Thursday February 07, 2008

Are You Smarter Than Homer Simpson My favorite episode of The Simpsons has a scene in which Homer goes into the witness protection program and the agents have to coach him to learn that he now has a new name.  After many frustrating hours of them trying to get him to respond to his new alias, Homer leans over and whispers to the agent sitting next to him, "I think he's talking to you."

Sometimes I'm not sure I catch on a lot quicker than Homer.

My group and I spend tremendous effort in Sun trying to enable the latest and greatest Web analytics measurements-- custom events and special variables and bells and whistles to try to make campaign measurement  more insightful or efficient.  Marketers and web area owners are constantly asking for more and increasingly complicated measurement features so they can optimize their area of the business better.  We try to please.  Sometimes we do. 

But then the CEO pops out a 10 second email asking a simple thing like how many downloads of X we had over the last two years.  Frenzy! Panic! Fire drill teams spring into action!  I can readily tell you the clickpaths and fall out rates of users coming from search key word "xVM" last month in Germany vs. Kazakhstan.  But I'm not ready to answer a simple question from the CEO.

Thus, the lesson that I am as slow to learn as Homer was his new name.  Do the simple stuff first.  Do it well.  Make sure it works.  Make sure it's right. 


( Feb 07 2008, 11:22:57 AM MST ) Permalink Comments [1]