AG09 - Day Two: Opening & Keynote

Let's talk about Ah-Ha moments from yesterday.

• Jenna Delaney's ah-ha moment "I did it! Finally!"
• Sean: "I'm not as alone in joy/misery as I previous thought."

Shout out to the tweople and bloggers in the back of the room by the power outlets!

Recognition by LINGOs to Greg Davis - 2009 Volunteer of the Year. He delivers all his training online from Panama. Corporate partner of the year is Articulate. So now I need to check out LINGOs more. The concept is interesting.

LINGOs (Learning for International Non-Governmental Organizations) works to improve the performance, lower the cost and increase the effectiveness of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs.) Together, LINGOs member agencies provide humanitarian relief and development assistance in over 125 countries around the world. By working together, LINGOs agencies and partners increase the impact of their work by sharing learning resources.

Keynote Speaker, Bill Tancer
Click: What Millions ARe doing Online and Why It Matters to You as an ELearning Professional

Bill Tancer is the general manager of global research at Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence services. Or really, a datageek. How so? He entered the talent show at Science Camp in high school and WON! Don't forget to celebrate Pi day! (3/14)

"To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something." Walker Percy

He got started as a writer by given an assignment, then Googling "how to write a magazine column". Immediate need? Immediate search. Immediate learn.

Hitwise's data sampleis massive... can't get into the stats now. Can't read the slide.

So he gets stranger. He has this obsession with prom dresses (?!). Specifically the search terms on 'prom dresses'.

"What is the one thing people is searching to buy on the internet?" Prom Dresses. The spike occured the first week of January. Strange because retailers put out the marketing for prom dresses in March.

Turns out the answer was given by the GM or a teen magazine who approached Tancer at a presentation. The teen magazines started putting out their prom dress promotion in January to change consumer behavior. Solved.

Another data story: data also shows huge spike for the term "diet" starting Jan 1... but drops sharply on Jan 5. Go fugure. Know when "diet" is the lowest? Thanksgiving.

About engagement ring search data...
The search spike is the week before Thanksgiving. Jewelery stores marketing on engagement rings are right after Thanksgiving. WTF?

The theory is: girls bring guy home to meet family. Guys pressured to get an engagement ring. OR... guys are searching before Thanksgiving to get information on them, comparison shop, before they actually make the purchase after Thanksgiving.

An ah-ha moment: Dancing With The Stars is really a popularity content. Therefore, he predictited the winner by checking out the search term data on the contestents. Turns out he was wrong in his prediction. But he was excited that he was wrong. Why? Becasue he's a datageek.

On closer analysis, the data reveals the real reasons why the DWTS search results were skewed. The searchers weren't fans, but sex-starved males checking out the hot contestent. You have to pay attentionto the intent of search as well as the search results. "The Stacy Keilber Correction Coefficient (SKCC)."

Applying the SKCC to housing sales, Tancer predicted how the housing market was going to go. His prediction was wrong, but he was "almost right".

Cognitie Dissonance - the difference between giving an honest answer and giving an answer that you think is the one someone wants to hear. But really, actions speak louder than words. For example, if you ask "who visits porn sites?"... crickets. But when you look at the data of visits to pron sites they're through the roof. So... who's lying?

The Narrative Fallacy: creating a story after the fact so that an event will seem to have an identifiable cause. (See Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his book Black Swan).

The data also suggest that as the market tanks during this recession, eLearning enrollment increases. So, is eLearning recession proof? Enrollment at online universities and online components of brink & morter universities show it's a fact. The higher income people are taking advantage of going back to school.

The value of Twitter: you can listen and and to any conversation in the Twitterverse. Tancer found his value in it when he gave an immediate plug to his book to someone who had just asked if it was any good. For more data, check out search.twitter.com and trends.google.com.

Corporate eLearning isn't forgotten. They haven't gotten the same huge increase as university eLearning, but searches for eLearning platforms have increased. Technology companies are leading the way, followed by education, online retailers and the entertainment industry.

So...
Observed behavior provides unique insight into changing consumer sentiment.

Great Keynote!! I guess I'm a datageek, too!

AG09 - Keynote Speaker

Jeff Howe, Wired Magazine

Crowdsourcing: Why the power of the crowd is drivin the future of business

Jeff's video explanation of Crowdsourcing:
The internet created a virtual crowd that comes together through shared interests. When a company takes a job that was once performed by employees and changes it to an open call, undefined position to the general public. Photography is an example. Digital SLR, Photoshop & the Internet make amateur photographers now providig their work to stock photo sites. These groups come up as organicaly by people formally know as customers. Online communities are the building block of crowdsourcing. Shows that people can come together and create organized units.

The Warped Tour grabbed his interest on how the participants have a creative relationship with the tools to create their art. The art isn't about the technology but how the 'kids' used it to seemlessly create thir own works. It's not about content. It's about everyone having a changed relationship with their products. There is a blurring of the lines of producer and consumer.

Example: Threadless.com. User created designs for t-shirts. Then, users can vote on t-shirt designs. The tasks are things that can happen in 30 seconds. Revenue exploded. What started as an idea to please their designer friends, the site creators are now 'doing very well for themselves." What does the crowd do for Treadless?

• gives cheep labor by creating the designs
  
• designers become pseudo-famous because their designs are everywhere
• marketing & advertising (Threadless Street Team) Threadless never spent $ on an advertising budget becaues their users do all the free advertising.
  
• instant metrics for consumer demand
  

Example: iStockphoto.com. User genereated photos for general use. Pay by credits, not by photo. Created to benefit the community. Photographers have a place to publish their work. Designers have a place to purchase cheep photos.

Cardinal Rule of Crowdsourcing:
Ask not what your community can do for you -- ask what you can do for your community.

... left early to attend ID Zone.