A contest was held
To win eMetrics ticket
Winning Haiku here

eMetrics Haiku
Came pouring in this season
All hoping to win

From London, Zurich
Ljubljana, Slovenia
UK and Brazil

Some were beautiful
Some were educational
Best presented here

Some got attention
For classic use of season
Autumn comes again

Industry latest
Adobiture mentioned twice
1.8 billion

Web analytics
A cry in the wilderness
Likely solution

Vanity tested
Who says thy name is woman?
I am most flattered

Flattery plus scale
Impressive combination
Worthy of notice

A difficult choice
Some Haiku so very good
Only one can win

One Haiku rings true
Captures conceptual soul
Feels like love poem

Some Some submitted late
By speakers who have tickets
All a gift of verse

Heart-felt ambition:
Provoke collegial verse.
Supreme achievement

Posted in eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, web analytics association, web analytics industry Tagged: emetrics, eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, Haiku, web analytics ]]> http://emetrics.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/emetrics-haiku-2009-winner/feed/ 0 Jim Sterne http://emetrics.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/about-twitter-really/ http://emetrics.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/about-twitter-really/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:05:18 +0000 jsterne http://emetrics.wordpress.com/?p=284 ]]>

Note: I put this was in a recent Sterne Measures newsletter but realized it should go here….

Just saw a tweet from @rdo where he asked:

>> Why should all tweets be relevant?
>> Do we always talk relevant stuff?
>> Twitter is about discussions, not
>> news coverage. Or did I get it wrong?

Well René, you’re not wrong, you’re just asking the
wrong question. Twitter is about discussion and news
the same way a pencil is about discussion and news. It’s
a communication tool.

When Edward Tufte published his rant, “The Cognitive Style
of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within,” I just about
blew a gasket. PowerPoint is a communication tool. It’s a
freakin’ pencil! Use it well, use it badly – it doesn’t care.

What’s the best use for Twitter?
Stand by for my favorite answer:
It depends.

What are you trying to accomplish?

If you want your family to know that you arrived safely,
then get a familial Twitter account and don’t cross the
streams (Ghostbusters’ reference) with your business
account.

I tweet for business and it shows up on my Facebook page.
That confuses the heck out of my regular friends who have
no idea what I’m talking about and they Really Don’t Care.

@avinashkaushik does a masterful job of walking the line.
His equally masterful blog http://kaushik.net/avinash is all
business. But his tweets are mostly cool things he has found
online that he feels other intellectual, analytical, online
marketing professionals might like. Some are business,
but most are just cool things. And every now and then,
he tweets about his next book or his next public appearance.
Brilliant.

So is Twitter about discussions or news coverage?
Yes.

That said, it seems obvious that this should have been a
blog post that I should have tweeted about. Someday, I’m
gonna get the hang of this communication thing…

I asked the previous eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit attendees “What sticks with you?” which would have been a great question if not for the typo in the Subject line (cringe).

Rick Eagle – whom I’ve known since the very first eMetrics Summit in 2002 – took his time to write back. But when he did, it was great… so I wanted to share. Rick is Coremetrics’ web analyst. He tracks the traffic on the Coremetrics website. No pressure!

From: Rick Eagle [mailto:reagle@coremetrics.com]
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 4:03 PM
To: Jim Sterne
Subject: RE: eMetrics San Jose quick quesiton

The things that have stuck with me… 9 things.

Ok, the Summit was in May and now it’s August but I still think the “what has stuck with me” is relevant, perhaps even more so.

1.
Twitter and the social media thing in general. Shocked is not the right word, startled perhaps, yes, I was startled at the intensity of Twitter at the summit and I was glad that at Coremetrics we at least had our Blog and Twitter elements in-place. There is no doubt an aura of trendiness to twitter, just as there was (and to some extent still is) to blogging. What stays with me is not blogs or twitter but the social media “thing”. It is that “thing” that is interesting. It currently is being manifested in blogging and tweeting. Those things may pass away but it feels like the social media thing is some archetypal force.

Like in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum, in the role of chaos theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm states, “Life will find a way…” Social Media is like that.

2.
There wasn’t any particular session topic that covered this but what occurred to me as I drove home from the Summit was that the analytics feature wars really are over. Tools are excellent and there is plenty of data. So users are really forced back to the fundamentals, being clear about what their business goals are and focusing on the data and reporting that best informs those goals. Choosing the right tools, for the right situation. Smart people can pull great value out of any of the available tools. And conversely, you can have great tools and be completely lost.
Back to brains now!

3.
Good attendance but not full to the brim. When I attended in SF in 2007 I was shocked (yes “shocked!”) at how big the eMetrics Summit had become. Of course my previous eMetrics Summit experience had been in sleepy little Santa Barbara in maybe 2002? Anyway, San Jose in 2009, not packed. Probably due to the economy being in the tank and maybe a little dilution due to 6 summits per year now. Saturation?

[Jim pipes up: Yes, it was a perfect storm of more subject matter so more tracks and fewer people. The Washington D.C. version in October will be more tightly focused.]

4.
The hotel lobby and not staying at the hotel. It was nicely convenient that the San Jose location was just 4 miles from my house. Unfortunately because of that, I could not justify the expense of staying at the Fairmont, which is too bad because staying at the venue definitely makes it easier to hang. Interesting people, great conversation, excellent beer, what’s not to like.

I did hang out a few nights and that was great. I enjoyed meeting our competitors. It’s weird, we are all trying to grab market share away from each other and, truth be known, trying to drive the other guys out of business, but then we’re so alike, same issues, lot’s of shared experience. Weird… and Fun.

5.
Mike Grehan. An interesting guy, always hanging out just beyond the edge a bit.

[Search Engine Strategies has hired Mike as their V.P. & Global Content Director. Congrats Mile!]

6.
Those small panel sessions didn’t really work for me. I can see how that idea might sound like the perfect answer to getting more experts in front of more people for a rich exchange. It didn’t work out that way in the three of those I attended. It felt like after each speaker did their “introduction” there wasn’t much time for rich exchange. Maybe the format was too loose and an expert moderator could make it work better.

[Noted. Moderators for the Washington D.C. Summit are on notice!]

7.
Getting out of the vacuum of the office. Most of my experience in running web sites is with corporate, content, lead-gen sites. It’s good to mix with people who run other kinds of sites. Especially being at Coremetrics where our customers are many kinds of sites (although the sweet spot is still retail).
And conversely, talking to other people who run the same kind of content/lead-gen site I do and sharing challenges and thoughts on different approaches.

8.
The MindMeld. Very interesting, thanks for inviting me.

9.
Jim Sterne. I so enjoy seeing you.

Regards,

Rick

Thank you so much Rick – it’s always great to see you too!

Last time it was tweets, haiku, limericks and straight prose. This time, we’re going back to our roots and keeping things simple: Haiku only.

But that 17 syllables might be enough to earn you a free ticket to an upcoming eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit.

The classic Haiku
Five Seven Five Syllables
Email them to me

@BobbleHeadGuru kicked it off before the contest even started by tweeting this:

Web analytics
Is not so hard that you can’t
do it well.. just try

Can you do better?

Entries must be received at haiku@emetrics.org by
Midnight, September 15, 2009

The Reward? You could win:

eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit Pass
Includes all three days. No cash value. No refunds
for already registered attendees. Your winning Pass
is transferrable and redeemable at any 2009 or 2010
eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit.

Winners will be hand selected based on merit by me (Jim Sterne). All decisions are final. Selection will not be influenced by small cash bribes, physical threats or public humiliation. Large cash offers will be handled on a case-by-case basis and threats of bodily harm will be referred to my family friends Vinnie and Guido. Creative writing rules.

This is worth more than just a simple tweet, this is worth a blog post.

Why?

Because I want a more permanent pointer to this interview.

Not because, as Rebecca insists , “no one has web metrics insights like @jimsterne has web metrics insights” but because this tweet got more attention than anything I’ve ever said on twitter.

Just goes to show it’s not what you say, but who tweets it.

Thanks Rebecca.
Thanks Econsultancy.