Last March, I enjoyed a merry old time at the Web Analytics Association (WAA) Awards for Excellence Gala – a celebration of contributors, vendors, technologies and more in the digital analytics space. This year, it’s happening all over again and it’s going to be better than ever. But you need to act quickly – nominations close on February 1st 2012.
What’s it all about?
Here’s the blurb: ”Are you or one of your colleagues a digital analytics pro who deserves recognition? Do you know of a company worthy of appreciation? At the 2nd annual Web Analytics Association Awards for Excellence, the WAA will celebrate the outstanding contribution to our profession of individuals, agencies, vendors and practitioners. Here’s your chance to get out from the shadows and into the spotlight with other industry luminaries.”
Who won last year?
Client/Practitioner of the Year:Joe Megibow, VP, Global Analytics and Optimization, Expedia.com
Most Influential Industry Contributor (individual award)
New Technology of the Year (group award)
Most Influential Agency, Vendor or Group (group award)
How do I choose who to vote for?
What am I, your mother? You’re telling me you don’t know a person in analytics who is an unsung hero toiling away at analytics, a technology that makes your life easier (or makes you sick with jealousy), a person whose work influences you every day, a company who is shaping the industry with their efforts? Seriously? Maybe it’s you! Go nominate you! You don’t have to be a WAA member to nominate, be nominated or win, but spring lambs will be forlorn if worthy folks are not nominated.
Did you not read my opening paragraph? No-one ever does. Make me weep…
The awards will be presented at the WAA Awards for Excellence Gala on March 6th. A magical soirée for which you may now register. If you are attending the eMetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit, you have no excuse – it’s at the same hotel (Marriott Marquis, San Francisco). If you’re not…you still have no excuse – it’s a great event!
Disclaimer: I am on the organising committee for the awards and gala. I’m not sure that I need to disclaim such a thing, but you may think so, so here I am. Disclaiming. We done here?
“As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.”
If Papa Cringle has a Naughty but Nice list, it’s probably the same as the Silly Series list.
And now, for a snack to go with your eggnog, it’s time to turn our attention to Ted McDonald, a man who took six months to answer the silly questions below, bless him.
Tell the nice reader peoples about Ted McDonald.
I’ve been a full-time web analyst for almost 6 years, working for interesting brands like Nat Geo, Carfax, and now Verisign. Prior to that, I always made it a large part of my job, even if that meant sifting through log files for tracking codes used in that special email campaign. I really got the taste for web analytics when I got my hands on SiteCatalyst back in 2004. After several years of toiling as a jack-of-all-trades marketing type / entrepreneur, where web analytics was headed at the time seemed like the perfect blend of marketing, math, and web that you couldn’t find anywhere else and I never regret making the career move.
You have triplets. How did you tell them apart when they were babies? Did you secretly have no idea which was which?
You got me…I could not tell them apart for quite a while. They were very tiny at first – under 3 pounds. Even the doctors could not tell them apart when they were first born. We wanted to name the two identical Ben and Zach, but no one knew which was which until after a blood test, so the identical are now Ben and Nick. I had to use blue nail polish on one of the little guys’ thumbs for several months until we definitely knew who was who.
That’s lovely picture of you in a Jim Sterne t-shirt. How many hours a day do you spend crouched in his garden watching him?
“And out of all the windows, No matter where we went, The merriest eyes would follow me And make me compliment.
There were a thousand windows, All latticed up and down. And up to all the windows, When we went back to town,
The queer folk put their faces, As gentle as could be; ”Come again, little girl!” they called, and I Called back, “You come see me!”"
Edna St. Vincent Millay, especially for my friend JayDaisy and her daughter Foxylocks. If that isn’t a metaphor for the website/visitor relationship, I don’t know what is!
It is time to turn our jingle bells to Petri Mertanen – a man who’s always in the dark
Tell us all about Petri Mertanen.
I have been interested in the Internet since my marketing studies started in 1995 at North Carelian University of Applied Sciencies. The school was in Joensuu, which is my original home town in eastern part of Finland. I finished my BBA degree with a final paper about eCommerce, right after I moved to Helsinki area in 1999. During my career I have been involved all the time more or less with web-related software and projects in various positions. In the beginning of 21st century, web analytics came along with some server log based systems and I was hooked.
It was a bit of accident that I became an entrepreneur later on and I found myself as a managing director of NXC Finland, previously Naviatech Solutions) in 2005. Since then I started studying more analytics business and got involved with the Finnish community (Kalle Heinonen, Steve Jackson and the rest). It paid off because I was selected by these gentlemen as a chairman of WAA Finland in 2007. Today, I’m a free agent and looking for the next challenge.
Your sister has an Olympic bronze medal. What was that for, and are you a little bit jealous?
Yes. Maybe I have to admit that my sister is a better hockey player than me.
Or not.
At least I’m hearing that a lot in our locker room. I have been playing for 26 hockey seasons [profile and career stats] so of course I’m very jealous about that Olympic bronze medal from Vancouver. And couple of World Champ bronze medals as well.
Yeah, maybe I was some kind of role model for my sis when I played in first division in Finland (second level) – at least she is saying that so I could feel better. As revenge I invited her into field of web analytics so we have to share same passion and punishment.
If you wrote a book on web analytics in Finnish, how many sales would you make in the first week?
I have very large fan group in Finland so I guess that during the first week I could sell 5 copies (parents, both sisters and me).
Actually I have been asked to write a book couple of times, but so far I enjoy just writing to my blog every now and then.
“The free bird thinks of another breeze And the trade winds soft through The sighing trees And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright Lawn and he names the sky his own. But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream His wings are clipped and his feet are tied So he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with A fearful trill of things unknown But longed for still and his Tune is heard on the distant hill For the caged bird sings of freedom”.
Maya Angelou must have ended up in a Silly Series.
Now we turn the spotlight on Pritesh Patel, Jim Sterne’s doppelganger.
Who is Pritesh Patel?
This Pritesh Patel is one of 513 (yes, fracking 513!!) other Pritesh Patels on LinkedIn. I am the Digital Marketing Manager for Pauley Creative, a B2B digital marketing agency serving companies within the construction sector – mainly product manufacturers. Very niche. I went to school with another Pritesh Patel and during an Achievements Evening at school, where all the kids would get certificates for outstanding performances in subjects, I purposely collected the other Pritesh Patel’s award for Best Progress in Reading and Writing. I was the only school child who ended up with two certificates. I am friends with him on Facebook and, to this day, he is still asking me if I took his award. Pffff….Loser!!! It’s a dog eat dog world my friend and I have the bigger teeth!
You studied Visual Communication in university. Is that the one where you learn to tell people things with your eyes?
No. It’s a just posh alternative for ‘colouring in’. I also did a Foundation Degree in Art and Design and once had to paint a plant using just fish oil and tomato ketchup!
It is a year to the day since I began the Silly Series, in which I profile the great and the good of the digital analytics industry. I had planned to run the thing for a couple of weeks, but it became bigger than me and I have adored learning more about colleagues I admire and respect. This is the 68th profile I have posted – click here to see the full list of profiles.
Huge thanks to all who have participated – if you enjoy the profiles and want to be involved, drop me a line!
Today, helping to celebrate the paper anniversary, is Richard Calentine, man of fashion.
What can you tell us about Richard Calentine, esquire?
The first question is a tough one. I am a very complicated individual. I am not really from anywhere, but I am from a lot of places. I spent some time in upstate New York and I went to college in Texas, so I guess I am a “New Texan”.
I have done a lot of things before I got started in web analytics – from sales, financial analysis, and a pricing analysis for convenience stores. I finally entered into web analytics via a newspaper ad for an internet marking analyst. I had done analysis in previous positions and I had used the internet before. I could do this job, right?
You studied Computer Science at Quinnipiac University. What is a quinnipiac and how do you clean up if it gets on the couch?
I did study computer science for a brief period of time. Well, a Quinnipiac is a bobcat so you are going to need a BIG pooper-scooper. Do you happen to have one I can borrow?
“This passion of our kind For the process of finding out Is a fact one can hardly doubt, But I would rejoice in it more If I knew more clearly what We wanted the knowledge for, Felt certain still that the mind Is free to know or not.”
Smart man, that Auden – I doubt he’d think much of the Silly Series.
Now we turn to Claudiu Murariu – a man who cannot fathom why people would abandon his site.
What should the folks at home know about Claudiu?
I’m 28 but I weigh as much as a 14 year-old. That never stopped me from jumping out of planes, paragliding or adventuring in Siberia.
2 years ago I quit a job I really liked and started my own company that I like even more. I started doing web analytics around 4 or 5 years ago, out of necessity. I had nobody around me to give me answers to questions I had about the performance of the projects I was working on. Never stopped since then.
On a scale of one to tomato, how important is the digital analytics industry?
It’s a very tough question and we’ll have to do some research to find out. We first need to find the value of tomato. I know what you are thinking: find out where it grew, how many miles did it travel, and how, to where it sits now, double it if it came in by plane and take out from the final number the carbon tax.
No, I won’t do it like that. I’ll take a fork and a knife, I’ll slice the tomato, pick the seeds, dry them, plant them in 2 different places with different environmental conditions, see which lot gives the best results, make sure it’s statistically significant, find a fellow who does the same with cucumber and organize a salad party on a Web Analytics Wednesday.
With a certain degree of confidence we can state that on a scale from one to tomato, web analytics has a high value.
“Man hath stil either toyes, or Care, He hath no root, nor to one place is ty’d, But ever restless and Irregular About this Earth doth run and ride, He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where, He sayes it is so far That he hath quite forgot how to go there.”
Good old Vaughan – probably had a Silly Series though.
It’s time to turn our attention to Chris Olenik – a man who should immediately be persuaded to sing at the next eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit.
Tell us all we need to know (and more) about Chris Olenik.
By day, I work with an incredible team at Keystone Solutions as we dominate the world of digital marketing and optimization. At night and when I am not on Delta, I have a great time with my family. As you can see by the above picture, they are growing up as Red Sox fans and that is why there are two daggers aimed at my head.
You have a degree in Political Science. What job did you plan to get with that, back in the day?
I was very close to attending law school, but I luckily did an internship the summer before enrolling into a full time program. I don’t want to offend the thousands of lawyers reading the Silly Series, but my experience was analogous to the Bill Murray movie, “Groundhog Day.” Each day, I would wake up, work with the same documents, hear bickering between two opposing lawyers about the meaning of a word in a particular context, and go home at 2:30AM. Rinse. Repeat.
I quickly realized that this was not for me and focused my attention on technology. I thought I would avoid lawyers in my professional career, but that was naïve. I now deal with them on a daily basis as I try to explain to them that we do not have a fleet of cars at Keystone and we do not need car insurance language within their professional services agreements.
“I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful-The eye of the little god, four cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.”
That Plath girl cracks me up – she surely had a Silly Series.
Ladies and germs, it is time to expose Shawn C. Reed to the mirror – a man you will not find in a reality TV show near you.
Tell us about Shawn C Reed. For one thing, what’s the C for?
Charming? Haha. Just kidding. It’s my middle initial. I started using it in all of my online profiles for the purpose of establishing a personal brand. The middle initial has helped me to differentiate myself in search results from the other Shawn Reeds out there. I’m not a fan of my middle name though so I’m not sharing it here. If your Google-fu is strong, you can probably find it out there somewhere.
I think the work in personal branding has paid off — I run into people who know me even though they didn’t realize they knew me.
You’re stuck in an elevator with 2 strangers for 25 minutes. Do you a) tell them a fascinating anecdote about web analytics, b) strip down to a white vest and stage a valiant rescue mission or 3) tweet about how elevators are a metaphor for life?
I am pretty sure that unless the 2 strangers were also in the field, they’d be pretty anxious to be rescued if I started talking to them about analytics. And I’d probably tweet something while I was waiting… except that my phone never gets a signal in elevators. So I’m gonna go with the rescue mission. But only if I can wear a different color vest — black or navy blue, perhaps?
“Maybe a twelvemonth since Suddenly I began, In scorn of this audience, Imagining a man, And his sun-freckled face, And grey Connemara cloth, Climbing up to a place Where stone is dark under froth, And the down-turn of his wrist When the flies drop in the stream; A man who does not exist; A man who is but a dream; And cried, “Before I am old I shall have written him one Poem maybe as cold And passionate as the dawn.”". Daily it becomes clearer that Yeats had a Silly Series.
Today, it is time to talk to Anil Batra, a man with a profound respect for the potato – for which I profoundly respect him.
What should people know about Anil Batra?
As a kid, whe n people asked me how to spell my last name, I always said Bat (BAT) ra, so you can call me Batman. Then Judah Phillips once mentioned me as Anil “Batman” in one of his blogposts and that prompted me to add a picture of Batman on my blog. It was there for almost 6 months before I changed the format of my blog.
What do you think is the most surprising thing about you?
I can write damn good and complex SQL. I can also code in ASP. People don’t believe that, they don’t know that I have worked in IT before. When I was building a datawarehouse for a healthcare client, I stumbled upon IIS log files and that was my entry into Web Analytics. That was in 2000.
Friends, Romans….people from other cities….lend me your eyes!
I am a big fan of the Web Analytics Association and I have been a member for nigh on 4 years (1 year as an individual and 3 as a corporate member). I am on the Exam Committee and recently had the honour of being named co-chair of the Membership Committee alongside co-chair Michele “Jojoba” Hinojosa and chairman Eric “Hairic” Feinberg. I’ve taken the Certified Web Analyst (CWA) exam and I’m encouraging colleagues at Yahoo! to do the same.
In terms of the value of the membership to me – it’s been very useful in terms of making connections (especially considering I’m in a dark Hungarian outpost) and I have more recruiters contacting me since I took the UBC Web Analytics course (utilising my WAA discount) and the CWA exam – yes, it’s true, I’m needy for attention.
I’ve learned a huge amount from my time in the WAA, mainly from the involvement I’ve had with various groups.
So, my question is, why don’t YOU want to join the WAA?
2011 WAA Awards for Excellence Winners
It is time to turn our jingle bells to 
And I’d probably tweet something while I was waiting… except that my phone never gets a signal in elevators. So I’m gonna go with the rescue mission. But only if I can wear a different color vest — black or navy blue, perhaps?
Friends, Romans….people from other cities….lend me your eyes!
