eMetrics Haiku 2009 Winner

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

autumn leaf descends
swirls around graying noggin
this life grows older

@JulienCoquet

Conversion metrics
Regress slowly to their mean
Like leaves in autumn

Shabbir Safdar

Industry latest
Adobiture mentioned twice
1.8 billion

Remember ‘09.
The last year of Omniture.
They’re at #eMetrics.

Tom Miller

Acquisitions happen,
Omniture knows.
Living and dying by the sword.

Jose Davila

Web analytics
A cry in the wilderness
Likely solution

Methodology
A differentiator
Why don’t they see it?

eMetrics helps us
Travel the difficult path
Through data to truth

Rhonda Berg, ForeSee Results

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

optimize your life
at this measurement mecca
sterne’s team works magic

Jeremy Cooker

Flattery plus scale
Impressive combination
Worthy of notice

Dear Lord of Haikus,
I submit to thee my humble submission, for review by thy honorable eyes…

Oh where art thou my,
elusive analytics
of web visitors?

look how I beckon
thee, for thy ghastly insight
to convince HiPPos!

I sit and measure,
then twitch and search forever,
to finally find…

core nuggets of gold,
in recent emails of mine…
chance! a stroke of luck!

Jim Sterne gives a-way!
a free pass to the summit
to D.C. he say!

Web Gurus galore!
all the optimization,
networking, and more!

Certification
tests are calling from afar
thou must come hither!

by plane, train, or car?
No! by eMetrics Haikus
I reach for thy star!

Ali Salman Shah

Poor, sad editor
No trade shows for you, they say
I sneak in again

Fog over Twin Peaks
ROI on PPC
Emetrics beckons

Up and to the right
Google says this; I believe
Still, I must segment

ROI metrics
PPC? Now optimized
I ♥ Emetrics

Oh site visitors
Won’t you stay, perchance convert?
Bounce they go like balls

The data directs
No more gut-based marketing
Just test it, silly

I: A/B tested
She: So multivariate
We: Need a Jim Sterne

Many visitors
Why are you all so bouncy?
Bad navigation

Emetrics Summit
Big brains, so enlightening
Now I’m optimized

Willem Knibbe John Wiley & Sons

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

data flowing hot
requires brain, not software –
reality check

Yonah Karp

rain water
flowing through the spiders web
watching drips

Phil Pearce

Methodology
Turns Measurement to Action
As Cloth turns to Quilt

Farris Khan ForeSee Results

data flowing by
catch and release, catch again
streaming to the sea

Diane Gorine

One Haiku rings true
Captures conceptual soul
Feels like love poem

A visit, silent
On a server, a light blinks
I know you were here

Tom Miller

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

Heart-felt ambition:
Provoke collegial verse.
Supreme achievement

eMetrics Feedback – Lessons About the Summit

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!

Win a Free eMetrics Pass – Haiku Contest

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.

It’s not what you tweet but who tweets it

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.

WAA-UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics

A member of the Web Analytics Forum at Yahoo! asked about the WAA-UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics. A Masters candidate, this individual wondered how in-depth the classes really were.

Stéphane Hamel, consultant, UBC tutor and currently on the Board of the WAA had one of the most useful responses and I felt it was worth sharing.

Stéphane Hamel

*****

From: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of Stephane Hamel
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2009 7:39 AM
To: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [webanalytics] Re: UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics

Hi,
I’m one of the tutors for the program (all four courses). In my opinion, there are 3 main skills/background to do web analytics: business/marketing, technology, and analytics (statistics in your case). Nobody is strong in all three, most have a “major” and a “minor” and are weaker in the third. Having tutored to about 500 people over the last 2 or 3 years, here’s some comments in reply to others:

1) It’s education, not training:

The benefit of the program is to cover all dimensions of a successful analytics program. It’s an “education” program, not “training”, so the emphasis is not on how to use the tools and large sets of data, but much more about the concepts and principles behind web analytics. Those range from understanding the technology supporting analytics, optimizing web sites, optimizing marketing, change management, and some very basic element of statistics. If you are seeking hands on training for a specific tool, you would be better off looking for vendor training. To get an idea of what’s covered in the program, you can have a look.

2) Interactions among students

Being an online course, interaction among students varies greatly and depends on the group and how involved and skilled the tutor is at facilitating and nurturing communication. Some courses triggers lots of discussion, while it’s more challenging to get people to participate in some others. But again, if you are “lucky” and you end up in a group where there’s a lot of discussion, the value of the course is greatly increased.

3) Unique and highly regarded

And lastly, the UBC program is the only one I know of this kind and has been receiving very good reviews since its inception. It’s also an element of the UC Irvine Web Intelligence certificate and the WAA is coming up with a certification exam. But maybe I’m biased here… so other people could comment

Hope that helps,

Stéphane Hamel
- eBusiness Strategist & Web Analytics advocate!
- Board of Director, Web Analytics Association
- Tutor, UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics
Twitter: immeria
Web: http://immeria.net
Blog: http://blog.immeria.net
WASP: http://WebAnalyticsSolutionProfiler.com
WAA: http://WebAnalyticsAssociation.org
UBC: http://www.tech.ubc.ca/webanalytics/

*****

Well said Stéphane – many thanks.