Matthew Wright - Germy Man

Welcome, bienvenue, üdvözlet, fáilte, hoş geldin, karibu, siya namkela nonke!  This is the Silly Series of profiles, looking at people in the web analytics industry.

Let’s turn our attention to Matthew Wright, a man who will not reveal how he would sell cutlery in Asia.

Hi Matthew, tell the nice readers all the pertinent details about you.

A little about me: born in California and moved all over as a military dependent (e.g., Texas, Maryland, Germany, and even lived in really exotic places like Fort Riley, Kansas) – but I still consider the Bay Area my “home”.  I relocated to Utah to attend school and settled there – I love the variety of activities available year round; hiking & biking in the summer, skiing in the winter, etc.  I’m married to an incredible woman with 5 beautiful kids [make that 6 as of August 15th 2011 - E] (our family’s blog: http://mcfamilycircus.blogspot.com/)

I was your typical science geek in school - I enjoyed math, chemistry, physics, and of course, could NOT get enough of computers.  I built my first computer at 16 (a 386SX with an entire 1MB of RAM – cost me my entire summer savings) and began programming at the Junior college in high school.  I was hooked on programming from the beginning – and that led me to computer science in college as an undergraduate.  After graduating and consulting for a few years, I also realized that programming was only a fraction of the “successful business” equation and returned to complete a business degree.

In 2003, John Pestana introduced me to this obscure company he helped found called “Omniture” which did something called “web analytics”.  Like many others in the industry, I enjoyed it from the start – there’s a great level of satisfaction that comes from figuring out what data really means.  I’ve been very fortunate to work with fantastic clients and companies that work on some of the hardest and most interesting problems in the industry.

Who is your superhero-sans-cape in the web analytics community and why?

Hands down, it’s Jim Novo.  His book “Drilling Down” is one of the hidden treasures in our industry. Avinash and Peterson’s books are definitely guides to the “what and how” of web analytics—but Jim takes on the more broad question of “how do you look at customer data, regardless of the channel?” – which makes his work almost timeless.

What I love about Jim is that he’s very modest and almost seems surprised when people talk to him about how much they appreciate his work.  I met him at eMetrics several years back as he was stepping out back for a break and it struck me how humble and no–nonsense he was in his approach.  His approach reminds me a great deal of how Gellis and I approach our work at Keystone Solutions: no-one is too important to get the work done, tackle the most impactful challenges first, and keep improving along the way.

Please write a quick limerick about web analytics

Digital data keeps on flowing,
When it stops, no-one is know-ing
But the rows and the fields,
And the insights it yields,
Leaves our bosses and vendors a glow-ing.

What is your wish for the remainder of 2011?

There are a number of people who have been hit hard by the global recession—leaving many either unemployed or underemployed.  These aren’t people who were frivolous with debt or sold complex financial instruments—these are people who are hard workers.  Many are quite skilled in technology-they simply were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I hope that those of us in the web analytics industry will reach out to those struggling with employment to help educate them about opportunities in our industry, help them connect with potential training, internships, and mentoring programs. Our industry needs great people to step-up and join us.

You are dining with Matthew Gellis (MD of Keystone Solutions).  Someone shouts “MATTHEW!!” – to which one of you do they refer?

It depends, but in most cases, they’re referring to Gellis:

• If we’re among friends or clients, then they’ll likely refer to one of us with our approved nicknames-such as our surnames, Rhino , etc.
• If it’s an angry shout, then they’re clearly asking for Gellis.  He gets in much more trouble than I do.
• If there’s Karaoke anywhere close, they’re definitely asking for Gellis.  His rendition of the theme song from “Little Mermaid” is second to none.

If you could turn your principal hobby into a business, what would that business be and would it be called “Wright Back At Ya!”, “The Customer is Always Wright”, “I’m YOUR Mister Wright” or “If this is Wright, I don’t want to be Rong”?

So I have a couple of hobbies; chess and biking:

- My chess business would be called ‘All the Wright Moves’.

- The bike business would be called ‘Cycle Wright’

Speaking as a C-level executive, if you were getting a report from a web analyst, how would you like the data to be presented?

If I’m paying an analyst to pull a report for me, I typically don’t want ‘data’.  I want insights into what the data means—I want them to tell me the story driving the data.  That’s the single largest differentiator between an analyst and a data technician: data techs pull data or reports for you; analysts tell you what the data means.  I prefer that the analyst puts together the two or three of the most impactful views of data that support the story they’re trying to tell—and to be prepared to tell me at least two reasons why the story they’re telling could be incorrect.

What is the most tedious question you have ever been asked in a job interview?

That would have to be: “If you were going to sell forks in mainland China, how would you go about selling them?”

Completely and totally useless question – that tells me the interviewer doesn’t have a clue about meaningful interview questions for the position —or worse, that the role they’re interviewing for will require you to provide un-insightful answers to stupid questions.

Check out the full list of interviews in the Silly Series here!