That’s another problem — and I’ve heard about it so many, many times from Microsoft employees: Most every technology decision must be justified by some data point.
Google. Microsoft. Both have a data-driven cultures but one is functioning and one isn’t.
You could conclude from this that Google is destined for the same-fate as Microsoft — analysis paralysis. It is only a matter of time. But I am keen to see if Google can overcome this problem. Instead of having a bun fight with metrics, I wonder if improved data-flow within teams — that ambient awareness you get from twitter — can mitigate this outcome.
I’ve been living the startup life and have come to terms with no longer being able to “comp last year”. It’s a game of grow, grow, grow, where sheer volume and customer headcount matter only slightly less than fussy old concepts like margin, and rather than comp last year by 2%, you’re aiming to be 2 orders of magnitude bigger by next year because there is no last year, and even if there was it’d be a sure sign of trouble if you could use last year to tell very much about what’s going on now.
A year after starting this blog (and a month into my new job) I’ve resolved to roll up my sleeves and learn how to deal with data.
Also, when my boss asked me for figures including median and standard deviation I got sweaty palms and goobered up my company iPhone.
So I bought a book; my usual stress response when confronted with my own ignorance. It’s an O’Reilly (my first, I think) from their “Head First” series, which seems to be geared towards impractically-educated people such as myself who are thumbing through night school course catalogues but not quite convinced that this subject is worth the scheduling commitment or risking entanglement in group assignments.
I worked through the first chapter last night (it was good, but you really do need a pencil handy). If I knock off 2 chapters every week I’ll be done before March.
The New York Times is featuring a rather empty article about data in retail whose thrust is basically more data = more opportunity. Uh yeah. The trend I am seeing with retailers — and my visibility here is more limited than it used to be — is an analytics or CRM vendor sells a retailer a data package that is tailored just enough for the purchase to make sense to the company’s executive but the package isn’t tailored enough to yield any intelligence to make better decisions. The mid-level users that need the intel are left saying WTF? That is an old management pattern but seeing it happen hurts my insides because the opportunity is really amazing but is being fumbled so badly. Creating a data-driven culture has to start with the analysts. Hopefully they know what to ask for.
Your browsing history can be used to tell a lot of things about you. We are just beginning to see a raft of applications that leverage your history to provide a better web experience. One firefox add-on that I have just stumbled across is Wikipedia Diver 4.o. It tracks the research you have been doing on Wikipedia and gives you a granular info viz of your history. (http://thejit.org/)
Maud Newton references Richard Brody on the centrality of the director in Cahiers Du Cinema versus the centrality of the author in the Paris Review interviews of the same period.
Brody observes that “portable” recording devices (which weighed about nine pounds then) made these conversations possible, and wonders about the effect of technology on our “expectations for information and aesthetics” generally.
The expectations-for-information-and-aesthetics bit caught my attention. As we have said here before on Datachondria new forms of technology are linked to new forms of criticism. The supercut is only one such example. Now if only we could learn how to use these tools we would be laughing.
In this blog, I write about the world of online music discovery and recommendation. I look at the tools available to help people find music. I examine some of the issues that can make music recommendations go bad. I also write about things that I find generally interesting including programming, data visualization, playing games, and (of course) music.
At the first MESH conference, Chris Messina was enthusiastic about the future of the browser. Page, page, back button, address bar, page, bookmark, page. Surely we could do better? The shuffling paper metaphor needed to go.
Every since hearing Chris, I have been keen on seeing the browser evolve. In the embedded video, the folks at Adaptive Path put forward one possible iteration — the browser as data manipulator.
It was probably heard Merlin Mann who said that you should never apologize on your blog for not having updated your blog.
I love ol’ hotdogsladies, but I think we do owe a bit of an explanation.
If you’re not already following Datachondria on Twitter, you can do so here. And if you want to get really personal with us datachondrians, you can do that too.
Now, the excuses:
I am a happy new daddy who just started a new job.
Ryan, daddy of a toddler, has more going on at work than I care to consider without a drink in me
We’re not sure about Foursquare; who’s it for and why would they use it?
We’ve tried (and failed at) conducting our weekly meeting on Google Wave
I suspect my family still resents me pushing them to Twitter for updates on the birth of The Boy
We’re just about ready to post our first podcast.
That’s to say nothing at all of electronic reading, parenting and mobile apps, job transitioning with social media, digital guidance to analog pleasures, and however serendipity leads us to those moments of palpable transition that we’ll forever try to capture and share with you.
Twitter allows two things to happen very well: mobs feed on themselves, and the slippery slope gets very steep and extremely slick. There’s also the snowballing analogy… Bottom line, there was a lack of respect for the topic, a clear void in researching the audience, and just bad presentational ability. A perfect storm, if you will. And once the tweeting started, it simply became more fun to be in the stream than put up with the presentation. In a way, it was less about being snarky towards the speaker, and more about amusing each other by sharing and exaggerating the pain.
We touched on this a few months ago: the idea that Twitter is, as yet, a social space largely unregulated by norms of behaviour. There are furtherthoughtselsewhere about this particular example and some possible lessons: are we moving from a model of passive consumption in conferences to one of active participation? Does the ‘unconference’ model so successfully employed by, for example, BookCamp Vancouver last week, provide more value to attendees? Has the burden changed from audiences (to pay attention to the presenters) to presenters (to better know their audiences)?
Back in 2006 Google’s Marissa Mayer shared her Nine Notions of Innovation with NewsWeek. Number six was “Don’t Politic, Use Data.”
I’ve been living the startup life and have come to terms with no longer being able to “comp last year”. It’s a game of grow, grow, grow, where sheer volume and customer headcount matter only slightly less than fussy old concepts like margin, and rather than comp last year by 2%, you’re aiming to be 2 orders of magnitude bigger by next year because there is no last year, and even if there was it’d be a sure sign of trouble if you could use last year to tell very much about what’s going on now.
It was probably heard Merlin Mann who said that you should never apologize on your blog for not having updated your blog.