paradigm out of pure monetary necessity. Any flash functionality, when tracked properly, is done through a separate account/ID tag so that we preserve the understandability of the main pageview account. And then you get into the confusion with the second account,[…]
Joseph Carrabis replied with a really detailed and thought provoking point of view on his blog: I’m going to zero in on the bits that energized me the most: I also offer that it’s not a losing battle, nor do we need to sensationalize or exaggerate, or resort to fear tactics. Definitely not fear. Not with a pioneering mentality and not as is suggested (the competition is doing it). The response to that would be “Really? Good, let’s see what happens and if they really absolutely positively get an advantage that we can’t duplicate or approximate without going through everything they went through, we’ll do it. But only then. Maybe.” I’m also quite sure logic (at least as we’re using[…]
Joseph Carrabis, on his blog replied to June Li’s and our vexing problem. Here’s the main body of the quote: Howdy, Thanks to June Li for calling me and asking me to take part in this discussion (for those who don’t know, you can reach me far quicker and more easily by phone or Skype than email). Okay. First question: “Why are Canadians so reluctant to embrace data driven strategy?” … I’ll offer an opinion based on lots of research (from others as well as NextStage’s). Canada is still a pioneering society, the US isn’t. Nor is much of the EU…I’m sitting here wondering where else pioneering…probab…Oh, Australia. Duh! I don’t have any direct data and I’m willing to bet[…]
June Li of ClickInsight, matriarch of the Toronto Web Analytics community, is indulging in some pot stirring. 🙂 She made a really thoughtful reply, referenced here., and I’m going to quote from it. Liberally. Thank you Mike Spaeth of Coremetrics for sponsoring the evening and patrick glinski of Critical Mass for organizing (Yet again! This is the 8th WAW T.O patrick has organized). I’ll echo that. 🙂 Mike is so damn likable. Thanks to Patrick to continuing to host it, and continuing to put up with my constant badgering over it. I was part of the conversation with Chris. And I don’t know if it’s fair to blame the schools. Probably something more systemic and complex. I’m well known in[…]
Web Analytics Wednesday was a huge success. Kudos to Patrick Glinski for setting it up, and hats off to Coremetrics for actually sponsoring the event. I had a particularly good time talking with June Li from ClickInsight and Mike Sukmanowsky from Rogers, among many others. Here’s the vexing problem that came up last night: Why are Canadians so reluctant to embrace data driven strategy? Is there something cultural about us? Is there something in our DNA that makes us inherently skeptical of a marketing science approach? Is there something in our school system that turns people off and away from statistics? What’s the deal there? And what’s the deal with airline food? Do they call it food?
Patrick Glinski, as always, is the catalyst behind Toronto’s Beer Camp. The even tomorrow at the Bier Mrkt promises to be one of the largest ever. There are going to be a number of breakout groups so that everybody gets a chance to learn something and share some knowledge, and it’ll be a great chance for the broader web analytics community to get together and compare notes. (It’s been a few month months since our conference. If you’re in Toronto and in data mining, IA, or interactive more broadly, you should come on out. 🙂
Frequent readers of my work emails know that I’m inspired by somebody. Thelen (2004) in “How Institutions Evolve” argues a strong form of what public policy theorists call “lock in”. It made me realize just how easy it is for a single politician to set a country on a path towards greatness, or towards demise. For instance, Chretien’s decision to turn towards a hyper-university and research policy in 1996, and the pursuit of the Millennium Scholarship Grants to ensure accessibility to the lower quintiles, has already had a resounding success for Canada. And it’s only 2008. I’m especially sensitive to labour policy because it’s such a critical ingredient in the success of a nation. On this point, I take the[…]
Sowrey, fellow Tweeterer and friend of the blog, posted a very good letter today conveying mild disappointment with some Conservative copyright legislation. Dear “Honourable” Jim Prentice, Allow me to express my sincerest feelings when I say you are responsible for fucking over the Canadian people. This bill you are introducing this morning — likely as I write this very post — is not for the benefit of the Canadian people. Not one bit. This is purely to support two things: Archaic business models that have not yet woken up to the new economy, and to the United States government. You are blatantly ignoring the wishes of the informed Canadian public, who (thanks to the grassroots efforts of Michael Geist) have[…]