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Category Archives: General

Oct 26 6 comments
General, Web Analytics

Moving On And Becoming Super Important

I kind of knew this was happening a week ago, but I didn’t want to post about it until things were finalized. As of November 2nd I will no longer be working at ZAAZ and Microsoft, because I’m moving over to Cobalt to be a web and optimization analyst there.  Cobalt is a Seattle-based company that does digital marketing in most of the automotive space in the U.S.  One of my Microsoft bosses made fun of me for moving into that industry, but I see it as continuing to work on analytics, whatever the client.  And Cobalt just made the Deloitte Fast 500 for the 9th time, so they’re doing ok.

It is a really cool and exciting opportunity for me, and it should be an interesting challenge to deal with monetizing site activity and conversions for cars instead of software. I’m lucky to have the chance to work on both analytics and optimization (finally!), which means I should start brushing up on my statistics now.  If anyone knows of good stats resources/tutorials, let me know!

I’m sad to leave the people at ZAAZ and Microsoft, but I’m glad to have had the chance to work and learn at both places, and I even got to play on the ZAAZ soccer team. Hopefully this transition means my blog posts will include even more interesting and complicated problems from working in a new area.

Twitalyzer Top 100 Most Influential #Measure Tweeters

Twitalyzer rankings for #measure

Twitalyzer rankings for #measure

In other news, Eric Peterson’s Twitalyzer tool ranked the top 100 most influential people using the #measure hashtag on Twitter. And you’re probably thinking “Whatever that means”, which sounds about right. I’m currently #20 on the list, but it only shows people who have been “twitalyzed” in the last 14 days.  When I saw that in the fine print (I initially did not make the list), I ran the Twitalyzer tool on my account, and lo and behold I ranked at #19.

I’ve only sort of tried to understand the Twitalyzer metrics, but like most social media ranking/grading tools, I’m not sure what they define as success is always correct. It was useful for finding new people and for making me feel very important and influential until I dropped to #20 after 30 minutes.

Oct 11 0 comments
General, UX

InfoCamp 2009

InfoCamp is an “un-conference” that encourages conversations about anything information related. Its supposed to be democratic, unstructured, and low-cost. Its in its 3rd year (my 1st year attending and volunteering), and had a great turnout:  350 people!

There seemed to be a good mix of professionals and graduate students, and topics ranged from UX to content development. I met lots of interesting people (which only added to my week of networking after attending Web Analytics Wednesday). The way it works is that people can prepare presentations ahead of time, or on the fly, and sign up to present and discuss an idea. The organizers want InfoCamps to happen in other cities eventually, and so do I.

On day 1 my former interaction design professor Axel Roesler gave a keynote on IXD, and design in general. There was one quote that resonated with me, but I forgot to note who originally said it:

“Design is the reconciliation of seemingly irreconcilable constraints.”

I also saw great presentations on user-centered design and information visualization from Noah Iliinsky, and on user-centered design, optimization, and kittens by Jason Carmel from ZAAZ. I live blogged from day 2 of InfoCamp (sadly I missed Vanessa Fox speaking) below.

Information Architecture and SharePoint

This one was presented by Microsofties, so I was a bit skeptical. I also typically hate dealing with SharePoint, and I’ve done an  IA project with it; maybe I’m just completely biased.

Someone asked about people who want to tag things with more terms than you’ve allowed, or conversely, don’t want to tag things. The answer was “I don’t think that’s a technology problem, that’s a people problem.” Not sure I agree with that. Yes, you need to establish a process that works for your users, but not allowing flexibility and user error recovery in the information system is poor usability practice.

In terms of metadata for SharePoint, their argument is that authors will automatically see the value in assigning metadata to documents and fill in metadata.  I believe unless people are educated in the value of metadata and there is some kind of control applied to what kinds of metadata terms should be used, SharePoint is not as effective.

Hm..and now he’s admitted “[Microsoft SharePoint is] not the best wiki, we’re not the best document and records management system…but we try really hard to make all of these things work together.” Fair enough.

How to start your own InfoCamp

Recommendations from the organizers, Aaron Louie and Rachel Elkington from ZAAZ. There’s tons more info on the wiki.

**NO FEAR**

  1. community
  2. $ – sponsorship
  3. venue
  4. publicity
  5. logistics
  6. personnel
  7. social media (see the #infocamp hashtag on Twitter)

Came about from Rachel and Aaron attending IA Summit, and thinking it was good for theory, boring for practitioners.

“The best discussions happened in the hallways and afterparties.” –Rachel Elkington on typical conference experiences

Wanted to bring in the local community and reinvigorate the local ASIST chapter.  They also didn’t like that conference attendance is limited by cost and structure. Both of them wanted to imitate a bar camp format in Seattle and have it be be a movement–a viral form of conference.  The key was finding like-minded people and keeping the conversation going.

Sep 22 0 comments
General

Wordpress Upgrade in Progress Now Complete

This time I got rid of the blank screen of death in only 2 hours! w00t! I think everything is back to normal, and I’ve tried installed/uninstalling plugins to make things run better. Maybe next time I upgrade Wordpress I will only have 1 hour of blank screen of death! At least its not running on the entire site, so I should be thankful for that.

Sep 19 0 comments
General, Web Analytics

Pimp Post #3

It’s that time.  Some of these events aren’t until October, but that’s ok.

  1. InfoCamp on Oct. 10/11 2009! It’s in its 3rd year, and this year I fully intend to go. From what Rachel Elkington tells me, it might sell out this year, so you need to get tickets soon.  Find out more about this “unconference” on UX/IA/information here.

    InfoCamp design by Aaron Louie and Josh Walker

    InfoCamp design by Aaron Louie and Josh Walker

  2. Baron Brewing is awesome. Not only are they making beers for the Pillager’s Pub (pirate-themed) in Greenwood, they also have this tiny taproom in South Park only open on Fridays from 4:30-8:30 that I must go back to pronto.
  3. The band formerly known as Ladies and Gentleman but now known as The Head and the Heart, is having an art/music show on Sept. 27th at the Jewelbox Theatre.
  4. Everyone raves about Fremont Oktoberfest, but I think I’ll skip that in favor of the less crowded Enumclaw Oktoberfest this year on Oct. 9th and 10th.
  5. Web Analytics Wednesday is back on Oct. 7th at Cobalt. 3rd time’s the charm for me and hopefully ZAAZ will not have a conflicting party.
  6. There is an excellent SEO and GA post on Yoast (unintentional rhyme), on how to set up a profile in Google Analytics just to track keyword positions–not just pages. At first it didn’t work for me, and then it did and I don’t know why. But still, its good to know versus the basic page info you get on Google Webmaster Tools.
  7. Most importantly of all…today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  To celebrate, here is a pick-up line:

    8. “That’s the finest pirate booty I’ve ever laid eyes on.“

Otherwise, UW beat USC and Cal beat Minnesota!  I spent all day trying to re-educate myself on SEO and figuring out how to insert an Excel scorecard into the body of an email and not have it look janky. It took way too long to get a workable solution for that.

    Sep 15 4 comments
    General, Web Analytics, Web Design

    ZOMG! Omniture + Adobe and some other stuff

    So I can’t really post on anything I’m doing, because I’m doing some troubleshooting on things, but expect posts on multi-variate optimization, a cool SEO hack for Google Analytics, and the ever growing list of data visualization tools I need to try out.  In the meantime, in case you missed it, Adobe bought Omniture today. Below is a model of Adobe’s take on how Omniture will fit into the grand scheme of things, and here is their press release.

    Adobe + Omniture model

    Adobe + Omniture model

    I don’t have a very strong opinion on this but I’m sure tomorrow my Google Reader feed will have a million posts on it. Everyone at ZAAZ was talking about it when we found out, but it should be interesting to see how they integrate aspects of Omniture page tagging into Dreamweaver and Flash. Hopefully it will be a good thing.

    Last weekend I went to Arizona as a birthday trip. Not sure how I feel about all the malls and new-ness, but I loved the landscape, the weather (thunderstorms included), and how friendly everyone was. Some random lady at a restaurant bought our lunch for us on the first day. Didn’t leave a message, just did it. I wanted to go hiking, but I got too scared about hiking in the desert for the first time without a guide. Below are pics of Sedona and Montezuma’s Castle.

    Sedona red rocks

    Sedona red rocks

    Sedona thunderstorms

    Sedona thunderstorms

    Thunder and lightning near Sedona

    Thunder and lightning near Sedona

    Montezuma's Castle

    Montezuma's Castle