InfoCamp is an “un-conference” that encourages conversations about anything information related. Its supposed to be democratic, unstructured, and low-cost. Its in its 3^rd year (my 1^st 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.

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

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:

“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.

It is my birthday, which means I am not thinking about anything work/tech related. Ok besides the fact I’m trying to pick out a new phone and I can’t decide between Blackberry/G1/Windows Mobile phone. But either way its been a transitional year for me in terms of my personal life (people coming and going), my academic life (finished my last master’s ever, I promise!), and work life (got to do something I enjoy for kick-ass companies).

I feel like I found my niche in the UX/Web Analytics world, and I keep meeting cool people through that. I finally became ok with the idea of living in Seattle after getting sick of it when I was growing up here, and I have no idea where I’ll be in the upcoming months, but I’m still excited about the possibilities.

So today I will be hanging out with Bentley (the surprise visitor on my b-day) and my family, playing soccer, and relaxing. Advice on cellphones is also welcome!

My surprise bday visitor--Bentley!

Ok yes I am being a baby because I’m not used to the weather, but its really hot for once in Seattle, so I feel uber lethargic. I think I’m typing at about 40 wpm, that’s how lethargic I am. Pyramid beer probably did not help. Below is a picture of the weird clouds hanging out now that we have crazy hot weather, courtesy of Cydne.

Today at work finally gained some momentum on a project, got to do some event tracking, and figured out how to get rid of those pesky parameters appended to the end of URLs in Google Analytics like: “sarahdeatley.com/index.php?id=13c4eb92kp“.  Sometimes they are useful for tracking different content within a site or for campaigns, but other times its the same content, and yet you’re seeing 20 different URLs that all are the same page.

I thought that you’d need to create complicated filters to accomplish this, but turns out its a really simple fix in the profile settings. Its easy:

1. Click “Edit” when viewing profile settings.
2. Click “Edit” in the first box that says “Main Website Profile Information”
3. Enter the offending URL Query Parameter in the form. So in the example above you would enter in “id.”

Yay for simple solutions, but if you have more complex needs, see this post by Justin Cutroni. Or if you need web analytics inspiration in general, read Avinash Kaushik’s latest post.

In other news I discussed my page tagging ideas with someone at work, and found out that the excessively complex page tagging is mainly in Omniture, and not so much WebTrends.  Basically we decided that controlling too much of the tagging limits creativity, but lack of documentation/control can lead to a chaotic mess.  We also talked about the advantages and disadvantages of automation in extracting data from reporting tools.  We both find the idea scary, but I know there are others who think its key to having more time to focus on analysis. I’m too hot to figure out an answer. Someone else should do it for me please.

I’ve played around with WebTrends some already, but now I can compare it more to Omniture and Google Analytics. Main things that struck me:

1. Things take forever to load (especially when you first open a profile because of the volume of data) and there’s no indication of that the page is still loading. This is a UI feedback issue, but still, kind of annoying.
2. The dashboard (I think the same goes for Omniture too) is not easily manipulable like in Google Analytics.
3. I like their way of changing the period of time viewed, that its a calendar and a drop down menu of common time periods.
4. Its nice to be able to have templates so you can easily access certain reports that are targeted for deeper analysis within a profile.
5. Graphs are not very visually appealing, so I can see why you’d need to create graphs and charts in Excel most of the time.
6. You can create a calculated measure for a metric, such as bounce rate (I still wish it were automatic like in GA though). **OK I lied, I think you still need to calculate bounce rate in Excel because of the available fields for report queries and calculated measures.
7. What is an active visit, WebTrends? I discussed this with someone for 10 minutes and we could not figure out the difference between an active visit and a normal visit. They claim its something to do with sessions, but the numbers were almost exactly the same, so who knows.
8. I did like that they define terms on each report page, which is nice for a novice, but you can turn it off as well.

Ultimately this seemed about the same as Omniture, though I know there are more differences, my only preference would be for Omniture based on the UI alone. I’m sure I will develop a more detailed impression over time.

Also, Seattle? Thunderstorms, really?

UPDATE: talked to someone about active visits in WebTrends, and found out that its a metric meant to measure the users who are on the site overnight as one visitor. So if someone is looking at the site from 11:59 PM until 12:03 AM the following day, they will not be counted as 2 visitors. He also said that he doesn’t really use this metric (I didn’t think that “active visits” would comprise a large segment of users), and this made me feel vindicated.

Such good weather in Seattle today! Totally makes up for the last couple weeks.  I did nothing productive except tan at Greenlake and drink tasty beer. Tonight I’m going to taste home brewed beer that my friends make. It is (usually) surprisingly good. My friend Cailey also successfully completed her first marathon today, and finished in 4:27:51!  She is far more awesome than I for doing that.

And R.I.P. to my favorite sandals. You have lasted since 2002 in Berkeley. Way to break right as I was running to catch the bus. Also what is it with guys and nice weather who think that whistling at me is a classy way of communicating?