MeasureCamp North America

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending MeasureCamp North America. For those who do not know, MeasureCamp is the biggest Digital Analytics conference in the world, spanning four continents. As the name suggests, this was a virtual event; otherwise, it would include the name of the city instead of a whole continent. When we meet in person, a city hosts the event. For example, in under two weeks from now, I will fly to Helsinki, Finland, to attend MeasureCamp there.

But MeasureCamp is not like most conferences that you know. First, nobody knows who the speakers will be before the event because the event starts with an empty session board. People volunteer to run a session, i.e. a discussion, a presentation, or a panel discussion during the day. Volunteers update the session board. The conference is free to attend, but the attendees need a ticket.

For the physical MeasureCamps, getting a ticket is not a foregone conclusion. For example, Munich, Germany, will host a MeasureCamp for the first time in late June this year. The first batch of tickets vanished in one minute. Also, MeasureCamps are always on a Saturday, so you can bet that only the most accomplished and dedicated Digital Analytics practitioners attend.

I am guilty as charged here; yesterday was my 50th MeasureCamp. I went to almost half of them worldwide, mainly in London, Europe, and once in San Francisco and Moscow. Some will travel to attend MeasureCamp in another country. Last October, I attended MeasureCamp in Baku, Azerbaijan. I might attend one in Australia or New Zealand one day. I am a linguist; I enjoy travelling and expanding my network in Digital Analytics.

Yesterday, I presented two sessions, but first, I would like to share with you my main takeaways. Tim Wilson is one of the speakers nobody with their right mind would try to speak during the same slot in another room. His session was on time series analysis, which he presented at Superweek in Hungary just over a month ago. I learned how, through time series decomposition into an overall trend, a seasonality cycle and residual noise, you could predict how a time series could evolve. Instead of using a long time series, focusing on a sample of the most recent data is the best option. But the further we project ourselves into the future, the greater the risk that the model will fail to predict the actual value.

I also attended a discussion by Abi Dawson on Analytics training and democratisation. Abi covered the topics of self-service access to the Analytics data. Personally, the idea of self-service conjures up memories of Walt Disney's Fantasia film, where Mickey Mouse dons the magical hat of his boss while the latter is away on business. Mickey's job is to keep the house tidy in his master's absence, but he orders the broomsticks and the buckets to care for themselves. Soon, Mickey falls asleep. By the time his master returns, the house is experiencing a flood.

I see self-service as a dangerous opportunity for the Dunning-Kruger effect to manifest itself. The incompetent will feel overconfident like Mickey and cause trouble, and competent people are full of doubts. I asked whether Abi had considered applying the Hub and Spoke model, which I believe she was unfamiliar with. I have covered this model in an article I published on LinkedIn last year if you want to read more.

I attended the next session by Tim Wilson's acolyte and co-presenter at the Digital Analytics Power Hour podcast, Michael Helbling , about side gigs and solopreneurs. In another article I published last year, I explained how I was creating a company in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. I want to turn it into a Digital Analytics agency, and the session was particularly relevant for me.

Many of us are struggling to land gigs and find clients. One of the attendees revealed that most of his leads came from his network, and only one came from his website. I asked Michael whether it was worth paying a salesperson to scout for public tender offers. Michael's short answer was no, not until your business has grown big enough because you could have to pay this person a lot for a long time before seeing a return on that investment, perhaps a year.

Michael also revealed how managing perceptions are critical. When pitching to a prospective client, never come alone. Coming alone conveys that you are a freelancer; coming with someone else means you are a consultancy. Your prospective client is likely to push back on the money you are asking as a freelancer but has no problem paying more if they believe you are a consultancy rather than a freelancer.

Then I attended Madison Cantrell 's Analytics Therapy session. The timing could not be more apropos since my brain was beginning to show signs of being blown up. This was my last session of the day. I mentioned how vendors seemed to hijack the term Analytics in a desperate attempt to drive up sales, and they threw us in Digital Analytics under the bus. This habit of changing names reminds me of businesses that fail but keep rising from their ashes under a new name, only to repeat the cycle. I am concerned about the future if Data Science, now Analytics, fails to deliver.

As mentioned above, I ran two discussions in two different slots. The first one was about whether, as a Digital Analytics practitioner, you consider yourself working in Analytics. It would seem that, yes, Digital Analytics is part of Analytics. But in recent years, it appears that Analytics has come to mean something different. First came Big Data, and then the sales started to slow down, so it was time for a rebranding to Data Science. It seems that the term du jour is Analytics.

From my experience attending conferences for Chief Data and Analytics Officers, I was the only one from Digital Analytics in 2018. At the latest one, last September, we were perhaps four. One of them was representing a Digital Analytics vendor. The other two managed to achieve a career progression to a more strategic level and were no longer hands-on Digital Analytics practitioners.

From where I sit, it feels as if Analytics treats Digital Analytics as separate, on a jar sitting on a shelf somewhere. Some companies are B2B rather than B2C, and the value of Digital Analytics is not critical. I wondered whether this perception of Digital Analytics data being of lower value than the rest of the data an organisation generates and manages was a UK phenomenon only. I closed that session with the impression that it's the same in North America.

My second and last session was also a discussion. When the Digital Nomad lifestyle appeals to many, and the pandemic has made remote working more acceptable, why do US companies insist upon candidates residing in the US and even in specific states? I left my job with Barclays at the end of 2019 to work remotely as a digital nomad. With Brexit looming, changes in the UK legislation towards contractors and freelancers and a strange virus outbreak in China, my timing clearly sucked.

In the beginning of 2020, I applied for remote jobs based in the US, but it never went anywhere. I knew someone working for a digital agency in the US while working from the UK. He explained then how he had to create a limited company in the UK, and then his employer was a client. A few weeks ago, I met a Digital Analytics from Nigeria on my free Monday Javascript course. His brother was a Digital Analyst, and both worked for US employers. They also had to register a company in Nigeria; I assume they had to apply for a tax id, an EIN, or something similar. But apart from this, we could see the emergence of a global job market for Digital Analytics talent.

The same trend of remote work within closed borders has also been happening in the Netherlands and in Germany. As a result, employers have to pay 20% more than the UK for the same role, which prompted me to publish an article on this last year. It seems that Germany has no issue with their employees to commute across the border from another EU country, but they expect the employee to work at the office in Germany. At best, it's hybrid with working one day per week from home.

Germany also has rules against companies hiring contractors, which the lawmakers see as disguised employees not paying their fair share of tax, even if contractors and freelancers do not get paid sick leave, and are not paid during holidays. These two countries insist upon relocation. Dutch employers also prefer Dutch-speaking candidates, which results is a very small talent pool. But as Digital Analytics practitioners in the US, no country pays higher salaries than at home; the salaries are much lower outside the US.

A few participants from Canada explained how, even for them, the US market was closed mainly due to the insistence of employers needing talent in the US or specific states. Unfortunately, I could not get specifics about the taxation hurdles that US companies face by hiring across states with no office or business presence. Hiring across borders and the Atlantic could prove harder still. But some companies may be desperate enough, which calls for desperate measures.

This post would not be complete without thanking the event organisers, who have also been preparing this event for months in their spare time. Thank you to CXL , the sponsor of this event. I believe that the US will resume MeasureCamps in person, with more cities, and Canada is also considering hosting MeasureCamp in a few cities. The next one will be in Helsinki, Finland, at the end of the month, and I will be there.

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