Lexthink! sounds like the kind of event I would want to attend if I worked in a real Professional Services firm.
And to make it "by invitation only"…well, that makes it super sexy!
Thanks to Scoble for the link.
Author: spierzchala
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To measure or not to measure; that is the question…
Remember how Comcast Re-IP’ed the entire neighbourhood this week? Well, I can measure the Sears hompage again. For those who don’t know the story, you can read more here.
The ethical question that I face is whether I should or not because I can. In the Web performance business, the companies that I work for have always held that if the site is public, then it can be measured, even if the site owner is not the one requesting the measurement (competitive benchmarking, public performance indices, etc.).
I am not going to burn the bridge with Sears at this point, but does anyone else have an opinion? How would your company react if it found itself being measure/monitored without it’s knowledge/consent?
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Christmas Present Assembly
Just spent the last hour assembling a gift for the boys. The ZenWife was kind enough to stand back and simply read the instructions to me — and they were EXCELLENT directions. There were a few “big daddy hands in in a tight small space to tighten a nut” moments, but beyond that, all the parts were there and clearly marked and in the right quantity.
End-product: one ride on tractor for the boys! Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa (the ZenWife’s parents) and Great Grandma Isa (my grandmother) for contributing.
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Comments on management books
In a previous post, I discussed that I was reading some management books to get an insight into the other side of the company. I have finished Hope is Not a Strategy finally. Interesting, but no new revelations. The war stories are the most interesting part of the whole book. The approach to sales in common-sensical, but much too hard for most folks in this day of instant gratification.
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Long Tail == Heavy Tail == The Beaver Effect
The reason why the Long Tail concept seemed so familiar to me is that I work with the statistical cousin to the marketing term, the Heavy Tail.
The term Heavy Tail is used to describe a dataset that is not “normally” (in the statistical sense; think Bell Curve) distributed. Internet performance data is notoriously heavy-tailed, with a large concentration of datapoints to the left-hand side of the population and a very slow and long/heavy tail trailing out into the nether reaches of “where things go very wrong”.
When I gave training classes, I described this (being a Canadian, of course), as the Beaver Effect. If you are as puzzled as some of my seminar participants were, I am not suprised. However, go look at a picture of beaver — none posted here; you know how to use Google.
Huge Body; large tail. The Beaver Effect.
Guess it doesn’t resonate like the Long Tail.
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Turn data into information
I have a monthly conference call with one of our consulting clients to go over their data, discuss improvements, and hear about initiatives that they they may be undertaking which will have an effect on the data for next month’s call.
I woke up from my month-long slumber to prepare for this call. I saw some unusual trends, noted them, threw everything in a PowerPoint and thought to myself, "Well, they probably already knew this…but it’s what I saw".
When I got on the call, it seems that my information had set off a fire-drill. They look at the data daily, but hadn’t had anyone turn it into information for them. Now it looks like they will have to go in and debug an ancient piece of Java code that no one has looked at in years, cause it just worked. (See Tim Bray for more on this topic)
How does your company turn data into information? Chat away!
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Speaking in Public
I miss it.
Seems like an odd thing to say, but I miss talking to groups of people who may be interested in what I have to say (in my offbeat and unique way) about concepts in Web performance. I used to do it a lot at my previous job, but I have not been presented the opportunity to go somewhere and talk for too long.
Anyone know of any good conferences where I could give a presentation or talk on Web performance? I can’t seem to find any…but I guess I haven’t been looking in the right places.
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The Long Tail Phenomenom
The Long Tail has been the latest phenom here in the blogosphere. Its discussion of the choice freedom released by online retailers and distributors should be no surprise to anyone who has been online for more than 2 weeks.
My experience with this Long Tail goes back to the Christmas in 1998 when I bought a copy of Christmas in Connecticut (the original, not the schlocky re-make) from Amazon. Paid duty and shipping to have it sent to Canada. Very few of my peers had ever heard of it, and the only taped copy was an old Betmax version pulled from TV years before.
The whole reason that the Internet retail channel was touted in the first place was for just the reason that Chris Anderson has “discovered” in the Long Tail: all-the-time access to everything in market niche X. So why is the blogosphere heralding this as a new discovery? It has been with us since the beginning. But when someone “invented” a term for it, it is a new idea that needs to be discussed.
It is the original idea behind the commercial Internet. It is not news.
Next story please.
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Back up — NEW IP
Ok, the GrabPERF and Pierzchala.com servers are back on the Net, with new IPs. You may not be able to get to them for a while, due to DNS propagation.
Whatever Comcast did better be worth it.
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Sigh
Looks like the link to my home network is down. Ugh.
Guess I will have to do some work now.
ZenWife reports that the tv is out and there are multiple Comcast trucks patrolling the neighbourhood. Looks like a severe knockdown.