WaW Montreal, May 14th, Cafe Melies

The last "[WAM] Web Analytics Wednesday in Montreal" goes way back to November... Spring is here, now is time for a new [WAM]!

When: May 14th, around 6:00pm, after WebCom
Where: Café Melies
RSVP: Simply send me an email
Sponsor: None, everyone pay his own drinks

The last 6 months have been busy! Come join us for a drink and catch on all that happened!

• December: busy with XMas parties...
• January: struggling with record breaking snow storms
• February: we had a WAA breakfest with Jim Sterne
  
• March: I was attending the Omniture Summit in Salt Lake and speaking at eMetrics Toronto
• April: speaking at InfoPresse day dedicate to web analytics
• May: speaking at the great eMetrics Summit in San Francisco

And hear about what is coming up!

eMetrics appreciation

Back from a fantastic trip in San Francisco for eMetrics. Catching up on emails and work. But I thought I should share my impressions while things are fresh in my mind.

Ok, I must admit I might be biased... as I presented on the Industry Insight day and was moderating one of the track on Tuesday.

BUT... It was an amazingly productive conference.

Way back then...

Some years ago (well... many years ago... I'm getting old!), each Internet World conference brought something new to the forefront of the industry. Remember "push technology", VRML, the early days of streaming? Without any coordination, "the industry" was moving in a direction. Although we can now laugh at some of those concepts, they nevertheless changed the face of the industry and how we use the web today.

The same pattern is happening at eMetrics. Without any preliminary coordination, there are some things setting the path for the future.

Testing & beyond

I noticed this year eMetrics was a lot about the value of "testing". Bringing the "testing" culture and the right tools to do it in order to optimize and achieve success. Contrary to most other field of expertise, the Web allows us to deploy quickly and continually improve. You don't want to do that with your car, your house or the space shuttle... but with the web it's how it should be. Most companies don't understand that and still impose strict project cycles, those who understand are not only demonstrating huge benefits.

From IT, to marketing, to business

The other outcome, highlighted during the Industry Insight afternoon round table and in Thomas Davenport's great keynote is the transition from web analytics to business analytics. Just like the web, web analytics started in IT, then marketing found out about it and took control. We are there now. But winning businesses understand the value of the web and have optimized some of their most important business processes around it. We are maturing to a level where we won't only talk about using web analytics for marketing optimization, but we will be talking about analytics for business processes optimization and strategic level changes.

Being a tutor of both web analytics and business process analysis classes, it's obvious to me there are very strong benefits in leveraging analytics to optimize business processes.

What will be this fall highlight? Next year?

Industry Insight

Jim Sterne told me the experience of the Industry Insight was very positive and will be renewed this fall in Washington: leading experts sharing their view of the current and future state of the industry. I will be there to bring some hard core data about the vendor market shares and exchange with fellow analysts.

Live from eMetrics: got interviewed by Robert Scoble

eMetrics is getting close to an end and it's been great for me! Great from a learning perspective, great networking, and great opportunities for my startup.

I was walking down the hallway and bumped into Jim Sterne and Robert Scoble. Robert just interviewed Jim and he was kind enough to mention what I'm doing with WASP. A few minutes later a short video interview was posted on Qik, Robert's "from your phone to the web" platform. Spontaneous, short, quick. I like that. Thanks Robert!



If the video above doesn't work, head over to Qik to watch my interview about WASP.

eMetrics: Davenport, Slanted Door and Lobby bar

What a day! This is my third time speaking at eMetrics since last year and it's getting better every time. The conference is growing in size and there are now numerous tracks to satisfy beginners as well as more experienced practitioners. There are also numerous "unofficial" activities, as you will see.

Tom Davenport: beyond web analytics

As I said in my previous post, I had the privilege to participate in the Industry Insights day. We concluded by a round table where we shared our opinions about the state of the web analytics industry and where we see it heading. I read Tom Davenport's "The Attention Economy" a while back and I'm halfway trough "Competing on Analytics" and I already felt it was alligned with what I thought.

I loved Davenport's keynote! He is not only a great speaker, funny and full of interesting anecdotes, he should also be considered a guiding light toward what is bound to be the future of web analytics: analytics and business optimization.

Here's some random quotes from the book and from his keynote:

• "It is not my job to have all the answers, but it is my job to as lots of penetrating, disturbing and occasionally almost offensive questions as part of the analytic process that leads to insight and refinement". Gary Loveman
• "Do we think or do we know?". Gary Loveman
• "In God we trust, all others bring data". Sara Lee Baker

Once I have completed my reading I will post a more extensive review of the book and my takes on it. In the meantime, head over to "In God we trust, all others bring data" for a great review.

Testing, testing

Bryan Eisenberg did, as usual, a great presentation. This time he was introducing tidbits of his upcoming book "Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer". This book is bound to be a category leader. I wish I had taken note of the table of content he showed us, but from what I remember, it looks like it will be a great introduction to the concepts and methods of online testing. Bryan told me he will share a pre-release copy, so stay tuned for some early reviews!

Google Analytics v3.0: I was wrong... but...

Remember my post from a few days ago, where I speculated about Google Analytics v3.0? Ok, I was "slightly" off... But... When I asked Avinash Kaushik shortly before his presentation he said something like "You will be disapointed... but I shared your idea with the team. I told them Stéphane wants this, so we need to do it" in his always musing and friendly tone. Avinash, you are great! :)

I'm supposed to get enroled in the Google Analytics for Blogger beta program. Stay tuned for more info.

Slanted Door

Once the tracks and sessions are over, the "unconference" can start. Dinner often ends up being a unique occasion to network and share on all kinds of topics related to web analytics (or not!). Sunday night was an intimate dinner with my friends Joseph Carrabis, René Dechamp Otamendi and eMetrics event coordinator Matthew Finlay.

Last night Ian Thomas and his team invited a couple of us to The Slanted Door, a great fusion-asiatic restaurant. Along with the Carrabis, Dechamp, Finlay and others, Jim Strene and Bryan Eisenberg contributed to a great dinner and great fun!

Of course, as the tradition goes, we ended up at the lobby bar and beyond... A good scotch and the traditional Belgian chocolate from René summed it up for the night.

Time to run...

Today I'm moderating the Marketing Optimization Management track. I also noticed there's a lot of interest today for optimization and multivariate testing with keynotes from Omniture, Optimost and Interwoven.

Time to go! Stay tuned for more insights from eMetrics!

eMetrics San Francisco: Industry Insight

I thought entitling this post "Continental airlines: redux" to reference my horror story from a few weeks ago. Here's another one (yeah... I should have known better!) or skip that part and jump to the Industry Insights.

Continental airlines: strike two

It was supposed to be a smooth traveling day: leaving Quebec city toward Detroit, then San Francisco. Turned out this time the plane was late 4 hours because of the bad weather in central US.

The plane from Detroit to SF would be at 7:00pm, basically wasting my whole day... So I asked to reschedule trough New York to take a plane around 12:30, another half hour later than planned. I knew it would be short in New York, where I had to go trough customs. Of course, I got a pretty stiff custom guy who was very friendly... too friendly... making jokes and wasting even more of the little time I had. Then it was security after picking my bags, another check to put back the bags on the next plane... one last security check...

I ran for nothing... the plane was late another 30 minutes. Finally got on the plane... taxied for several minutes and waited on the tarmac even more. Then we saw the maintenance trucks come in... bad news. "Mechanics told us they now know what is the problem and it will take 20 minutes to fix".

20 minutes turned to 2 hours, having us back to the gate and getting off the plane. Then I realized I was actually exactly at the same gate where I got stuck the last time! Could it be Ground Hog Day? Or maybe one of those hidden camera prank?

I finally got to the hotel around midnight... roughly 12 hours later than I was supposed to.

Industry Insights

There were two pre-conference events on Sunday: WAA basecamp and Industry Insight. I was very glad to present some of the web analytics vendor market share insights I gained trough WASP data. Morning was spent filling our brain with lots of data and bringing us in the mindset for the afternoon: what do we want our industry to be? Where is it headed? I found the discussions from the Industry Insight event to be amazingly interesting: people were very experienced analysts, great subjects and challenging ideas.

I don't want to go into too many details about what was discussed and what were the outcomes as this will be presented here on Tuesday under the very appropriate title of "Insights from Industry Insights Day". Stay tuned!

Davenport: Competing on Analytics

I read Thomas Davenport's book "The Attention Economy" a while back and it changed the way I think. I wanted to read "Competing on Analytics" for a while and with all the time I had at the airport and on my way in I'm already half-way through. Thomas Davenport is Monday morning's keynote and I'm sure it will reinforce my opinion that web analytics as we know it today; very marketing centric; is going to lead way to business analytics that will drive strategy and process optimization way beyond the limits of the web.

Google Analytics v3.0: my speculation

Digital Alex has an interesting post about what he think will be announced from Google at next week's eMetrics. Basically more social media measurement in Google Analytics trough the integration of MeasureMap.

Of course it's interesting to us, bloggers, but the next level of web analytics is not only about adding Feedburner, MeasureMap or YouTube data. It's about integration, customization, collaboration and visualization brought to the next level.

I think the last post about "The Action Dashboard" from Avinash might not be a coincidence...

Read on...

Google Analytics v3.0?

Here's my take on what I think (and would love to see) in Google Analytics v3.0:

• API: simply put, all Google services have APIs and there is no reason why Google Anlaytics wouldn't have one... we've been asking for it for a long time. Bet it will be there!
  
• Custom reporting: slicing & dicing of data is key. I want to use any metric, any dimension, any segment and create my multi-level breakdown report the way I want.
  
• Custom metrics: one user variable? c'mon! I should be able to integrate all the data I want, either from offline sources (welcome API again!) or as new metrics gathered from the web. People have learned to use other fields and do all kind of acrobatics to use more than one user variable... it's time to make it official and easy. For example, wouldn't it be interesting to bring the 4Q data right into GA and correlate the results with user behaviour?
  

The killer: custom dashboards

Now it gets even more interesting!

• Import/export: Google Docs spreadsheet doesn't allow you to import data from a web source. Either allow "Save to Google Docs" from the GA interface or import from a web source straight into Google Docs.
  
• Google Docs: No more Excel? We all know MS Excel is the web analyst best friend. Why not bring that data into Google Docs spreadsheets? Leverage the collaborative capabilities of Google Docs to share in edit or read only mode and even use the discussion feature to comment it.
  
• Charting & Gadgets: from the Google Docs spreadsheet data, it's very easy to build basic graphs and very sophisticated visualizations like Gauges, Time Series, Motion Chart, Timelines, Gantt and Org charts and new ones are being added by 3rd parties.
• Dashboarding: bring that to the next level, create a fully customized dashboard in iGoogle and share it to whoever you like. iGoogle allows you to include several types of gadgets. Imagine a financial dashboard that would include Google News, Stocks and Web revenues! Imagine a marketing dashboard that would include competitive data, Google Reader RSS feeds from your competitors' blogs along your AdWords and conversion performance shown as gauges and timelines.
• Alerts: The only thing missing are notifications when values get outside of the acceptable ranges. Google Docs already include the notifications when a spreadsheet, a range or even a specific cell. The only thing missing is allowing to send those notifications based on some rules. I'm sure that would be an easy fix.
  

Basically, the only missing piece of the puzzle is the ability to import/export to Google Docs! From there, everything else becomes possible...

If my predictions turn out to be true, I would easily see Google Analytics inching even more on the higher end players.

We'll see next week.

eMetrics Industry Insight: WASP market research

Jim Sterne is a no fuss, down to heart guy. Picture this: evening before eMetrics Toronto; dinner with a bunch of speakers. WASP is mentioned and questions abound: how is it being used? Who are the target users? What's the state of development? etc. Then I talk about the market data I'm collecting: which sites are using which tools, what kind of research I can do with it, etc. "That would make a good topic to present in San Francisco" Jim said... the following day it was set! So here it is:

eMetrics San Francisco: Industry insight, May 4th

As I mentioned in a recent post, one of the interesting side effect of WASP is the ability to do market research. On the back end, I get a bird's-eye view of the marketplace: 350,000 sites on a monthly basis, for nearly 100 tools. Which tools are used by which industries? Which sectors are having trouble with implementation and which are getting it right? What are the industry trends?

This is highly valuable information for market and financial analysts covering the web analytics space, for vendors and agencies looking for prospects, or even companies looking at who is using which tools in their specific vertical.

On Sunday, May 4th, I'm honored to talk about the results of my research alongside Nielsen/Netratings, Jupiter Research, Yahoo!, Hitwise, Comscore and my friend Joseph Carrabis. Register for Industry Insight.

If you want more information about WASP market research please contact me.

Infopresse day on Web Analytics: post scriptum

We've come a long way!

About 4 or 5 years ago, while working for a web agency with worldwide offices and very well known clients, I was mandated to build up a "web analytics practice". The idea was simple: if we measure success of the web sites we build for our clients, we will be able to come up with facts & recommendations to do repeat business and sustain the relationship.

I was supported by the Sales VP and we became reseller of one of the top tools. I did a couple of implementations, did reporting & analysis. Built dashboard and presented to clients. It was a hard sell... Issues were clients who didn't see why they would pay to fix something that was supposed to be built right in the first place because as a web agency "we were the experts". There was also those who didn't see the value of spending thousands of dollars a year to measure success. Or the ones still contemplating monthly hits, page views and visits and being Ok with that. You get the idea...

Now is the time!

Yesterday there was 350 Montreal-based marketers from dozens of companies attending a full Infopresse day dedicated to web analytics. As my friend Jacques Warren said, 5 years ago he presented to a dozen of people...

I was glad to learn that same agency I worked for is now pushing to enhance their web analytics practice, as are all the agencies I know in Québec and dozens of companies. There are some challenges ahead, notably from the staffing and education perspective...

The day in point form

• Jacques Warren: introduction. An very well done presentation. Good insights, good anecdotes, lots of tips.
• Your humble: implementing a web analytics program. I wanted to do a presentation in two steps:
  • Context: challenges found in most organizations,
    
  • Food for thought in 8 points: WA Maturity, Trinity approach, Mutliplicity, Multidisciplinary Team, A Winning Approach, Defining Goals & KPIs, The Process and lastly, the Tools.
• Agency VDL2 did a case study of Via Rail & RDS.ca: Great panel about the two things we talk the most those days: weather & hockey (Go Habs! Go!) We rarely witness companies who are ready to "open the kimono" and show their metrics, their KPIs and their dashboards. I'm sure this was revealing for a lot of people in the room.

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Avinash: hero of the day year

It’s always a pleasure to see Avinash Kaushik. His willingness to help on his blog, in person, trough personal emails, trough donations to The Smile Train and Médecins sans Frontière, his friendly and humanistic approach as revealed by the pictures of his kids in his presentation, by providing honest comments, by doing more than just a formal shake of hands, Avinash is unique. His personality not only makes him an amazing speaker, but someone trustworthy of our most honest respect and admiration.

To piggy back on a well know commercial: I first met him at last year at eMetrics SF: it was a revelation. I saw many of his appearance in videos and interviews: he was great. Yesterday: priceless.

So allow me to declare something here: if there is such a thing as “web analytics person of the year” Avinash definitely deserves it!

You might also want to check out the great review from Mitch Joel review: Every page is your home page.

See you at eMetrics San Francisco!

Recognizing cultural behavior

At the recent eMetrics Toronto conference I was presenting on a panel with Joseph Carrabis & Simon Rivard from Canoe.ca, moderated by Alex Langshur of PublicInsite:

People from different cultures use websites in different ways. Analysis of web data requires sensitivity to these cultural differences. Mouse movements, navigation habits, and language nuances require “localization” rather than mere translation. Learn how cultural segmentation will yield better results and an improved customer experience.

Here's a couple of things I wanted to highlight in my presentation.

What is culture?

Culture is traditionally defined by the codes of conduct, language, art, rituals, morality, norms passed from generation to generation.

But culture is also growing/controlling bacterias in a Petri dish... (my wife works in a lab). By understanding the mechanism behind the patterns, we can learn how to outsmart the bacteria - for example with their communication or environment - in our ongoing battle for our health (or business objective...)

But why is culture so important? Because it makes us "feel fine and welcomed"!

Culture & emotions

Then I presented a cool project called "We feel fine", by Jonathan Harris & Sep Kamvar. They call it "an exploration of human emotions on a global scale". Culture transpire into blog posts, but that's not all: geographic location, gender, age, weather also influence what will be talked about on the web. My take is that culture will influence how we use the web, but our changing emotions will also make a huge difference!

Language is not culture

Merely translating a site from English to French is far from enough to really consider different cultures. Most sites will simply ask for a company, assuming everyone share the same culture attributes (and of course, the same language). Most sites are really doing a bad job of asking location/language, some others are a bit more successful. I used a few automobile sites to make my point. But being a man... what's more "cultural" than the definition of beauty. So I used L'Oréal as an example of adapting for cultural differences through imagery, language and adapting their offering.

Stereotypes

When developing personas and our persuasion architecture, it's important to consider the differences in stereotypes between, say, the North-American and European cultures if we want to cater to those profiles. To make my point, I showed a series of "attributes" as highlighted by Pascal Beaudry.

Where's Waldo?

But in the end, am I just another French-speaking guy from Québec-city or am I unique among others, why my own cultural background, my own emotions, my own identity?

T'was eMetrics (Toronto) time...

Time is flying by! eMetrics Toronto is already over! The 200 or so attendees were split among newcomers in the field, experienced people and vendors & speakers who were like a bunch of old school friends hanging out together. From what I could glean from the attendees, it was a great success: plenty of learning, networking, thinking.

I had an initial objective of posting everyday... things went way to fast. But allow me to point to some posts from others who were more diligent then I was:

• Jim Novo presented the WAA Base Camp and mentions my good friend Joseph Carrabis amazing patent.
• Mitch Joel about Brian Eisenberg persuasion architecture presentation: should your marketing stink?
• My presentation on cultural behavior
  
• (I will update my post if I find new reports about the conference...)

Who said things happen at the bar?

Jim Sterne said it before: the conference continues long after the official sessions are over. I landed in Toronto on Sunday night and I hesitated to get dinner in my room and work at the same time or go to the hotel bar and relax a bit and get a small snack. I'm glad I did the later! We ended a bunch having dinner, chit chatting and having fun. At one point, the conversation turned to my work on WASP and the market research I'm doing, getting Jim Sterne to say "that would be an interesting subject to present at eMetrics San Francisco". A few hours later it was all set: I will be presenting my market research results at the eMetrics Industry Insight on May 4th, alongside Nielsen, JupiterResearch, Hitwise, Comscore and the like.

eMetrics Toronto is next week!

Just got the latest Sterne Measure in my mailbox. Couldn't say it better, so I thought I would pass this along. And since I will be presenting on Wednesday PM, I want you to be there!

You have just a few more days to register!

Recognizing cultural behaviour

Moderator: Alex Langshur, President and Co-founder, Public Insite
Joseph Carrabis, NextStage Evolution
Stephane Hamel, Immeria.net
Simon Rivard, Canoe.ca

People from different cultures use websites in different ways. Analysis of web data requires sensitivity to these cultural differences. Mouse movements, navigation habits, and language nuances require "localization" rather than mere translation. Learn how cultural segmentation will yield better results and an improved customer experience.

Highlights of the conference

Lots of Canadian Presenters

Lots of industry experts from all over

WAA Base Camp Training on Monday the 31st

WAA - IAB - GTA Panel on all those numbers

Networking like you've never seen

Keynotes from eBay & Microsoft & some guy named Sterne

Web marketing measurement tools to inspect

Multiple breakout tracks:

Marketing Optimization Management

Website Optimization

Optimizing Content-Rich and Mission Driven Websites

Campaign Optimization

Advanced workshop on predictive analytics

Advanced workshop on sizing up a site visitor in 10 seconds

Receptions

Insights

Knowledge

More networking (learning from your peers rocks)

A focus on your desired outcomes for this Summit

It's marketing, stupid!

Continuing on my rant about web analytics being hijacked by marketing and my coverage of the Omniture Summit... I flew all the way from Quebec city to Salt Lake and one of the first thing I see at the airport is a huge banner hanging on top of the baggage claim: "Omniture Summit, where online marketing comes together". I thought Omniture was positioning itself as "the online business optimization platform"!

Impressive start

2000 attendees, a 5 star hotel and even outside lighting changed to "Omniture green". The day started to music and lighting that would make the envy of any discotheque. Rolling statements like "66% of the most innovative companies use Omniture”,"40% of top 100 retailers use Omniture", "9 out of 10 top automotive sites use Omniture", "Omniture process 8.2 billion transactions daily".

Keynotes

The morning was spent on the traditional keynote from CEO, Josh James, announcing a roster of new features and how VisualSciences got integrated into the Omniture Suite. Then Forrester’s Peter Kim took the stage and gave a great keynote. Peter brought us memorable quotes like “TV is just another light source in the room” and some what I found to be a very interesting survey result: when asked if they agreed with those statements...

	2002	2006
Ads are a good way to learn about a product	78%	52%
Buy because of ads	29%	13%
Companies tells the truth in their ads	13%	6%

I also liked the other survey result (tried to find the reference but couldn't) stating that 45% of the companies surveyed hoped to improve the online customer experience. Interesting isn’t it? While the room was jam packed with marketing people, it appears the most important thing to work on might not be brand awareness and bringing people to the site, it’s what you do with them once they are there!

Ford’s presentation was also interesting, "numbers are like poetry" and "it’s not the tool, it’s getting people to listen to what the tool say".

Afternoon sessions

There were several tracks for each vertical. I attended the automotive one, then went to Matt Belkins "Think Big: Using Analytics to Win in Today’s Economy". Couple of points made me wonder, like the statement that companies who actually increased marketing budgets during hard economic times got out of it better than those who cut it. Not sure I agree with that based on the evidence that were provided, especially stating that Dell increased 300% marketing budget increase was the reason for their outstanding performance afterward. As web analysts, we should know better... just a percentage without much context is useless. What if Dell’s budget was just 5% of IBM’s one (a likely possibility at the time...)?

Lance Armstrong

The last keynote of the day was inspirational and not related to web analytics at all, but a presentation everyone should see. I took notes during the presentation, thinking of parallels between what Lance Armstrong went through and what we can face in businesses environments, like ignoring the signals and the symptoms or finding excuses for not facing reality. But it wouldn’t do justice to this great person and would be a lack of respect to anyone who’s fighting or had to fight cancer to push the analogies any further.

Entertainment

The day ended up at The Depot for great food and entertainment. I stayed for the Flight of the Conchords show and called it off for the day (well... after reading my emails, checking the blogs, writing this blog post and finalizing an analysis I have to deliver tomorrow!)... going to bed late in the morning.

(I wished I had some pictures but somehow my camera got very low-res ones...)

Omniture SiteCatalyst 14 released

A few days ago I was ranting about web analytics being too marketing centric. Frankly, there's no reason to use Omniture for marketing optimization... you should use Omniture for optimizing your online business as a whole!

It has become a tradition for Omniture to release new versions during the Omniture Summit and this year is no exception! Those who logged to their SiteCatalyst account today were in for a little treat from Omniture: SiteCatalyst v14 is now available.

The interface

Nicer graphs don't make for better decisions, but usability and communicating just the right information in the right way makes a big difference. The Omniture SiteCatalyst v14 interface is radically different. There is a bunch of little features that makes this version very easy to use: quick navigation, reorganized menu, easier date selection, access to bookmarks, improved dashboards, a crisp reporting interface with more charting options, etc. (click on the picture at right for a larger view)

Extensibility

Custom variables, calculated metrics, custom reports and dashboards, amazingly limitless segmentation with Discover and of course, a powerful API with both SOAP and Excel compatibility are what put SiteCatalyst in a different category than your other free entry-level web analytics tool.

Omniture was amazingly fast at integrating some of the WebSideStory products. What used to be the search solution from WSS is now Omniture SiteSearch. The CMS is also rechristened as Omniture Publish. Offermatica and TouchClarity are now found under "Test & Target" and there a new integrated survey which is the result of their Instadia acquisition. And, by the way, SearchCenter is now at version 3!

Video or Flash?

v14 includes native support for Flash and Flex, as well as Media Player, QuickTime and RealPlayer video engagement reports and milestone tracking. It also support for Flex 2 and Flash 9 applications.

Web Analytics is not a one men (or women) show

There a bunch of additional consideration for teamwork and report distribution, from the new Distribution Manager to contextual help and community support built throughout the product.

On my way to the Summit...

The title can take several significations.

Omniture Summit

The most obvious one is my trip to Salt Lake City to attend the Omniture Summit. I will be reporting about the event until Friday. First thing: not obvious to go from Quebec city to Salt Lake City... 3 flights with hour long connections: total time, door to door was 13 hours. I knew it would be long, so I came in early to be in shape for Tuesday's opening reception at 7:00pm. Spare time? Not really, I will catch up on client work!

Skiing at Snowbird

The other summit takes the form of a 3,000' ski hill; base elevation: 7,000', top: 11,000', on average, 500 inches of snow! My first time on such a huge mountain. On my way in I had a good chat with people who also skied on the East cost. Quite a difference from our dammed icy slopes... I can expect powder up the belt! I'm going there on Friday, I'll take it easy...

A personal high

The last way I can think of a "summit" is how I feel about what I've been doing since the past few months. I wanted to enjoy the "freedom" of being freelance, I wanted to push the envelope of what I can do, I wanted to learn more & share even more. I have not attained the summit, but I feel I'm actually living trough what is a big personal objective.

New business models: wrap up from InfoPresse day

Yesterday I attended a conference entitled "New business models: Google and revolutionary management" organized by InfoPresse. Very interesting and thought provoking.

(Note: You will see that the next logical step from those presentations is to come at the InfoPresse day about web analytics where I will talk about "Elements of a successful web analytics program" on April 16th, along with Jacques Warren and Avinash Kaushik.)

Bernard Girard on Google management

M.Girard is the author of a book on Google management. M.Girard highlighted some interesting facts about the "ecosystem" of Google: lower legal constraints, a closer relationship between universities and companies, the availability of venture capital and business angels and cultural differences that made, and still make Google, a fertile ground for a different management style.

Whereas management capability is typically limited by the cognitive capacity of a company manager, Google triumvira composed of Page, Brin and Schmidt has proven to be successful. Girard compared Apple's Steve Job to Michael Angelo, working with a team but getting all the glory for the result, Microsoft's Bill Gates closed and controlling practices, and Google's multiplication of experiment approach.

Let's face it: free stuff, frequent release and availability of beta versions, open architecture and incremental evolution are all fine. But what strikes me as being most interesting is the focus on user behavior analysis rather than spending a lot of time watching out the competition. It's observing how user interact, use and think of new ways of using their application rather than doing long and often biased marketing research. That's sounds like a melody to my ears :)

Stéphane Gauvin on the Social Web

M.Gauvin is professor of marketing at Laval University and closely involved with the eBusiness MBA. An amazing and fun speaker who mixed university style "rigueur" and provoking messages that brought laughs from the crowd. There was a lot of highly interesting facts in his presentation: web penetration is saturating at around 70% (far from the >98% of television), effective usage is around 50%, but the core of the message was that so called social media is not the panacea that some people would like us to think. There's a noticeable slowdown in Facebook and the Twitters, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr and other social sites are eclipsed by Youtube amazing growth.

James Surowiecky on the Wisdom of Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds as become a best seller for basically saying that so called "experts" are not so great... and it's wiser to tap into the diversity and amazing power of statistical significance of a correctly sampled group. Numerous examples reinforced the concept, presented in a way that makes perfect sense and didn't need to go in the methodological aspects of statistics. The keys to The Wisdom of Crowds are:

1. diversity of opinion,
2. independence of members from one another,
3. decentralization,
4. skills at aggregating opinions without interfering.

As stated in the editorial review on Amazon "The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge."

#1 key takeaway from the day

"Listen, observe, measure... measure... measure..."

One good news after another: Bryan Eisenberg in Montreal May 14th

First it was Jim Sterne, then, yesterday I announced Avinash Kaushik at InfoPresse day on April 16th.

Today, I can share with you that Bryan Eisenberg himself will be in Montréal for the next WebCom event, on May 14th.

What's going on in Montréal?

More to come...

Avinash Kaushik in Montréal for InfoPresse Day, April 16th

In February Jim Sterne was in Montréal for the eMetrics Breakfast series, in April we will have the honor of receiving Avinash Kaushik for a half-day event called "Journée InfoPresse" dedicated to web analytics.

Avinash in Montreal

Avinash will share his perspective on the future of the web analytics industry and his opinion about the failure of traditional web metrics. He will speak about the next generation of tools geared toward Web 2.0 measurement and how to use multiplicity to gain better insight and take better business decisions.

Also presenting

Before Avinash, my good friend Jacques Warren will give an overview of what is (and is not!) web analytics, then I will present key elements of a successful web analytics program and a business case will be presented by VDL2 André Bélanger.

Six Pixels of Separation: interview with Jim Sterne

Last week, on the evening before our WAA/eMetrics Breakfast in Montreal , I had the chance to have dinner with Jim Sterne, Mitch Joel, Andrea Hadley and Jeff Conatser at Cafe Melies.

Just before dinner, Mitch recorded one of his famous podcasts and interviewed Jim Sterne. So head to Six Pixels of Separation to download the podcast. And if you listen to the podcast, you'll hear Jim's impressions about the complexity or simplicity of web analytics.

And on the same topic, you can view what I presented last Wednesday on the WASSUP approach to a successful web analytics program.

WASSUP? Four elements of a succesful web analytics program

When we ask "WASSUP?" we're seeking a fair and honest answer, but what we often get is the default "yeah, fine". When it comes to web analytics, we also ask how it's going, and we want the right answer!

Here's the presentation I gave yesterday morning during our WAA/eMetrics Breakfast.

If you have trouble viewing the presentation, use this link instead. I'm experimenting with VoiceThread, an amazing way to communicate and get involved into a conversation, so I'm looking for your feedback! Click on the "record" or "type" to add your comments directly into the presentation!

WASSUP?!

• Web
• Analytics
• Strategy: Trinity, the classic from Avinash Kaushik about Behavior, Outcomes and Experience
  
• Strategy: Multiplicity: also from Avinash; using multiple tools and sources of information to come up with better insights
  
• Ultimate Team: multidisciplinary and empowered teamwork from the Business/Marketing, IT and Analysis sides
  
• Process: Systematic, with SMART objectives, Continuous and considering an ever changing environment
• ! Obvious? Easy! We're just having trouble putting it into action.
  

eMetrics breakfast: prologue

This weekend I moved some furniture and hurt my back. I even had to cancel a round trip to Toronto today. Standing up is ok, being seated is fine, it's the long way between those two position that makes me feel like I'm 100 years old...

Nevertheless, I drove 4 hours in "yet another snow storm" from Quebec city to Montreal, what usually takes between two and half and three hours. I wouldn't have missed the wonderful dinner at Cafe Melies with Jim Sterne, Mitch Joel, Andrea Hadley and Jeff Conatser. Tomorrow morning is our eMetrics Breakfast in Montreal where we're expecting to have a turnout of about 60 people.

As you can imagine, the discussion turned around marketing, analytics and social media pretty much all the time. Joel did a wonderful interview of Jim, look for the podcast on Six Pixels of Separation (not available yet, I will post the link when it's available).

I felt like the newbie avidly listening to the conversation about the art of speaking; both Jim & Joel are amazing speakers!

Stay posted, I will put up a summary of tomorrow's presentations. I will also post my presentation and comment it for those who miss it.