Google Wave opens doors to public, asks old friends for new chance originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 May 2010 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsI don't think you'll have one device. I think you'll have a full-screen device that you can carry around and you'll do dramatically more reading off of that... yeah, I mean, I believe in the tablet form factor [...] You'll have some way of having a hardware keyboard and some settings for that. And then you'll have the device that fits in your pocket, which the whole notion of how much function should you combine in there, you know, there's navigation computers, there's media, there's phone.
It will be the PC, maybe used a little more tightly coupled with some back-end Internet services and some things like that. And, of course, PCs are going mobile in an ever greater degree. So I think the PC is going to continue. This general purpose device is going to continue to be with us and morph with us, whether it's a tablet or a notebook or, you know, a big curved desktop that you have at your house or whatever it might be. So I think that'll be something that most people have, at least in this society. In others, maybe not, but certainly in this one. But then there's an explosion that's starting to happen in what you call post-PC devices, right? You can call the iPod one of them. There's a lot of things that are not. … I think there's just a category of devices that aren't as general purpose, that are really more focused on specific functions, whether they're phones or iPods or Zunes or what have you. And I think that category of devices is going to continue to be very innovative and we're going to see lots of them.
We're getting to the point where everything's a computer in a different form factor. So what, right? So what if it's built with a computer inside it? It doesn't matter. It's, what is it? How do you use it? You know, how does the consumer approach it? And so who cares what's inside it anymore
In any sensible system of institutional governance, negligence would be sanctioned. So why is it that leaders of major corporations often seem to escape punishment for negligent conduct? Why is it that Tony Hayward, the head of BP, can publicly admit that it was 'probably true' that the company should have done more to prepare for deep-water drilling emergencies and still keep his job? This is a company that as recently as March 2010 defined itself as the leading deep-water drilling company. It's also a company that has demonstrated a pattern of questionable conduct related to safety as exemplified by the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion and the criticism leveled by the Baker Report as well as the lack of care that contributed to the 2006 Prudhoe Bay pipeline leak. Why are heads not rolling up and down the leadership chain at the company?
So long as we fail to hold business leaders to an appropriate standard of care, we can expect these sorts of disasters to continue. The heads of corporations are seldom held personally accountable for the negligent acts of their organizations. BP and its contractors have caused, at the very least, hundreds of millions of dollars to damage to the Gulf of Mexico. Deep-water drilling is a core competence. The CEO admits the company could have done more, which is tantamount to an admission of negligence. But the very worst that can happen to Hayward is that he will lose his job ... along with an attractive financial package to ease the pain. And he may even get to keep his job!
How could we hold corporate leaders responsible for negligence? We would start by defining a standard of care. Negligence is 'conduct that is culpable because it falls short of what a reasonable person would do to protect (others) from foreseeable risks of harm.' That's a straightforward standard. If you fail to do what a 'reasonable person' would do and someone gets injured, you are subject to being sued and having to pay a penalty. For corporate leaders, this would mean establishing a 'reasonable leader' standard. Given that BP was specializing in deep-water drilling, and given prior experience of devastating underwater oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, it was reasonably foreseeable that these sorts of problems could occur and the company's leaders did not do what a 'reasonable person' would have done to prevent these problems.
Having established a standard of care, we then need two additional elements: penalties and a fair way to judge conduct. The former could be addressed by writing specific provisions concerning negligence into executive compensation contracts. 'If you are judged to have been negligent as a leader, you will forgo some or all of your severance payments.' The best predictor of what people do is what they are incentivized to do. If there aren't penalties for leadership negligence, we are encouraging leadership negligence.
Finally, we would need a fair way to judge negligence. This couldn't be credibly done by Boards of Directors or other interested parties. One answer would be to create a special panel to render judgments, consisting perhaps of highly respected retired executives.
Would this be easy to implement? Of course not. It would require a great deal of thought and careful design. But if we fail to fundamentally transform the incentives companies offer their executives, we should expect more of the same.
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Back in December of last year Aurelie, John, and I announced an idea we believe has the potential to change the web analytics industry forever, The Analysis Exchange. Briefly, the Analysis Exchange is a totally new approach towards web analytics training — one that depends less on what you read and more on what you do.
The Analysis Exchange lets experience web analysts demonstrate their passion for their work and gives beginners valuable “hands on” experience with data and real business problems. What’s more, the output from Analysis Exchange projects directly benefits some of the most amazing organizations around the globe — nonprofits and non-governmental groups who work not for money but for the betterment of humanity, our planet, and all creatures great and small.
You can read more about the origination of this effort in our blog posts and a very nice write up by our friend Jim Sterne, founder of the Web Analytics Association:
Since December we have been hard at work building out a web site and perfecting the business process that would be required to accomplish our core goals. What are those goals, you ask? Very, very simple … between now and June 1, 2011 we want to:
1,000/500/150 are the numbers that we will be living by, but we know we’re not living there alone. We know this because the initial response to The Analysis Exchange has been tremendous! In addition to the great stuff we learned in our first testing round we have had excellent feedback from nonprofits, mentors, and students alike.
I love what Amy Sample, Director of Web Analytics at PBS Interactive had to say:
“What I love about the Analysis Exchange is the learning is reciprocal. Not only is the student learning about analytics and giving back to the organization, but the organization is learning from the student as well. Many of our local PBS stations have little experience with Web Analytics. Through the Exchange, the stations are able to learn how to tackle analytics problems along with the student and how to make a lasting impact to their own organization.”
Cindy Olnick from the Los Angeles Conservancy had similar enthusiasm for her project:
“Joy’s a terrific mentor from what I can tell, and she and Danielle are great at translating all the numbers into information I can use. They’ve given me a report and will set up some new parameters in Google Analytics targeted to my goal of increasing membership.”
Todd Bullivant, one of our students said:
“It was a great way to end the week! Thanks again to everyone for the opportunity. I learned a lot about analytics that I can use in my own organization as well as future projects. I hope to work on many more of these in the future! I also just heard that my company is planning to spotlight me in the next internal newsletter due to this project, so increased visibility!”
Susie Hall, Director of Outreach and Enrollment at Acton School of Business said:
“The Analysis Exchange project was very enlightening for me as well. We found out some valuable information, and I’m excited to use this new-found knowledge to help shape our outreach efforts. This project could not have come at a better time, we are in the middle of changing pretty much all of our processes, so moving forward armed with such powerful information is invaluable. Andrew and Candace were lovely to work with, and I am very happy with the whole experience.”
One of our super-motivated students, Andrew Hall said:
“During the course of the project, I worked with almost every functionality of Analytics other than custom variables, got to understand how Adwords campaigns work, and learned the benefits of taking data from Analytics into an analysis software like Tableau to gain and communicate insights. Most importantly, I confirmed that I really enjoy doing this! I am waiting to hear back from a couple of jobs, but in the mean time I’ve decided the knowledge I now possess would be beneficial a lot of organizations. I feel confident enough to start approaching businesses and nonprofits in my community to get consulting work.”
By now I’m sure you get the picture, and our mentors have been having a great time as well. So much so that Joy Billings from Digitaria gave a positively glowing review of her work at the San Jose Emetrics, John Lovett’s student had her work go all the way to the CMO’s office at The Holocaust Museum, and Victor Acquah from Blue Analytics said:
“Just got off the presentation! Todd did such a great job with the analysis and presentation that it is hard to tell he hasn’t been in analytics for too long. Totally impressive output.”
We at Web Analytics Demystified have felt totally blessed to be part of the projects that have been going this far … but now is the time to take it to the next level: Starting with the publication of this blog post, The Analysis Exchange is open to all students, all mentors, and all qualifying organizations around the world.
If you haven’t already, please create an Analysis Exchange profile and join us in our effort to change web analytics forever. If you need more information first we have lots and lots of content including:
If you’re already in the Analysis Exchange and you want to help, please reach out to nonprofits you know and ask them to create a project so you can work with them. If you’re on Twitter, please use our short link (http://bit.ly/analysis-exchange) to help spread the news. If you’re a member of Web Analytics Wednesday, please consider mentioning the effort at your next meeting.
Finally, I want to offer a special “thank you” to Aurelie, John, Jim, Holly Ross, Beth Kanter, Sean Power, and each and every one of the mentors, students, and organizations who have helped us over the last five months. You are all amazing for contributing your time and energy to help make this effort run as smoothly as possible. Thank you!
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So what are we looking for? Basically, apps, websites, tools, software and programs that fit within one of our channels: social media, tech, entertainment, web video, mobile, etc. Specifically, you should stick to the following criteria. Your submission:
Additionally, if the site is in private beta or alpha, please provide our editors with access information, and ideally invite codes for our readers.
If you have a genius venture that does, indeed, meet these criteria, please jet on over here to apply.
image courtesy of iStockphoto, Neustockimages
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