#056: Live from Superweek!

[music]

00:04 Announcer: Welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. Tim, Michael and the occasional guest discussing digital analytics issues of the day. Find them on Facebook at facebook.com/analyticshour, and their website, analyticshour.io. And now, the Digital Analytics Power Hour.

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00:28 Michael Helbling: Hi everyone, welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. This is Episode 56. You know, great digital analysts come from all over the world, and no conference demonstrates this more ably than Superweek. Right now, we’re in Hungary where Superweek is celebrating its sixth year, and we’re surrounded by amazing analysts from all over the world. So Tim and I wanted to come and see this conference for ourselves. And so, it’s both of our first years. Hey, Tim. Welcome to the show.

01:08 Tim Wilson: Hey, Michael, I haven’t seen you in minutes.

01:12 MH: Minutes, and now I am so pleased to say that we are live right now.

[applause]

01:28 MH: Now, usually we have a guest on the show. And we couldn’t pick just one. So on this show at Superweek, Superweek is the guest on the show. You are all the guests, so welcome to the show.

01:51 TW: You’re not gonna get an applause for that.

01:52 MH: Yeah, yeah. We’ll fill it in later.

[applause]

01:56 MH: So, Tim and I have been chatting with, meeting some of you, listening to the speakers this week, and we have questions. Questions that need answers. So we’re gonna be asking some of you questions and interviewing you on the show tonight. And so let’s get started. Oh, and [02:19] ____.

[laughter]

02:22 MH: I think, sort of. No, maybe not.

02:25 TW: Run that through a Google translator, all our listeners at home and see.

02:26 MH: Yeah yeah. Alright. So, for the first question of the night, Matt Gershoff, what’s the best way for me to start doing predictive analytics?

02:40 Matt Gershoff: Well first let me say thanks for having me here on the live podcast. I think that’s a good question. I’d say probably what you shouldn’t do is attend anything or really research anything that calls itself predictive analytics. So what you probably wanna do, or I would think you would wanna do is, there’s an excellent resource, is your actual answer, an excellent resource online called VideoLectures.NET, and you can just search for that. And there is a ton of resources on machine learning, which I would assume predictive analytics is a subset of. You can also go to our blog, you can go to conductrics.com and Google for data science resources, and we have a ton of great resources there. But I think my first stop would be VideoLectures.NET. There is a great video…

03:31 TW: Okay Matt, hold on a second. Now you realize, we’ve gotta ask you this question. We have learned, courtesy of Sasha, that that was a question that when you were appropriately set up, you answered with more of a little bit of a rant about the whole questioning the framing of the question, which we now asked you two or three times. We didn’t know that we were gonna give you a mic and all of a sudden, you were gonna give a straight-up and agree to answer the question with real resources.

03:54 MG: Yeah I know, but I thought this time I’d give people who are actually listening something informative.

04:00 TW: If you wanna be cut off and edited out of the show, but…

[laughter]

04:05 TW: Well really, we weren’t trying to ask you… I mean that’s good, and I’m not gonna tell you how to answer the question, but you’ve got… I kind of am…

04:11 MG: I don’t know, it sounds like you are kinda telling me how to answer the question, Tim.

[laughter]

04:15 TW: I’m always slowly following. And some of these questions we’re gonna ask are ones we have managed to ask and we wanna catch them for posterity, because you have kind of a different take that I certainly can’t re-articulate around more the framing of the problem. Can I ask you to shift gears on that?

04:30 MG: Okay, so now I understand that the question was really, you’re trying to hit one of my triggers.

04:36 TW: Yeah. Apparently, your trigger gets dampen when you’re holding a microphone.

04:40 MG: Well no, actually, we’re at Superweek and there’s just so much good energy, and love, and intimacy here about analytics that I wasn’t…

04:47 TW: Get your hand off my knee.

[chuckle]

04:49 MG: Right. Well, it’s a robust knee. [chuckle] No, I think what you’re getting at is just the focusing on the predictive side of predictive analytics. I think it’s the wrong way to think about the problem. And usually, what we wanna do is we wanna solve some sort of decision problem, we’re trying to improve some sort of process. And people tend to get really excited about something that’s new, and in our industry, it seems that predictive analytics, and a little bit with AI… This is something we’ll be talking about tomorrow… Is kind of like, a lot of people are excited about it and they think it’s gonna do something for them. But if you haven’t really thought through the problem well, it’s not really the problem you’re trying to solve. And so, I don’t know where I’m goin’ with this right now, I’m just trying to get myself worked up but I don’t really feel particularly hostile to the question right now. I would say [chuckle] it is important for…

05:41 TW: The one time he’s not hostile to the question, for once in your life.

05:47 MG: What is once in my life? You should have told me that you wanted me to get all worked up.

05:49 MH: No, it’s fine. It’s fine.

05:52 TW: We told you what the question was gonna be, and you got all worked up, so we thought we’d communicated effectively, but…

05:57 MG: Yeah, I guess I missed it.

06:00 TW: You’re a man of mystery.

06:00 MG: I’m ruining your live show.

06:02 MH: No, no, it’s great.

[overlapping conversation]

06:04 MH: Actually it’s probably a better answer because it now give people something to go…

06:06 MG: Yeah, VideoLectures.NET, seriously, actually for everyone in this room, so forget about the podcast, everyone in this room right now, ’cause you’re here for learning something, VideoLectures.NET is a great resource.

06:16 MH: Awesome.

06:17 TW: Thank you.

06:18 MH: Thank you so much.

06:18 MG: You’re welcome.

06:20 MH: Alright.

[applause]

06:22 MH: Now… Thank you. Now, I do have a question for Zoltan.

06:28 S?: That would be great, now that… Yes.

[background conversation]

06:30 MH: No, yeah, no… Come on, you gotta come up here…

[background conversation]

06:38 TW: Well you can answer it… Promptly.

06:39 MH: You can answer it from there…

06:40 S?: Me?

06:40 TW: You better answer it…

06:41 MH: You. So Zoltan I am very amazed by being here, and thankful to be here, and I’m so curious to know, what was your inspiration for creating this conference? What made this come to be? Why are we all here?

07:00 Zoltán “Zoli” Bánóczy: You want to hear the truth right? Not the…

[chuckle]

07:03 MH: Hear the what?

07:05 ZB: Because it’s going to be weird, because…

07:07 MH: No, it’s okay, the real story, I think, is fine.

07:08 ZB: The real story is that I became bored with the Hungarian market. [laughter] That’s the real answer.

07:16 MH: That’s the real answer?

07:17 ZB: In one single sentence, I’m not sure, because it was like… I [07:21] ____ just want some detail, and please start the recording, but the main story is that I became bored with the consultancy work here in Hungary, and that’s why I decided to move to something which is a conference where I want to go.

07:40 TW: No, that’s amazing.

07:42 MH: I mean, but that, how long did you think about, I am gonna try… This place is amazing. I know this awesome hotel that’s up in the hills and it’s amazing and beautiful. All I have to do is convince a critical mass of speakers and people to attend. I am terrified of…

08:00 ZB: Yeah, but it took like five years.

[chuckle]

08:03 MH: I’ve been hearing wonderful things about this conference for a lot longer than the last year or two.

08:09 ZB: Okay, that took like three years.

08:11 MH: Okay, but you decided you were gonna… You are a risk taker?

08:15 ZB: No, I [08:16] ____ decision, this is what I wanted to do. I didn’t decide, I am not kinda…

08:22 MH: Well, weird…

08:23 ZB: Yeah yeah.

08:24 MH: Okay.

08:24 ZB: [08:24] ____ It’s just what I wanted to do, it’s like kinda, nothing in it.

08:27 MH: Well, thank you… Anybody else who has thought, “I live somewhere… I think I’ll just start my own conference”? Anybody else ever had that thought and considered it for more than about 12 seconds?

08:40 TW: Anybody?

08:40 S?: I did.

08:41 MH: But…

08:42 TW: Yeah? Okay.

08:43 MH: Okay. Let the record show that there are a couple of hands that go up, but not mine. Well thank you.

08:50 TW: For doing it.

08:51 ZB: Thank you for coming. Thank you.

08:52 MH: Thank you very much.

08:53 S?: Alright.

08:54 MH: Yeah!

[applause]

08:57 MH: Alright Tim, and as our listeners can tell, this was absolutely asking him to [09:03] ____ plug, Superweek was clearly not a condition of us doing this because we pretty much had to drag him kicking and screaming up here. [chuckle] So, I’m gonna ask one that I have… Unfortunately, I have told this story to people and I have potentially butchered it, and I actually first learned of it back in October, Mark Edmondson from IIH Nordic, if you can step up here, and for those of you who are lucky enough to be here, he’s gonna give a little bit more detail tomorrow, but to me as somebody who has been talking about R and the cool things you can do with R and within about four hours of meeting Mark, in person, he showed me this and I wanted him to describe it for posterity. So Mark, this whole thing with the prefetch tag, and GTM, and increasing page load time, can you explain what you’ve done?

09:53 Mark Edmondson: Yeah. So, I was looking at Markov chains for prediction, and we were lucky enough to have a client who had the right data, they were capturing the cookie ID and so we could go down to a user level on how they were going through the website. So, we used Markov chains to predict what the next [10:17] ____ euro would be. The original idea was for a content recommendation and something like that where we could take the output and improve conversion by showing them the page that we thought they wanted to get to anyway. But then I’m just gonna check, ’cause, so I can pronounce his name, but then I put this out online and everything, and then a guy called Vincent Terrasi, a French guy, he suggested that we should use prefetching, which is secret of chrome, one of the secrets of chrome, why it’s so fast, is that when you type in, say, Facebook, it’s so certain that you’re gonna click on the first result that it’s actually preloaded the Facebook page in the background.

11:05 ME: This JavaScript tag, this header, in your HTML, we can actually access through Google Tag Manager, so the idea was then to use the prediction that we had done and feed it into Google Tag Manager, so that then it could show the user as they’re browsing the website, prefetch the page before they hit it. And then also used this technology called OpenCPU, which is a technology that changes R code into JavaScript, and these all just happened around the same time, so I was like, R into JavaScript, JavaScript into GTM, GTM into Prerender. So it all just fitted together. And then we actually deployed it on the client, on a little test section and it sped up their website by 20% from what we were measuring before and after…

12:02 MH: And was that just for Chrome users or overall it was 20% but it was because it was speeding it up for Chrome users?

12:09 ME: It was for all, ’cause the tag is supported by all the browsers now.

12:12 MH: Oh prefetch, Okay.

12:13 ME: Yeah, yeah, so Firefox, I think it was about… It didn’t work for Safari.

12:19 MH: IE 6.0.

12:19 ME: Yeah.

[laughter]

12:20 ME: Or IE 6.0, yeah, exactly. But it worked for about, I think, 80% of users, so, yeah. And the model itself wasn’t actually that good, it was about 50% accurate, in predicting where the page was gone. So if we improve the model, then we could potentially see even more gains in the average time of the website load. So that was nice.

[chuckle]

12:45 MH: Very cool, I mean to me it was like as the analyst who, I’m used to analyzing data and then making a recommendation and then making a change to the site, and that was kind of… And I was talking to Mark and we were intensively talking about R, and he was like, “Oh yeah, I did this thing and it was just some Google stuff and I just pushed it out and, oh, increased the user’s perceived speed of the site by 20%,” and he’s an analyst who’s doing that and actually operationalized stuff which…

13:12 ME: I mean, it’s because, I’ve been working a lot on dashboards and things like that, but in a lot of cases they are kind of useless, eventually. [chuckle] And I think it’s because you’ve got, like the time to action, the time when you actually do something, you have to, the guy has to decide what to do and then they have to maybe pass it on to another guy and then he does something, so it was, I’ve always been looking to try and get the results of a data analysis, sort of the end to the action as quickly as possible.

13:41 MH: Take the humans out of it, that’ll do it, right?

13:43 ME: Yep.

13:44 TW: Yeah.

[chuckle]

13:44 TW: Okay, awesome. Thanks Mark.

13:45 MH: Awesome. Thank you Mark.

[applause]

13:50 TW: Okay, so I’m gonna get… You wanna do one?

13:54 MH: You’re next, at least on my list.

13:56 TW: Yeah, I am but you were looking at me like I was not…

13:58 MH: No, no, please.

14:00 TW: Okay, so now that Mark is sat back down, Astrid can crawl over him to come up here. So, here’s the question that our listeners are smarter than I am. So I think I’ve asked it three times and still don’t understand the answer, and…

14:14 MH: It’s very simple Tim.

14:15 TW: I know. [chuckle] And this was actually I felt, so Caleb and Charlotte on the fireside chat on the first night, she asked them a question and they actually understood the question, so they were way ahead of me and I was hitting Google, so, Astrid.

14:29 Astrid Illum: Yeah.

14:30 TW: Can you define what a blockchain is? Quick survey, by show of applause, how many people know what a blockchain is? By show of applause, this isn’t… By show of applause…

[applause]

14:43 TW: Okay. Okay, more hands went up but they’re like, “No, I don’t wanna be on the mic.”

14:46 MH: There were a lot of hands, hands went up all over the podcast.

14:49 TW: I had to Google it.

14:50 MH: Don’t worry.

14:50 TW: I Googled it as two words and then found out it started as two words and is now one term, but one word, or one term, but the key to find a blockchain and where you were thinking about it could actually come into our world is kind of a thing of use.

15:04 AI: Yeah. Well, just to start off, I’m not at all intimidated by the fact that so many of you know what blockchain is because I’m clearly an expert on the topic, so…

15:12 TW: Okay.

[laughter]

15:13 AI: No, yeah, just to start out as I understand it, with that caveat, it’s an online ledger which is registered in nodes, it’s distributed and each node will check with the others what is written in the ledger and every transaction is correlated with or tied together with other transactions in a long chain. So…

15:35 TW: And it’s kinda what’s behind Bitcoin, that’s like one of the key…

15:38 AI: Well, yeah, Bitcoin was the first…

15:40 TW: The first applica… Okay.

15:41 AI: Yeah, type, yeah of blockchain technology.

15:43 TW: Okay.

15:44 AI: And I’m not the one who invented blockchain, just to be clear. [chuckle]

15:48 MH: Oh, that would have been a great first for the podcast, yeah.

15:49 AI: Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah.

[laughter]

15:52 AI: No, but some of the interesting uses of it. We’ve been talking about ads and how to track ads and how to put display into the cycle of what’s actually worth spending money on, and blockchain technology could be something that revolutionizes that, just because it’s a way to actually have handshakes for who actually sees ads, or if anybody does, so that you only pay for actual views and not bots who view ads, which is a huge thing.

16:23 TW: And yet it’s still doing it by totally protecting the…

16:26 AI: It’s pseudonymous, so it’s actually, it’s tied to an individual but that individual is not tied to a public person. They only know themselves, so, yeah.

16:40 TW: So next year, after Astrid has spun off her startup to solve the fraudulent ads problem, maybe.

16:46 AI: Yeah, and also just to let go of the idea of knowing who your customers are, and instead just tabbing into systems of blockchain ledgers and serving what you want to serve to people through that technology, yeah.

17:01 TW: Yeah, that’s a lotta…

17:02 AI: And, well, just a tiny, tiny last point?

17:04 TW: Yeah.

17:04 AI: Micro payment is also something that’s clearly going to happen with blockchain because with a Bitcoin, which is infinitely divisible, there’s no limit to how small you can get, it means that, and there’s no transaction fee, you can easily, instead of paying a broker with ads, you can pay somebody like a user for seeing something, like receiving an offer from you like a tiny, tiny amount, stuff like that.

17:32 TW: Oh.

17:33 AI: Yeah.

17:34 TW: That’s cool. Thank you.

17:36 AI: You’re welcome.

17:36 MH: Yeah, thank you. Big ideas. Amazing.

[applause]

17:42 MH: Alright. Our next question is gonna go to one of you, but it has to be someone not from the United States, who’s ready for a question?

[chuckle]

17:57 TW: We could ask the question and see who thinks they have a good answer.

18:00 MH: No, it has to go this way, you gotta step out, be bold…

[chuckle]

18:03 TW: Okay.

18:04 MH: Yeah? You…

[background conversation]

18:07 MH: No, it’s okay, I get to pick. [chuckle] This is my show. [laughter] Join us.

[background conversation]

18:15 MH: It’s gonna be amazing.

[applause]

18:16 TW: It’s gonna be good, yeah.

18:17 MH: Come on up.

18:18 TW: Come on up.

18:20 MH: We’ve got the microphone. Alright. So you’re ready? Here’s your question. You’re gonna do a great job, and I’m sorry, your name?

18:27 Kayleigh Rogers: My name is Kayleigh.

18:28 MH: Kayleigh? Okay, Kayleigh. Hold the mic right up here.

18:29 TW: Hold the mic up.

18:31 MH: There you go. Perfect.

18:31 TW: There you go. Okay.

[chuckle]

18:32 MH: Kayleigh, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show.

18:35 KR: Thank you.

18:35 MH: My question for you: What is one thing you wish your American counterparts understood better about analytics in Europe?

18:47 KR: What don’t you understand about analytics? How is it different?

18:51 MH: I mean, don’t pick me out. [laughter] Just general.

18:56 KR: How can I help you understand analytics in Europe?

19:01 MH: No, but, I mean, so do you see things happening in Europe that you think are distinct and different from where they’re happening in the rest of the world? And what do you think is unique or special about analytics here in the EU?

[background conversation]

19:18 KR: It’s a very big question, that I wasn’t expecting…

[chuckle]

19:22 MH: That’s okay.

19:23 KR: I think our ability to innovate and start great conferences like this…

19:33 MH: Nice answer. Whoo!

[applause]

19:37 KR: Is…

19:39 MH: Amazing!

19:40 KR: Something very unique to Europe, we’re a very collaborative bunch, not that Americans aren’t collaborative but we’re better at it.

19:49 MH: Creative, [chuckle] innovative, good under pressure.

[laughter]

19:56 TW: Right.

19:56 MH: This is all what my observations are. Amazing answer Kayleigh, thank you so much.

20:01 KR: Thank you.

20:01 MH: Yeah.

[applause]

20:07 TW: Wow. Come on up here, Yehoshua. So, first off, I just need to get this on the record, I would like to publicly acknowledge that I am an asshole, [chuckle] and there is a Twitter exchange between Yehoshua and myself to prove that and he had the record and when we pulled up the record he proved that it was even moreso than I thought, so thanks for being a good guy anyway to me. You, on the other hand are a very personable and entertaining person. Everybody agree with that?

20:41 S?: Oh yeah.

[applause]

20:42 TW: Okay. Our MC for the week. So, how did you get into analytics? No, no, seriously. [chuckle] So, do you have thoughts either on how important it is for analysts to have, be personable and have some charisma? And if it’s important, is it something that you actively worked on or is that something that you just kind of, or naturally at?

21:09 Yehoshua Coren: Well, first of all I am very humbled by your words. I have a sense that it’s important to be yourself and having some level of interaction as you mentioned with, at least within my professional experience with clients, I tend to get along with my clients and that makes for a better ability to partner on trying to solve problems or meet their needs. I think the primary thing of importance is listening skills moreso than charisma, listening skills, make sure that you’re actually listening to the person before you’re thinking of the answer. Right, to think of the answer…

21:49 TW: Goddamn it, I’m doing that now. [chuckle] What was that you just said?

[laughter]

21:56 YC: Right.

21:57 TW: [chuckle] Sorry.

21:57 YC: So the listening skills…

21:58 TW: You versus me. [chuckle] Okay.

22:00 YC: Right. Listening before you have the answer formulated so you can collect the question. But the interpersonal relationships are critical in life, and I think that there’s a very important role for having positive interpersonal relationships with other people in a professional environment.

22:24 TW: Awesome. Thank you.

22:26 YC: Thank you.

22:26 MH: Thank you. Awesome.

[applause]

22:30 MH: Alright. We’ve got another question, this time it’s for Miraslov, come on down.

[applause]

22:40 MH: So, just a quick teaser, for tomorrow night when Miraslov will be entertaining us and I’m really looking forward to it.

22:48 Miroslav Varga: Hi guys, don’t hope for a good entertainment. [laughter] Just with whiskey and beer.

[laughter]

22:55 MH: That’s how it all works.

22:56 TW: That works too.

[laughter]

22:58 MH: That’s how this whole show works. Okay. What is the strangest thing that has happened to you in the world of analytics?

23:08 MV: When you ask me this, that you will ask me this question, the first thing I told you, my first answer is I’m surprised everyday, almost every day. When I find out something in analytics that was strange for me and I have this back to start moments at least three times a month because when nothing is working as you expect, the best thing is let’s start again. [chuckle] Let’s think over what we have tried to manage and the breaking point, when you actually decide to invite me was when I told you that I’m the oldest guy in the industry, but then I saw Tim, and Tim and me are the oldest guys in the industry.

[laughter]

23:56 TW: It’s not this Tim but we’re not gonna name which Tim it is, so…

24:00 MV: No, no, no, no, not this Tim, not this Tim. This Tim is much younger. But the…

[laughter]

24:06 MH: Not much, much younger.

24:07 TW: Not much, much younger, just one much.

24:07 MH: Not really…

24:08 MV: But what’s really surprising me, for example, and that was the issue actually that was convincing you that I should be here, surprising me that when you start to use analytics data in a different way than yesterday, you’ll get different results. Wow! [chuckle] I will just mention a small detail, we have done some analysis trying to avoid errors that are made by data sampling, and just breaking up a timeframe in smaller, smaller frames, and smaller, smaller ranges, we find out that the conversion rate was three times different than the average conversion rate in a longer period, but using data sample. And my advice for all of you and all people listening to this would be, if you have some high peaks, for example, Valentine’s Day, or New Year’s Eve, or something like that, you should just split the date range to avoid data sampling errors because it can misguide you two, three, or more times in just with plain data. So…

25:29 TW: It’s not, you just do it both ways and then report the higher number?

25:33 MV: No, no, no, no. It depends from the client because…

25:36 TW: Oh you can report the [25:37] ____?

[laughter]

25:40 MV: It’s not always easy and not always…

[overlapping conversation]

25:43 MH: For a small fee, the number could be this.

[laughter]

25:46 MV: But you should really try it, you should try it, “Okay, I have these results. What will happen if I change my experiment, the same data on a different time range?” and you will for sure, get different results. So, thank you for inviting me. I don’t know if I will live next year but if you will be…

[laughter]

26:07 S?: He’ll be here next year.

[laughter]

26:08 MH: Yeah…

[applause]

26:10 TW: I’ll take the mic. You can have your walker back and you can [chuckle] return to your rocking chair.

26:14 MH: Thank you so much, Miroslav. [chuckle] Alright. And for our next question, we’re gonna turn to…

26:22 TW: France.

26:23 MH: A fellow North American.

26:25 TW: Oh, French-Canadian, I guess. This…

26:26 MH: There you go, you go… There’s a real celebrity here which is Stéphane Hamel, who you all know.

26:36 Stéphane Hamel: I’m here.

26:36 MH: He’s here. And I have a question for you Stéphane, so…

26:39 TW: He’s coming to the stage in a radical manner.

[chuckle]

26:42 MH: Yeah. So you’ve done a lot of work in research in the field of analytics and most famously, historically, for your web analytics Maturity Model. Maturity.

26:53 SH: Maturity.

26:54 MH: I try to say it your way.

[laughter]

26:56 SH: Maturity. [chuckle]

26:56 MH: So, in Tom Davenport’s book, ‘Competing on Analytics’, was, I think, influential to you in this work. In the work you’re doing today, what are books that you consider influential and are guiding your thinking now?

27:13 SH: Well first, the funny thing is that, while I was working on a maturity model, Tom Davenport published ‘Competing on Analytics’. And I saw his maturity model, I said, “Oh, I’m too late to the game.” Then I looked at what he was doing and I figured out that his maturity model was much, much more advanced. Speaking to an audience that was using analytics to an extent that was far beyond what most of us were using, so I felt that there was still room for my approach to the maturity model. So back to your question, what is a book… Well, the latest book that I read is, ‘Google Analytics Breakthrough’ by E-Nor. Really, really good book, lots of interesting tips, including my own tip.

[laughter]

28:10 SH: But otherwise, I would say the next best book you should read is gonna be mine.

28:17 MH: Oh! This is… We did not know this.

[overlapping conversation]

28:21 TW: This is breaking news.

28:21 SH: This book has been in the making for 10 years, [chuckle] minimum.

[laughter]

28:26 TW: [28:26] ____ is it coming out?

28:28 MH: Yeah…

[laughter]

28:29 SH: Really, yeah.

28:29 TW: As soon as I finish it.

[chuckle]

28:30 SH: Yeah, yeah. But at least, now I’m actively working on it, actively writing. It’s quite a job, yeah. But…

28:41 MH: That’s no small task.

28:43 SH: The goal that I have is to have more of an academic textbook, so going through the concepts, and different from the book from E-Nor, for example, where it’s specifically about GA, so I want to do something that will be much more about understanding the concepts, of course using some GA examples, but hopefully, be a little bit more independent, I will say. Yeah.

29:12 MH: Wow, hey, that’s a power hour first.

29:15 SH: So stay tuned.

29:16 MH: Yeah.

[laughter]

29:17 MH: And this book will be called?

29:19 SH: It’s a secret.

[laughter]

29:21 SH: Well…

29:22 TW: Still testing…

[overlapping conversation]

29:22 MH: This book will be called, ‘It’s a secret: My journey through analytic… ‘

[overlapping conversation]

29:26 SH: I can reveal that in the title, there’s gonna be the words, “digital analytics”.

29:33 TW: Hour, power… No, I’m sorry. Power hour…

29:35 SH: No, no hours. That’s gonna be weeks and years.

[laughter]

29:39 MH: Yeah, awesome. Thank you very much Stéphane.

29:41 SH: Welcome, yeah.

29:42 MH: It is great to have you finally be on the show, but I think it won’t be the last time.

29:47 SH: Alright, thanks.

[chuckle]

29:48 MH: Alright. Alright.

[applause]

29:53 MH: We have…

[background conversation]

29:56 MH: Alright, time check Tim, what do you think? We have a couple of lightning round things we wanna do.

30:01 TW: Yup. I think we’re…

30:02 MH: We also want for you to drink, and hang out, and talk to each other, and go out into the fire. Alright…

30:10 TW: Lightning round then.

30:11 MH: Lightning rounds?

30:12 TW: Yep.

30:12 MH: Let’s do it.

30:13 TW: New Format.

30:13 MH: Who wants a question? Look how well Kayleigh did, but don’t let that mess with you. André, you still up? Yeah, get up here. Alright, so André, how excited are you for America to finally be great… Oh, no, I’m just kidding. [laughter] Sorry, sorry, too soon. [chuckle] Okay. Name one person you are super, get it, excited to have met this week, and why?

30:48 S?: Nothing.

[chuckle]

30:49 André Mafei: No, seriously… On the event, I met you. And, I had no idea…

30:54 MH: No… Come on.

30:55 AM: No, no. Seriously, I didn’t know you.

30:56 MH: You can’t use this one.

30:58 AM: We started talking and you got pretty much more experiences, more on teams than I do.

31:03 TW: Michael, I told you no plans for this. I can only pay you in foreigns, but…

[chuckle]

31:09 AM: No. Experience counts a lot. As I’m a one-guy company that intends to hire people, asked you some advices. That’s why, actually, I think we are here. To talk to each other, learn from each other, beyond the conference, beyond the… And that’s why I come 10,000 kilometers from, in straight line, over there…

31:39 TW: We’ll convert that to miles on the show notes for all of you…

[chuckle]
[overlapping conversation]

31:43 AM: Yeah, 16 hours by plane.

31:45 MH: No that’s great. André, I also learned from you this week though too.

31:49 AM: You’re welcome.

31:49 MH: So, I love this.

31:51 TW: We are in a hotel if you guys need to get a room.

31:52 MH: Thank you very much.

31:52 AM: You’re welcome.

[chuckle]

31:53 MH: Hey. Alright, Tim, your turn.

[applause]

31:56 MH: Thank you, André.

31:58 TW: Alright, who wants… This is gonna get… It’s gonna get tougher and tougher.

32:03 MH: Yeah.

32:03 TW: Who wants the question? There’s a little bit of math in this one, but not so much that I couldn’t do it in my head. It’s not really a math problem. Somebody? You…

32:16 Speaker 13: I’m drinking soda.

32:17 TW: So you’re good.

32:17 MH: You’re perfect for this.

[laughter]

32:18 TW: Come on up.

32:19 MH: Yeah.

[applause]
[background conversation]

32:27 TW: So, this is good. How long have you been in the digital analytics industry?

32:32 S1: So, that’s a hard… That’s tough question.

32:35 TW: That’s not the math question, actually, that’s just a…

32:37 S1: Actually, I was doing analytics for last five, six years. But, as independent, let’s say consultant for the last year.

32:45 TW: Okay. Ooh that’s perfect then, because the actual question is, so I wrote this… It was much cleaner in my head than it might come out. As a percentage, how much of a better analyst are you now than you were a year ago? How much have you grown?

33:05 S1: Oh, like 200%.

33:08 TW: 200%?

33:08 MH: Yeah.

33:09 S1: Yeah, I had to learn just G-query.

33:12 TW: Wow!

33:13 S1: Unfortunately.

[laughter]

33:16 TW: Outstanding, wow. That’s a good one. Okay, that was the question. You did…

33:20 S1: Just that?

33:21 TW: That was gonna be it. I don’t know.

33:23 S1: Oh, come on.

[laughter]

33:25 MH: Give him a hard one.

33:25 S1: Do you have something more? Come on.

33:27 TW: Alright, how many digits of Pi can you recite?

33:31 S1: Pi?

33:31 MH: Pi.

33:32 S1: Oh, no, no…

33:33 TW: Pi. No? Oh, okay.

[laughter]

33:38 MH: Alright, we’ve got another question. Do we have a answerer?

33:45 TW: Now, we have to limit this to people who are Google Analytics users… Oh, wait.

[laughter]

33:49 TW: Never mind.

[laughter]

33:55 MH: Alright. Anybody? Anybody? Don’t make me start… Oh, yeah.

34:00 TW: Here we go, yeah.

34:02 MH: Somebody has to do it.

34:03 TW: The winner of the golden bunch.

[applause]

34:08 MH: That is…

34:08 TW: There we go.

34:09 MH: Alright. Doug Hall.

[applause]
[background conversation]

34:14 MH: So, you know a thing or two about Google Analytics, I’ve heard.

34:17 Doug Hall: That’s flattering. Thank you.

34:18 MH: Hey…

34:18 TW: What was the last award you won related to your knowledge of Google Analytics?

34:22 MH: No, when thinking back to when you first started to use Google Analytics, what would you say was the toughest thing for you to grasp about using the tool, and why?

34:37 DH: Speaking English to the clients rather than speaking analyst.

34:41 MH: Ah, good answer.

34:42 DH: Yeah. It is fundamental to turn off the technical Klingon head and turn on the human head, and then give the real English answer that can be understood and acted on.

34:56 MH: Yeah, yeah. The proper English answer.

35:00 DH: Yeah, make sense, describe the value, provide the business case and you’re gonna win.

35:05 MH: Yeah. No…

35:06 DH: Don’t give them technical stuff. [35:09] ____ English word there. Don’t give them technical nonsense. Give them something they can work with.

35:14 MH: Sessionization.

[laughter]

35:17 MH: Yeah, no. I think, I love that answer. Tim, follow-ups?

35:21 DH: Go, Tim, go.

35:23 TW: No, I feel like there’s an opportunity to throw America under the… The United States under the bus here, and I can’t figure out how to phrase the question.

35:29 MH: I think that maybe what he meant to say, was the proper British answer.

35:32 TW: Yeah, that’s what, when he was… [chuckle]

35:33 MH: Yeah, instead of the proper English answer.

35:35 TW: Well…

35:36 MH: Maybe. I don’t know.

35:37 TW: The proper, the Queen’s English answer.

35:38 DH: [35:39] ____ but I do spell optimise with an S, that is… Yeah.

35:42 MH: Ah, yeah.

[laughter]

35:44 DH: But, the optimise tech in GTM is spelled with an S. I appreciate our Google overlords providing us with the correct spelling.

35:52 TW: That’s right.

[laughter]

35:55 MH: Great answer. Thank you, Doug Hall.

35:57 DH: Thanks a lot.

35:58 MH: Alright.

36:00 TW: Thank you.

36:00 MH: Alright, now…

[applause]

36:03 MH: We’re about done, but we’ve got a little twist. So, in about a week, Tim and I will be interviewing someone who has been to this conference before but is not here this year, by the name of Simo Ahava. And…

36:20 TW: All these blank gazes like, “Who is Simo Ahava?”

36:24 MH: No, nobody here knows who that is.

36:25 TW: That’s like… Okay, well we try to power through it anyway.

36:27 MH: He is well-regarded in the United States, however, which is why we’re having him…

36:30 S?: Former Punchcard winner.

36:32 MH: Former Punchcard winner Simo Ahava. But what we wanted to do was maybe get a little help from all of you, if you could ask Simo one question, what would it be, and we’ll ask him next week. Any takers?

36:49 Ivan Rečević: Yep.

36:50 MH: Yeah? Oh, perfect.

36:51 TW: [36:51] ____ Ivan is back. Here we go.

36:53 MH: Alright, we’ll take about three of these, so…

36:57 IR: So I asked him last year, so we were disusing English literature.

37:01 MH: Ah, okay. Perfect.

37:03 TW: This is gonna be so awesome.

37:05 IR: Okay. So he was into science fiction and he said he had read everything. So I asked him, Robert A. Heinlein, ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’…

37:14 TW: Absolutely. [37:15] ____ that in full.

37:16 IR: Yeah. But he didn’t try it, ever.

37:19 TW: Ooh. So we’ll ask him if he’s read it yet?

37:21 MH: If he’s read it yet?

37:22 IR: Yeah.

37:22 TW: That is outstanding.

37:24 MH: Okay. But, we need, your name?

37:26 IR: I’m sorry, Ivan.

37:27 MH: Ivan?

37:28 IR: Rečević.

37:30 MH: Alright.

[laughter]

37:32 S?: Ivan.

[laughter]

37:33 MH: Ivan. Perfect, that is a great question for Simo. Any other questions for Simo next week? Anybody? Yeah? Yes, and then Doug.

37:44 TW: Here we go.

37:44 MH: [37:45] ____ Damon then Doug.

37:46 TW: Yes, we should get your name?

37:48 Ophir Prusack: Ophir Prusack.

37:49 MH: Ophir.

37:50 OP: So I’m curious, Simo, if you could change GTM in any way you wanted, what would you change about it?

[chuckle]

38:00 MH: Whoo!

38:00 TW: We’re looking at the [38:01] ____…

38:02 MH: That’s the show right there.

[overlapping conversation]

38:04 TW: Well there we go. [chuckle] Outstanding.

38:06 MH: Well, let’s just get a list going. [chuckle] Alright. Okay, we’ll do one more after. Well, okay, quick. Doug’s next, then Kayleigh, then Krista, and then we’re gonna wrap the show, we’ve gotta do it.

[overlapping conversation]

38:17 TW: So we said Doug next?

38:19 MH: Yeah.

38:20 TW: Doug, back.

38:21 DH: Yeah, just real quick. I’m happy to be the custodian of the award now, and I no longer come second to Simo, as I did every bloody year before.

38:28 MH: That’s right. Yeah.

[laughter]

38:32 TW: We’re gonna turn that into a question.

38:34 MH: Take that Simo. Alright, Kayleigh you’re next, with a question for Simo.

38:41 KR: What do you wanna learn about in 2017?

38:44 MH: Ooh. Also very good. You need to be…

38:47 TW: Hey, Michael, I think we suck as hosts. [chuckle]

38:49 MH: Yeah, we definitely do. Krista Seiden from Google…

38:53 Krista Seiden: So, Simo, I know this is gonna be your favorite question. Even though you don’t want to, how would you build a visual tagging tool into Google Tag Manager?

39:02 MH: Yeah. Okay.

[applause]

39:05 TW: Hey, guys, this is Tim breaking in. In case you’re wondering, these questions will be answered on our episode that releases on March 14th. That’s not the next episode, it’s the one after that. So, tune in to hear the answers.

39:19 MH: Awesome, you guys are the best guests we’ve ever had on the show, I think, probably, because your questions are amazing…

39:30 TW: We had Matt Gershoff once and he was terrible.

39:32 MH: Yeah.

[laughter]

39:34 MH: He didn’t even hear you. Anyways. So, now we’re gonna wrap up the show. So, just a couple of things we do to do that. One of the things we do is we encourage everybody listening to interact with our guests, both on the Measure Slack and on our Facebook page and on Twitter. So, if all of you are on Measure Slack or on our Facebook page or whatever, you might be getting some questions from our listeners. So, be ready to answer those. And for my co-host Tim and for all of you and for everyone listening, keep analyzing.

[music]

40:16 Announcer: Thanks for listening, and don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter or Measure Slack group. We welcome your comments and questions. Visit us on the web at analyticshour.io, facebook.com/analyticshour or @analyticshour on Twitter.

[music]

40:36 Charles Barkley: So smart guys wanted to fit in, so they made up a term called “analytics”. Analytics don’t work.

[music]

40:45 TW: [40:46] Rock, flag, and Superweek.

40:48 MH: Yeah!

[applause]

40:50 MH: You guys are the best!

[applause]

40:54 TW: Thank you.

[applause]

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