I received an email the other week congratulating me for moving out of my Noogler (new Googler) faze, which I guess is defined as your first 6 months at Google. It’s hard to believe I’ve already been here for 6 months. So what have I learned? A lot! 1). I’m surrounded by a lot of really smart people which constantly pushes me to try harder and work smarter It’s not that I haven’t worked with a lot of smart people before. I definitely have. But it’s really a whole new level which is both exciting and scary. I’m constantly aware that I’m not the smartest (or second, or third) in the room. It’s a challenge every day to keep up (and I’m loving the challenge). 2). Likely a consequence (more
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Two weeks ago in Salt Lake City I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend and speak at unSummitSLC (I spoke about mobile & cross-channel analytics). unSummit is a half-day, intimate gathering of digital marketers from all over the country and local university students that takes place the day before Adobe Summit each year (this was it’s 3rd year). The idea is to share content/presos about relevant topics in the industry without the pitchiness of many of the presentations at larger conferences. It’s also a great learning platform for students who are interested in analytics (I wish something like this had been around when I was in college!). This was my first unSummit, and I walked away very impressed and inspired by the day. Some of the biggest
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This past week I had the unique opportunity to attend Adobe Summit as a part of the industry but not a part of the Adobe community (currently). In a prior life I worked as a web analytics manager for Adobe and attended Summit as an employee and active user of the Omniture suite, so attending this time with an outside-looking-in viewpoint was quite an experience. Many things have changed since my time at Adobe, and many things remain constant. For me, one of the biggest changes is the push towards the Marketing Cloud (and an active effort to kill the Omniture brand). In many ways, I see the benefits of this type of front-end collaborative interface, but I do have my doubts and concerns. Benefits: Drag & drop flashy interfaces
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It’s the age old question – what’s the best skill set for a web (or digital) analyst? Many will tell you that you’ve got to be technical, meaning you at least need to know html, javascript and SQL (at minimum). Others will tell you that you don’t need to be technical at all, you just need to understand the toolsets and be able to talk to the business. Finally, the most common answer I hear is somewhere in between – you need to be technical enough, and business savvy enough. But what does that really mean? Am I technical enough if I can talk the talk but can’t actually write my own code? Am I biz savvy enough if I can make pretty graphs and powerpoints? I myself fall into
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A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend eMetrics in Boston. (I actually started this blog post on the plane home but am only now finishing… I blame on-boarding a new job for taking up all my free time ;)) No surprise, it was a great time. I learned a lot, met some great industry people, and had a fun time. Given that there was 3 full days of content, I’ll give a recap of the major takeaways and some notes from a few of my favorite sessions but I won’t break down each session individually. Let me know what you think! Big Takeaways: 1. Tag Management! With the announcement of Google Tag Management, the acceptance and proliferation of tag management across the board will see a sharp
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This past week I had the pleasure of seeing months of work come together in the form of the DAA San Francisco Chapter Inaugural Symposium. It was a great afternoon of analytics insights and learnings as well as networking and catching up with nearly 200 other industry professionals. The theme for the day was “What’s Next” in Analytics and was carried throughout 3 different tracks: LoSoMo, Big Data, and Careers. Jim Sterne (@jimsterne) kicked off the event with a keynote titled ‘The Key to Omni-Channel Marketing Analytics’ which focused on bringing together the theme of the track ‘Local, Social, and Mobile’ (as well as other marketing channels) to give the consumer a single experience across multiple channels. Jim talked about using online and offline data together to give each customer the
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I’ve recently been pondering (ok, maybe more like fuming) over customer support via social channels. There is so much diversity in terms of levels of support offered, but to me, one thing is clear: if you have a social presence, I expect you to be responsive when I Tweet/Facebook/G+/etc to you (ok, who really uses G+?!). The proliferation of customer support channels on the social web has engrained this expectation in me. Is it fair to the business? No, not necessarily. But as a customer, do I care? No. I want you to answer my question/complaint/desperate cry for help. Now. Like I said, I’ve been pondering this for a while, but one recent experience has finally convinced me to write a blog post on the topic. My biggest issue –
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The other week I had the opportunity to attend a few networking events and 1 day of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in San Francisco. I have to say, I was quite impressed! While the conference itself was jam packed with relevant and interesting content (I had a seriously hard time choosing which sessions to attend), the caliber of the talent who attended the conference was out of this world. I can’t stress enough how important it is in our industry to network, troubleshoot, and spend actual, physical time with others from the industry – it’s a great way to build your personal brand within the industry. It drives home concepts and points that otherwise may have been fuzzy. It allows for building relationships which one day may lead to
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It’s that time of year again… you know, the one where every week brings a new industry conference and you are having trouble choosing between them?! I’m in that boat right now, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on what I find valuable/look for in a conference when choosing amongst the many many options. First of all – is it industry related? Yes? Check. But what parts of the industry? Social Media? Digital Analytics? Mobile? Specific to a vendor? Cross-vendor/tool? There are a lot of ways to slice and dice these conferences (just like data!), so it’s important to know what you are interested in and what will provide the most value to both yourself and your business (after all, it is their time and $$ sending you, right?).
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