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agreed. as the costs of collating data goes down, traditional businesses are going to realize that there are a wealth of customer data there that they aren't us

agreed. as the costs of collating data goes down, traditional businesses are going to realize that there are a wealth of customer data there that they aren't using. i can't help but think most business will move in this direction.

patio11 18y ago
I can. There is nothing new about A/B testing -- the statistics available to do it have been available for centuries, the techniques for applying it to offline business have been available for decades (direct marketing, principally), and copy/paste Javascript code to do it has been available for years. And still plenty of people have never heard of it. It is an absolutely amazing tool, one of the most powerful I have available. But its also hard, in a lot of intractable ways: you need to do things twice or twenty times when the first time was "good enough", you need to commit to looking at data and (scary part) making decisions based on it, and you need to learn to accept that reality and your perception of reality are very different things.
- aaronblohowiak 18y ago
  "you need to learn to accept that reality and your perception of reality are very different things." -- this can be extremely hard for people to overcome. How can you change an organization to be more data and results oriented? I do not know. I think that kind of attitude needs to be in the corporate culture, or hammered into people from on high, in order for groups to get past the "highest paid person in the room" decision making process. Does anyone have any advice about this?
  - patio11 18y ago
    Does anyone have any advice about this? Best Buy apparently did it, and it has been described as a "revolution" spreading from below and a "virus" infecting one working group at a time. I got my Big Freaking Enterprise Apps shop to take some baby steps into some directions I like by taking the discretion I have as a low-ranking engineer on the totem pole, using it, succeeding, and tying the success to business goals. I "convert" other engineers by appealing to desire for efficiency and professional growth, and "convert" managers by demonstrating that the quirky "minor little engineering details" we're working on consistently generate savings.

patio11 18y ago

I can. There is nothing new about A/B testing -- the statistics available to do it have been available for centuries, the techniques for applying it to offline business have been available for decades (direct marketing, principally), and copy/paste Javascript code to do it has been available for years. And still plenty of people have never heard of it. It is an absolutely amazing tool, one of the most powerful I have available. But its also hard, in a lot of intractable ways: you need to do things twice or twenty times when the first time was "good enough", you need to commit to looking at data and (scary part) making decisions based on it, and you need to learn to accept that reality and your perception of reality are very different things.

aaronblohowiak 18y ago
"you need to learn to accept that reality and your perception of reality are very different things." -- this can be extremely hard for people to overcome. How can you change an organization to be more data and results oriented? I do not know. I think that kind of attitude needs to be in the corporate culture, or hammered into people from on high, in order for groups to get past the "highest paid person in the room" decision making process. Does anyone have any advice about this?
- patio11 18y ago
  Does anyone have any advice about this? Best Buy apparently did it, and it has been described as a "revolution" spreading from below and a "virus" infecting one working group at a time. I got my Big Freaking Enterprise Apps shop to take some baby steps into some directions I like by taking the discretion I have as a low-ranking engineer on the totem pole, using it, succeeding, and tying the success to business goals. I "convert" other engineers by appealing to desire for efficiency and professional growth, and "convert" managers by demonstrating that the quirky "minor little engineering details" we're working on consistently generate savings.