MS Word’s Dictionary be damned. I know Multilith isn’t a word.
But in seeking to describe something that is formed of many distinct and very different pieces but that functions as an effective, single entity, I drew a blank and made up my own word. Multilith.
A good consultancy can be forged around a single identity. But when it is, it can never grow too large. As Semphonic has grown, I’ve become less certain that the strong identity between myself and our company’s public face is ideal.
Not that there is anything wrong with my face. But that one-to-one identity makes us seem more like a monolith than we really are. Eric Peterson is Web Analytics DeMystified. Gary Angel is not Semphonic. That identity was never true and is less true today than ever.
That’s part of the reason we’ve decided to launch a whole constellation of Semphonic blogs. You’ll see on my left-navigation a new entry – Semponic bloggers – and underneath it there’s a list of five new blogs. Joel Hadary, Paul Legutko, Phil Kemelor, June Dershewitz and Jesse Gross are all going to take to their keyboards and produce blogs.
What will they write about? Heck if I know. They probably don’t know either.
One thing I’ve come to realize about blogging is how intensely personal even a business blog like mine is. When I started writing this blog, it was expressly as part of a business/branding decision. It was a conscious effort by Semphonic to get our name in the marketspace and demonstrate our intellectual equity. But in the first three months of writing, I probably would have had the same brand impact if I’d simply printed posts, crumpled them up and shot them into a trash can.
Blog experts counsel patience when it comes to blogs. And they’re right. But the simple fact is that’s it’s a heck of a lot of work. Especially if you are trying to consistently generate real content. If I hadn’t found that I actually enjoyed the writing, I doubt I would ever have stuck with it long enough to see it actually contribute something to the business.
So I know that some of those blogs probably won’t take. The press of business, relationships, kids, pubs and gardens will claim some. And I’m sure we’ll add others. But I’m hoping that enough of these will work so that people begin to get a broader sense of Semphonic and our thinking.
Since I know and work with them, here’s what I’d kind of expect to see in their blogs (knowing that I’ll be surprised).
Joel, my Semphonic co-founder, runs all of the business aspects of Semphonic. He’s the main reason I’m pretty much completely free to concentrate on web analytics. But he still manages some of our largest clients and regularly gets his hands dirty building reports and analysis. Joel is far more practical, less theoretic and more involved in the business side of web analytics than I am, and I expect his blog to reflect that. I suspect his primary distractions will be an even lower tolerance for public duties than I have and the extensive garden, olive trees, apple trees, etc. that ring his lovely home.
Paul Legutko came to use from a professorship at Stanford University, and he’s by far the most academic thinker among us. He and I share a love of theory and an intense interest in exploring new methods and applications for web measurement. But like almost everyone here, Paul is also extremely hands-on with the WA toolset. He is our leading Omniture expert, he’s extremely skilled in traditional Statistical Analysis tools and he drives many of our most interesting deep-dive analytic projects. I think he’ll take to blogging – but like me he has two young girls at home who I’m sure equal mine in potential for distraction!
Phil’s blogged for a while now, so this is more about moving his stuff under the Semphonic wing. Phil’s interests are heavily invested on the business side of web analytics – how to deploy, manage and use web analytics. He’s also, of course, someone who has written heavily about the vendor and tool environment – and that’s always a hot topic in the blogsphere. I expect his blog to focus on those topics, but perhaps we’ll gradually corrupt him into the more technical aspects of web analytics! He has only one child for distraction, but it isn’t clear to me that numbers actually matter when it comes to the distraction potential in child-rearing.
I’m surprised June hasn’t entered the blogsphere long before now. June has tons of hands-on technical experience with various web analytics tools and also with the constellation of tools and techniques (database, stats, BI, etc.) that can also be deployed in the service of online measurement and analysis. She’ll be doing lots of more of that work with us, so I expect that to be a significant focus of her blog. She’s also been extremely active in the Web Analytics community – so I’d imagine her blog to be more social and community-centric than mine or Joel’s is ever likely to be. I’d like to say no kids, no garden (oops - she claims a public garden), no excuses. But I suppose having a life might be a bit of a distraction from time to time!
Jesse Gross is one our old “right-out-of-college” hires who’s become an invaluable analyst on our team. He handles lots of day-to-day analysis, mentors newer analysts and manages many client report needs. Given his blog title and constant heavy tool usage, I’d expect his approach to be hands-on, practical and down-in-the-weeds. But given his mentoring experience, perhaps he’ll be talking about training and helping new analysts as well. I’d say Jesse shares my sometimes sarcastic sense-of-humor, so I’m eagerly awaiting the day he gets into it with somebody. Just hope it isn’t me! Like June, he lacks any better excuse for not blogging than being young and living in the Bay Area. Makes me wonder if he’ll ever write anything.
I hope these blogs add real value to our community. I know that each of writers have the potential to do so. And I look forward to seeing what they write and having it spur my own thinking and writing.
No doubt I’ll be peeved if any of them get really successful (maybe they’ll rank in the Top 10 WA Blogs list!), but however they turn out I know they’ll help convey the breadth, quality and diversity of thought that Semphonic brings to the table.
The monolith is dead. Long live the Mulitlith!
Comments