Bob Mitchell

SCL leaving the WAA and me leaving the UK Country Manager role

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Published on Friday, 09 December 2011 12:24

Written by Bob Mitchell

It is with regret that I have to let everyone know that SCL are no longer members of the WAA and I no longer hold the position of UK Country Manager.

Please don’t think that we no longer believe in the value of the WAA itself and the benefits that it can have for its members. We simply no longer have the resource necessary to invest in our membership in order to realise the value for our organization.

When taking the Country Manager role I’d stated that I was offering myself to the association and that I’d stick with it until I got kicked-out, de-elected or someone more suitable volunteered.

It seems that over the past year I have been unable to add any value whatsoever to what should be a thriving UK WAA community. The country manager role itself (for the UK at least) hasn’t been a conduit to the members that’s utilised by the association and the role / country group needs to generate it’s own momentum. I was unable to generate the necessary energy.

The final push that I needed was the organization of a WAA session within the confines of the eMetrics London conference that I was utterly unaware of and, as I wasn’t a paying attendee of eMetrics, was unable to attend. This is a session that I should have been aware of and wasn’t – nicely demonstrating that I’m unfit for the role.

Assuming that a UK County Manager role is filled at some point (I have a side bet on who will volunteer) I will hand over any/all accounts and groups, as well as the stash of WAA badges that I have on my desk.
Please don’t be surprised or take it personally as I adjust my social graph over the coming days.

Finally, in case there’s any doubt we are still actively involved in the London Web Analytics Wednesday events – the next one that I’ll be looking after should be towards the end of January (unless Mr Peterson has other ideas in mind)

The Joy of... Testing

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Published on Friday, 18 November 2011 13:44

Written by Bob Mitchell

SCL are exhibiting at the EuroSTAR Conference in Manchester next week and I just found out what the stand is going to look like. I am deeply worried.

Still... there should be some free beer, maybe some snacks and a competition (win an iPad or something like that) which should keep things interesting.

Not of course that the stand needs any more 'interesting'.

I wonder if m'colleagues that are going to be working on the SCL stand will be sporting the full '70s facial hair and tweed jacket as modeled by the virtual maniquin in the preview picture?

So, if you're at the show, please pop along and visit. You could be conventional and actually come and talk to us about our testing tools and services, perhaps something about our massively scalable, cost-effective load testing from the cloud, our Oracle testing tools or J2EE and .NET application performance troubleshooting solutions - or just come and drink our beer and make fun of the stand.

View the full preview pic of 'Joy of Testing' stand.

Web Analytics - Lecture notes

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Published on Wednesday, 16 November 2011 12:04

Written by Bob Mitchell

Last week I delivered another little introductory lecture about Web Analytics to some Undergraduate students at the University of Southampton. It's the third or fourth time I've been down there to do this sort of thing, but this is the first time that I've had a full 90 minutes and a proper (mostly full) lecture theatre to work in.

Here is the 'release' version of the slides that I used (lower resolution pics for ease of sharing and one not-for-sharing picture removed) wa-2011-b-release.pdf (1MB)

These were really just supporting slides, so if anyone has any notes/comments about what I was rambling-on about that they can share back with me, that would be lovely.

In keeping with license placed on the screenshot from Vicky Brock I've used in the presentation this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Article image credit: Carlesmari (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Carlesmari)

website - comments and caching

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Published on Wednesday, 09 November 2011 11:44

Written by Bob Mitchell

I felt like writing a few words about the little hacks necessary to make this website work - partly as documentation and partly in case anyone else ever has any use for it.

Read more: website - comments and caching

SCL on Google+

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Published on Tuesday, 08 November 2011 11:13

Written by Bob Mitchell

SCL now have a Google+ page. We would like to understand how people are going to use the Google+ pages and what impact that's going to have on organizations, but right now we're treating it as 'just another channel'.

If you'd like to follow us on Google please do - not that we could stop you, even if we wanted to.

SCL on Google+

How to build a web analytics friendly web site

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Published on Friday, 04 November 2011 13:59

Written by Bob Mitchell

Abstract

As a web analytics solutions provider we often find ourselves in situations with customer websites, intranets, or web applications that make it difficult and time-consuming to implement effective web analytics. Sometimes we have the opportunity to work with a customer and website that makes the process simple.

This article describes the features of a website that will make it easier and less expensive to implement web analytics. It should be read by anyone involved in the process of building a website.

Read more: How to build a web analytics friendly web site

Time Zone

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Published on Monday, 31 October 2011 09:48

Written by Bob Mitchell

SCL are located in the UK (London) and, after the end of Daylight Savings Time this weekend, we're now operating on GMT/ UTC+0. http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=136

New website - 2011

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Published on Tuesday, 30 August 2011 16:00

Written by Bob Mitchell

We have a new website. It's taken far too long and involved too many of the wrong sort of people and too few of the right sort, but we finally have something that, while not awesome, is certanly better than what we had before.

There's bound to be some things that are still very broken and there's certainly content that hasn't been migrated, so please bear with us while we get all the wrinkles out.

If there's anything that you're looking for and can't find, please use the form (down there somewhere) to get in touch so we can figure-out where we've lost it (it'll probably be under the sofa cushions along with the crumbs, missing cutlery and the back door key that we lost a fortnight ago)

Using cookies in the UK

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Published on Tuesday, 10 May 2011 10:45

Written by Bob Mitchell

Here’s my take on reading the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) document titled ‘Changes to the rules on using cookies and similar technologies for storing information’ (version 1 – pub 09/05/11)

My worries revolve mostly around the implications for our own site (scl.com) and our customers using Web Analytics solutions, most notably the Unica (now IBM) NetInsight product – but the full implications go much wider than that – including the nearly ubiquitous Google Analytics.

Read more: Using cookies in the UK

Snow isn’t an excuse

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Published on Thursday, 02 December 2010 12:06

Written by Bob Mitchell

Working remotely from the office during emergencies and inclement weather.

The snow this week has provided no excuses at all to employees @ SCL – even if they don’t use a laptop, didn’t have one with them or aren’t usually remote workers.

How?

Read more: Snow isn’t an excuse