Arr me hearties, this be the Silly Series, choc-full of web analytics people profiles.
Today, it’s time to talk to Gary Angel, a man confident in the importance of tights to the superhero ensemble.
Who is Gary Angel?
Gary is the President and co-Founder of Semphonic. He leads Semphonic’s enterprise consulting and has been doing web analytics for more than thirteen years. In the past year, he’s focused heavily on building Semphonic’s Digital Database Marketing practice and on developing techniques for doing primary research with Social Media data. He blogs at: http://semphonic.blogs.com/semangel/
Gary, what should we know about you?
There’s a Calvin and Hobbes comic where the two are playing football. Calvin kicks-off to Hobbes and then runs down to tackle him. He slams into him, but Hobbes, being rather larger, just keeps going. Calvin is dragged along, hanging lower and lower on Hobbes until Hobbes crosses the goal and spikes the ball, leaving Calvin prostrate on the grass. In the final panel, the two are playing chess and Calvin monologues, “I’ve decided to be an intellectual.”
On the other hand, everybody in my family was dangerously smart. I was (by far) the worst student in my family. This made me realize at a very young age – in that deep way that we only learn things when we are young – that there is much more to life than being smart.
How many jokes have you heard about being an Angel?
I’ve always kind of enjoyed that – I actually like the name a lot. What used to drive me crazy were girls who sang “Johnny Angel” to me on dates. Now I miss that too.
If you were to write a thriller about a private detective with a dangerous taste in women, gin and shorts, under what pseudonym would you write?
“Dangerous taste in shorts” is puzzling. So I think I’ll make my P.I. a woman (I prefer a woman with a dangerous taste in shorts), I’ll name her Camille because this is modern tough-girl fiction, and I’ll write under the pseudonym Saint Saens because I love word-play and I always thought Camille Saint Saens was a woman.
You studied philosophy at university. Do you find that very useful in the web analytics world?
In theory, it should give me supernatural patience but I find that the practical applications of philosophy are pretty much limited to boring your date. Since I’m married, this gives me very little scope for philosophical practice.
In fact, I love philosophy and I still read fairly deeply in the subject. But if you have to lay claim to a practical benefit to studying philosophy you should probably be baking cakes instead.
One thing I will say (and you can see I’m hesitant to let this question go) is that studying almost anything at a very deep level is the only way to learn how to think. And thinking is, at least occasionally, useful in Web analytics.
Who is your superhero-sans-cape in the web analytics community and why?
What about tights? Tights seem more important even than a cape in the super-hero wardrobe.
I have a suspicion that being declared another adult’s “hero” is cringe-worthy. So if I name someone, I’m just putting them in an awkward spot and giving them an“Ewww” moment. I’ll fire a question back – don’t you find our industry’s apparently unquenchable desire for heroes and gurus a trifle…well… silly? Do accountants (for example) have this same navel-gazing cult-of-personality fetish? Are there superstar bookkeepers?
That’s actually a pretty frightening thought. Let me not answer the question in a different way.
In my youth, I worked in politics and I found that there is an inexorable law to public discourse: The people who talked the most, knew the least. I found this a nearly universal truth across all public spaces. Most of what I heard in public discourse was deeply-shallow (did I invent a new oxymoron there?), grossly self-serving (especially when positioned as “for the community”) or just flat out wrong.
This left me very distrustful – perhaps excessively so – of “community” discourse.
I know what you are going to say – “But Gary, you talk/write quite a bit in public these days!”
Yes, I’m afraid that “all Cretans ARE liars…”, and it should be clear from this answer why I love Philosophy.
If you could build a robot, would it take over the world or iron your shirts?
With world domination, who needs unwrinkled shirts? I prefer my shirts a bit wrinkly anyway – as anyone who has ever seen me at work can testify.
What is your wish for the remainder of 2011?
That Twitter will go out of business so that people in our industry can rest their elbows from patting themselves on the back and get a little bit of work done.
Which is better, eMetrics or X Change?
“D’oh.” Let me put it this way, my wife is deeply involved in planning and executing X Change.
How do you prepare yourself for public speaking engagements?
To be honest I get really nervous. I’ve always been rather shy and the one thing I don’t like about my job is speaking in public – which is ironic because I do love to talk.
When I get nervous I accelerate my speech, speeding me from a mere “fast-talker” to a potential Fed-Ex spokesperson.
Because of this, I always give presentations extemporaneously so that I have to slow down and think about what I’m saying. Sometimes it even works.
If you were to be described as an “expert” in something, what would it be?
I don’t know if you can call this an expertise, but I’m actually a fine oral reader. With thousands of hours of practice (courtesy of my girls) and a passion for books, I have become quite accomplished. I listen to a lot of audio books and while there are some great readers out there, I believe I could have a second career doing audio books if I had a mind to do that. And, of course, the wonderful thing about doing an audio book is that there’s no audience to trouble you!
Check out the full list of interviews in the Silly Series here!
