Gilligan on Data by Tim Wilson

And…it’s the monthly installment of “Don’t These People Know that Wednesday Comes After Tuesday?” Also known as “Web Analytics Wednesday (on Tuesday) in Columbus.” This month’s event was graciously sponsored by Coremetrics.

We had a record turnout (um…by one), with participants from Victoria’s Secret, DSW, ECNext, ForeSee (all the way from Motor City!), Lightbulb Interactive, Highlights (current and former), Resource Interactive (current and soon-to-be former), Nationwide (former and soon-to-be-again), Franklin University, and, of course, Bulldog Solutions.

This month’s topic was “Social Media Tools for Web Analysts.” As usual, the presentation/handout was quick, and the more interesting part of the evening was the various side discussions that the discussion spawned. Several active Twitter users were in attendance: @bigbryc (who, apparently, I inadvertently “outed” as a Twitter user to some of his co-workers after last month’s WAW), @reubenyau, and @tgwilson (me).

The discussion centered around the various social media tools/sites that have web analyst-oriented activity. Presented from the perspective of…me, so by no means all-encompassing, and not really intended to be. We (mostly) steered clear of “social media measurement,” and we definitely steered clear of “leveraging social media as a marketing tool for your company.” The list of sites/tools and how/where I’ve seen them being used by the web analyst community is available in this Excel 2003 spreadsheet. I’ve tagged the sites/tools that, personally, I am a regular user of, as well as some of the sites/tools that I am likely to become a regular user of in the near future (or really ought to be a more regular user of) — print/print preview to see the two footnote indicators and what they mean.

It’s not comprehensive…and, yet, it’s longer than it really ought to be. I picked up a tip on Google Notebook, so I need to check that out.

I can’t figure out exactly how to work a couple of notes into this post, so I’ll just drop them in as non sequiturs:

• Scott Zakrajsek was temporarily possessed by evil aliens recently. In reality, he always has and always will think that Coremetrics is the greatest web analytics tool on the planet
• The soon-to-be-traditional Monish Datta direct reference so he can pop up on his friends’/co-workers’ Google Alerts…

As always, it was great to see the regular faces, great to see a few new faces, and we missed some of the regular faces.

I’ve been a Twitter user since last fall. My usage has been pretty sporadic, but I seem to have a decent system for keeping one eye cocked without letting it eat into my overall productivity. It’s been a good source for interesting information — some work-related, some not.

I’ve been a webanalytics Yahoo! group junkie for much, much longer.

A couple of weeks ago, Jason Egan started a thread on group titled Any other web analytics folk on Twitter? It turns out a number of us were lurking there. Just over a day later, enough people had chimed in that one brilliant (and damn good looking) fellow suggested using the Twitter hashtag convention — proposing #webanalytics — to help identify web analytics-oriented tweets. Eric Peterson then chimed in within 10 minutes proposing #wa instead of #webanalytics (a char-saving suggestion) and added on that we could all use Twemes to track these tweets.

Just like that, we’ve got a much more immediate channel for web analytics check-ins and connections!

The irony continues. It looks like I’ve got the RSS feed back working again. But, I’d hate for you to see the most recent post in your feedreader as being that it’s broken. So, here’s a quick post to say it’s back up.

Thanks for your patience.

Yes, there is irony in putting “my RSS feed is down” as a blog post, knowing that no one who is subscribed to this blog via RSS will get the message!

It’s got something to do with WordPress not playing nice with IIS, as best as I can tell. I am looking into it to see what I can do to get it fixed.

I recently rolled out a project that I’d project managed over a several month period. I like to think I’m a pretty good “natural” project manager, but, every time I really actively manage a project that spans multiple months and involves a true project team, I’m reminded how much effort it takes to do it well!

On my latest flight down to Austin, I wondered if I could express that experience in poetry. Or, to be more precise: in rhyming verse. I don’t know that I’d elevate this to the point of “poetry.”

A Project Manager’s Lament

I chose a path for my career
That seemed a fit for me.
Organization, details, and time
Were the things I could easily see.

For it seemed work breakdown structures
Mirrored my brain and thoughts,
And Gantt Charts were the clearest way
To keep schedules out of knots.

Scope and time and resources
Were my Holy Trinity.
Their proper balance was my goal.
My mission? To make people see!

But, alas, I have discovered
That my skin is not thick enough
To continue my way along this path,
As every project does get rough.

The project manager I now know
Is doomed to make people sad,
For each phase of a project
Brings news that someone thinks “bad.”

At the initial project kickoff,
Optimism always abounds,
But think how many are unhappy
Once the project has made its rounds.

Stakeholders all too often ask
“Why on earth did it take so long?!”
Uninterested in the details
Where the Devil does belong.

At the same time others inquire
Why some of “their” features were cut?
Lip service to the “greatest good”
By deployment time is kaput.

And then there’s the simple fact
That projects tend to run long.
If the PM pads the time up front,
He gets told the timeline is wrong!

We know that the final scope
Of released features is short, it seems.
So many projects under deliver,
Or so is told the underappreciated team.

Which adds yet another burden
For the good PM to bear:
Boost up the project team’s morale
When good news is often quite rare.

By deployment time the entire team
Is under a general malaise.
Yet the PM gets to deliver the news:
“We’re already behind on the next phase!”

My hat goes off to all of you who do project management full-time!

At least, I hope this is a welcome! Check the URL — now at gilliganondata.com instead of secondtree.com/data. It’s the little things in life, isn’t it?

I’ve spent a silly amount of time trying to understand what’s going on under the hood of WordPress.

If you’re subscribed to this blog through the Feedburner link, you should be cut over automatically. In theory, if you’re reading this through your feed reader, you’re all set.

Leave a comment (oh vast legions of loyal followers!) to let me know you’ve found my new home. I’ll be doing some clean-up work to make sure my old location links/redirects as appropriate, which should be fun. I mean, who wouldn’t be excited about coding 301 redirects using PHP because my host doesn’t support server-side redirects directly? If I keep this up, I’m going to add PHP as a skill on my resumé!

I started a home/personal blog a couple of months ago. It’s really geared towards keeping friends and relatives… Okay, let’s be honest — it’s geared towards keeping grandparents updates as to what’s going on in our lives. I also see it as an archival technique that we (or our kids) might get a kick out of at some point down the road.

Initially, I thought the blog was wide open topic-wise, but I’ve already started to realize that I feel odd posting anything that’s more technical or data-related. And, since I spend 8-10 hours every day in a world of business data, I often find myself having thoughts that I’d like to write up. So, I spawned second blog for that purpose.