If you can measure it, you can improve it. With that in mind I plan on measuring more things about myself in 2013 as I continue optimizing areas of my life. I currently do a quarterly review of how I spend my time and an annual 50K ft look – but I think there can be benefit to a daily granularity. In general, I am a strong advocate of data based decision making. Often this does not require complicated computation or advanced statistical techniques – it simply requires having the right question in mind and some relevant data to look at over time. Trends will show themselves. This is especially true when the area in question is not already highly optimized. As anyone that works with data will tell you, though, getting clean relevant data is often what most of the effort goes into on a project. There are a lot of
I live in San Francisco and bike everywhere. It is the fastest and easiest way to get around the city. There are a few things that make the life of bikers in the city difficult though; hills, rain, cars & road conditions. Tonight I’m going to invest some energy into a creative solution to one of those – potholes. Problem There seem to be two steps in the process of a pothole getting fixed. First, the pothole has to be identified by the necessary party, second, a crew needs to show up with materials to fix it. Part One: Identifying potholes San Francisco is actually pretty advanced in how it deals with potholes. The public works department lets you call into 311 where you can report a hole and they will add it to a queue to get fixed. Unfortunately like most things the government does, speed is not their strength. On the other side
I am an Atlanta Falcons fan. This is by no obvious reason, I have lived in California for most of my life. A few years ago, though, I had the pleasure of working with Tony Gonzalez, aka. #88 & Tight End of the Falcons. Since then I have been rooting pretty hard for them. I want him to win a Super Bowl ring – he is a good guy and one of the best players the sport has seen. No one deserves it more. The Falcons are having a good year, they are 11-1 and tied for first place. But, unfortunately they are getting less credit for it than they deserve. Despite their record, most commentators are less than optimistic about their playoff hopes. I hear a lot of that around the office as well. We can’t get no respect. Tonight I will attempt to use a few of my
Reposed from the Hearsay Social blog – See the original post here One of the things I love about working at Hearsay Social is the freedom to explore new tools and methods of analysis. I recently spent some time digging into the open source data visualization program Gephi and decided to share some of the insights I came across. Many marketers still measure the value of their social media pages by a count: either a count of fans or a count of engagements (likes, comments, etc.). Unfortunately, the insights provided by these measurements are nominal. If you want to know the true value of your fans or how your social media communities are contributing to real ROI and sales results, then these basic counts should be a start, not an end. We have already learned that not all fans should be valued equally and that local fans can be worth as much as
Today I announced my official departure from SurfScience.com. After three years I’ve handed the project off to my co-founder to keep working on as I focus on other things. Building the largest resource for surfboard knowledge was an awesome project to work on. We built out a directory with over 1,500 surfboard model listings & 10K user reviews. We also implemented some really cool technology like an algorithm that matched surfers to surfboards that might serve them well based on body time, skill level and available wave conditions. I learned a ton about product design, community building and marketing while working on this project. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Can’t wait to see what is next for SurfScience.com Full post here: http://surfscience.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/see-you-in-the-lineup-greg-kroleski-signing-out/
We’ve been doing a lot of research at Hearsay Social about the value of local fans on social media. As part of this – we sponsored a study by Mainstay Salire who found that a local fan is worth 40 x a corporate fans in terms of engagement. Reposted from the Hearsay Social Blog – see the original post here Earlier today, independent research group Mainstay Salire released a white paper comparing the fans of corporate and local Facebook pages. According to Mainstay’s data, the typical Facebook post from a local Page reaches five times the percentage of fans as a corporate post, and eight times as many of the fans reached will engage with that post. (Engagement could mean anything from viewing a photo or watching a video to clicking a link, liking, commenting, or sharing.) Combining those two factors—five times reach and eight times engagement—Mainstay concludes that a local fan is 40