Free eMetrics Pass
Wrapping up the Contest
In response to my profile is Emir Kirrane‘s silly series of web analysts, Jim Sterne generously donated a free pass to eMetrics San Francisco for a worthy web analyst. The catch was that I would need to run the contest, judge it and so forth.
eMetrics San Francisco is the singular event in the #measure community which we should all attend, at the very least to meet in person those people we are exchanging tweets with.
A selection of analysts turned out excellent efforts, their performance gives me great hope for the future of our industry.
Winning Entry
I graded the entries on a scale, and it came down to a final two analysts who have different experience levels.
Thomas Bosilevac the founder of Mashable Metrics turned out a particularly noteworthy effort and analysis. What I found really interesting is that he took the admittedly unexciting sample data and added a layer of complexity, sales revenue and acquisition costs.
Utilizing the freely available Tableau Public he built an interactive chart which you can view here:
http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/eMetricsContest/Dashboard1
To everyone who entered, I wish I could have given out free passes to everyone as you all put forth excellent efforts.
Non-Entrants
There were a few people who expressed a great deal of interest in the contest but couldn’t make the deadline, if you are in that group email me at mdh@michaeldhealy.com and I will see if I can get you a discount code.
Spot The Error
Solving the Spot The Error option, the description of this graph:
Said that the size was the product of pageviews and time on site, more accurately it is the scaled product. The raw product returns something like this:
A further improvement could be made on the x axis with regards to the dates, as there wasn’t 1400 dates in the range. This is a step in the right direction, although the actual dates would be even better:
Feedback
This entire endeavor would not have been possibel without Emer posting that profile, so I am pretty sure I owe her a drink at eMetrics.
I would like to thank Jim Sterne again for sponsoring the contest, in fact we have already discussed the idea of another contest.
If you have feedback on how to make a free eMetrics pass contest even more exciting please email me at mdh@michaeldhealy.com.
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Thank you, Thank you! I feel like I need to do a followup to plot the influence between Emer (exxx), Michael (michaeldhealy), Jim (jsterne), or the Academy (waaorg) or Emetrics (obvious) for winning. But seriously, this was an awesome opportunity and I urge everyone to contribute (not necessarily compete) next year!
The full entry with “Chart Analysis” and “Why I want to go” answers shortly at http://mashablemetrics.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/emetrics-contest-msnbc-data-analysis-with-tableau/
The #dataviz, while compelling, took all but 1 or 2 max of the 8 or so hours I spent from start to finish. Surprising huh? This allowed me to not only spend time on defining the challenge I wanted to solve (albeit made up), but also describing it. I also got to go overboard on the ROI analysis of why I want to goto eMetrics. Start to pick up automation tools. They will make you a better analyst … because a well trained report monkey is kept in a cage.
As a shameless plug, since Michael was kind enough to give my little company credit, let me explain what we do-We have automated the collection, preparation and presentation of data (GAnalytics, webtrends, mailchimp, DoubleClick, Adwords, Twitter, etc) … allowing you to define the right metrics and react to the data. The more time spent treading water in Excel, the more time is wasted and ROI suffers.