The most obvious answer to a problem may be good, but it may not be the only one!
This is the Friday recitation. Mr. Mansa asks his students:
Which of the following numbers is not in the series?
2, 4, 5, 6, 8
It’s 5, that’s obvious! All the students find the right answer, except for Caboche, who says “I thought about it, but I prefer 4 because…”.
Mr. Mensa is not happy with the answer, so he deprives Caboche of recreation. He asks him to produce a text on the theme “I should have chosen 5”.
At first I thought of 5, because it is the only odd number.
But why not 8? It’s the only one…
L’initiative Le Panier Bleu est un échec annoncé.
Le Dictionnaire des expressions françaises relate une belle petite histoire au sujet de l’expression “panier percé”:
Quelqu’un qui, le matin au marché, s’aviserait de remplir son panier de lentilles en vrac alors que le réceptacle est percé y dépensera bêtement toute sa fortune avant que le panier soit plein.
Cette expression datant du XVIIe siècle serait synonyme de personne dépensière ; gaspilleur ; dilapidateur. Ils vont même jusqu’à ajouter qu’on pourrait remplacer les lentilles par d’autres petites choses, ou des plus grosses si les trous du panier sont également gros, comme des éléphants. …
Lesson from a maverick.
I now have more than 35 years of professional experience. These days, I find myself thinking more about my retirement plan than my career plan. In the industry, I’m probably what young wolves, full of energy and aspirations, would consider a veteran. I take it with pride, especially when they turn to me for advice.
So here it is, my top career advice.
Your career is a business.
- Constantly strive to increase your value in the marketplace by learning, creating and sharing.
- Bring value to your client/employer.
- Be compensated accordingly.
Think about these points twice a year.
If they don’t line up, it’s time for…
A forensic approach to Google Analytics data quality and compliance.
I first wrote about Verified-Data six months ago. Verified-Data is a sophisticated Google Analytics auditing service from my good friend Brian Clifton, author, speaker and overall data quality and privacy expert. I recently dug back into it and thought I should do another review.
What’s the price of good data quality? Worse, what’s the cost of making good decisions informed by bad data?
The notion of “good decision informed by bad data” is particularly pernicious. As a decision maker, you might think you can rely on good data when it is not actually the case. You just don’t know it…
Bill C-11: the Canadian version of GDPR — a little less and a little more.
Called Bill C-11, the draft was presented yesterday and so far, it seems to be well received by lawyers and privacy advocates. It is pretty ambitious and probably far from being perfect — but it is certainly a step in the right direction and something that was long overdue.
Statistics Canada says that about 57 per cent of Canadians online reported experiencing a cyber security incident in 2018.
CBC, Nov 16, 2020
So now, on top of GDPR, CCPA, and many others, we have DCIA and CPPA. So many acronyms ! So many slightly different rules to follow!
What’s Similar to the GDPR?
A recap of the virtual Web Analytics Wednesday Copenhagen hosted by IIH Nordic on August 26, 2020.
Updated September 18, 2020
I was really looking forward to visit Copenhagen, renew with old friends and get to meet people I’ve only known virtually… but that will be for another time!
You can find a recording of the session — although for some reason there were technical issues even though I have a super-fast fibre-optic connection and never had issues with other software. The presentation itself is available on SlideShare.
Quick Polls on Privacy & Ethics
Some of the data shown in the presentation come from the “Personal or nut?” game I’ve been posting on LinkedIn. Every weekday I post a new quick poll…
In a digital business environment, how might we measure trust? Can any quantitative data help? Or is it all qualitative?
I was contacted by Shane Breslin, a writer, podcaster and entrepreneur who reached out to me after stumbling upon one of my old blog posts while Googling “Avinash Kaushik trust”.
Reading back my blog post brought some great memories from another time! It’s funny to read about “influencer” years before it was trendy :)
But the most important point for me is this: I feel privileged, 12 years after this post, to have accomplished all I did. I’m blessed what I wrote still holds true today and I continue to learn, to share, to grow professionally and personally. …
All the world is made of faith, and trust, and privacy dust.
Data has been at the heart of what I do since 1986. Even my internship in computer science involved the discovery of patterns in healthcare data. Since I installed my first web server in 1991, I have pushed the envelope on countless projects involving websites, data and marketing.
I am worried… No… I’m literally scared.
I’m worried when those I consider to be the most knowledgeable in our field confidentially open up on their own fears. I’m shocked when I see those who should know the most about privacy are uneducated even if GDPR has been in effect for nearly…
The situation with the pandemic has upended many old ideas about what is possible and how the economy and society will function.
This is a loose and augmented transcript of the thoughts I shared on the Bright Future podcast by the Conference Board of Canada, hosted on May 21st, 2020.
Since I “jumped the fence” from digital marketing & analytics to privacy and the ethical use of data, the discussions about contact tracing apps have occupied a fair amount of my time. Those apps appears to be a critical part of reopening our economies and they have fuelled the debates that have been happening for many years in the world of marketing and analytics.
Today, I see a “conditioning” of the masses…
A new home for the Google Marketing Platform power tools used by over 10,000 smart digital marketers and analysts.
Finding a new home for Da Vinci Tools was super important for me. Supermetrics has a great vision, has the capacity to bring it to the next level and on top of that, I have the opportunity to endorse a product and a company which already offers powerful tools to marketers.
The Little Story Behind Da Vinci Tools
In 1982, a guy by the name of Peter Norton introduced “unerase” for people using the DOS operating system on PCs. By 1984, he had developed several other tools and revenues were very decent. …
