My conference experiences aren’t always the most representative. I tend to have so many client meetings that I catch only snippets of the actual conference. And being something less than a party animal (perhaps party amoeba would be accurate) I don’t necessarily get much out of receptions and such either. But eMetrics always has some great moments and it’s nice to see everyone in the community. My personal highlight this year was Greg Dowling’s keynote and the presentation the two of us did almost immediately after on Mobile Measurement.
Greg presented on Nokia’s very large effort to build-up a new practice around consumer information – a central part of which was a whole raft of initiatives to drive measurement standards across the enterprise. We’ve worked on pieces of this at Semphonic so it was both gratifying and exciting to see it presented at eMetrics – it felt like seeing your painting up on a museum wall or your book in a bookstore!
Greg’s presentation was cool – and as I said beforehand, if you are a large enterprise, I think there are some incredible lessons to take away from his presentation. First, the fact that Nokia committed to this as a large strategic effort speaks volumes. And I found the organizational structure (creating a “Program” that pulls across the company, is specially funded, and goes out of existence after 3 years) particularly interesting. This seems like a great way to drive a strategic initiative without creating a vast organizational tail that you can’t get rid of. Might be a good idea for government programs!
It’s significant that Nokia committed to an online measurement strategy that from the get-go included both a traditional web analytics tool and a warehousing/statistical analysis platform. That’s the direction that I see more and more mature companies taking, and I think it also happens to be the right way to go if you are serious about company-wide measurement. And Greg said something about 15-20 open reqs! That’s always nice to hear.
I’m personally very proud of the Omniture Standards work that’s a part of that effort. I think the Nokia Standard is unusually rich and covers a great deal of ground. Part of that is the detailed coverage of issues around administrative setup, flash and video, and testing, but the real heart of the standard is the extent of variable documentation and the efforts we made to balance the interests of the whole company with the measurement requirements of each business unit. The Ovi properties (Nokia’s consumer-facing portal properties) comprise a wide mix of sites and site types – which makes it a real challenge to create a standard that works both ways. As Greg descibed, the Standard documents hundreds of possible variables: a modest number are required, more are recommended and a great many are optional and provided simply to help the business unit identify possible options. I think that’s the way a good standard should work.
The Mobile Measurement presentation was a whole lot of fun. Greg and I just volleyed back and forth – and I think it was one of the most relaxed and integrated two-person presentations I’ve ever done. If you are thinking about mobile measurement this year and you’d like to get a copy of the presentation, just drop me a line. The presentation walks through the primary methods of mobile measurement, the advantages and disadvantages of each, and what kinds of decisions Nokia has made about them. It’s good stuff.
I enjoyed the Symposium on Monday as well. I knew most of the people there and it was interesting to hear the blend of short presentations people had prepared (10 minutes each – sixteen presentations on the rather abstruse topic: What is analysis?). With so much to take in, I thought the subsequent table discussions were a bit diffuse. But my biggest complaint about this was that I had a client call early in the afternoon and missed almost all of the afternoon presentations.
Dylan Lewis of Intuit sent me his (really good presentation) afterwards because we touched on some of the same themes - I talked about the myth of actionable data and if you're interested just let me know and I'll send it along as well. It was funny because I had considered talking about several of the other points he mentioned (his presentation was broader than mine) before finally settling on a topic. I could have done his presentation without even a practice and it would have been easy.
I always tell my daughters that the saying ‘Great minds think alike’ is absurd – since the whole point of being a “Great Mind” is that you don’t think like anyone else. If Dylan and I are on the same wavelength about so much, I guess I’d suggest something like “Very Good Minds Think Alike!”
I suppose that in the great web analytics calendar in the sky, if eMetrics is past it must be time to start talking and thinking about X Change, right?
Yes indeed. Joel and I met with Eric Peterson to lay out the initial plans for this year’s event right after eMetrics. And I think we have some great ideas. More about that very soon!
Comments