Tim@McG.es

Just spell it out

After the Fear, You Get Back in Line

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Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith

Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith

We did it!! We made it to Disney World, and it was a great all around week. We spent five very full days at WDW. We also added a trip to the Clearwater Marina so Col could see Winter and Hope in person.

As soon as Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith was over, I asked if I could go again. I had to. I also learned on this trip that a rollercoaster is even better than coffee for getting your day started. As for the early returns based on our talks on the plane ride home, it sounds like there will be another trip, since all the conversations started “Next time we come to Disney…”

Need more pictures?
There’s a running set of posts at our 7thtee Tumblr site.
And the growing monster set at the family gallery on Flickr.

Strat-o-matic Updated for a Digital World

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Big data updates Strat-o-matic

Big data updates Strat-o-matic

According to the NY Times, Strat-o-matic is rolling out a new digital version called Strat-O-Matic Baseball Daily. Players stats and team information will be updated daily. If this idea existed back in my day, I would know far less about Harmon Killebrew’s new Minnesota Twins franchise. Those were well-worn cards that had been passed though most of my father’s family until I was able to get my hands on them.

Last thing I need to add to my summer fantasy baseball / MLB.TV habit is playing daily Strat-o-matic, so right now I’m, hoping that it costs too much.

Later for Now, NYC

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NYC Skyline

Taken from the ramp after leaving the Lincoln Tunnel in October. Like many times before, on this last time out of the city I had fallen asleep in the tunnel.

The great blog secret has now come to end; my project in NYC that started in mid-May is now over. It made for a complicated 7+ months where I would usually leave home on a 6am bus early Monday and the get back on Friday evening. It included becoming an AirBNB power user — if only they had a loyalty program, or even gave a crap about their customers (probably more on them in a later post).

Sometime next spring and summer and fall and Christmas, I’ll probably think back and wonder what I did last year, and it will hit me that I was somewhere else. The toughest stretch for us was back in June/July when we left for a family trip to Maine on June 23. My next time home was for 2 days over the weekend of July 11, and then I left Monday July 14 to return back 3 weeks later on Aug 1. That’s 2 days home over 6 weeks.

After leaving the family in Maine, where they stayed for a couple more weeks, we all met again at a friend’s in Connecticut on July 18. After a weekend there, we all drove into Brooklyn where I had rented an apartment for the week, again via AirBNB.

What was I doing in NY? Building data platforms at a media buying agency. It was a great getting back to a agency environment where the clients had real budgets to spend; it was a big jump from the last local web agency I worked at where we held photo shoots in a storage container. Why in sexy storage containers? Because it was a storage container company.

Holding the Trophy High (while Wearing Gloves)

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Dick's Open Trophy Champions Tour Sr PGA

Walking off the 18th green with the winner’s trophy at the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open — in this case the winner was Bernhard Langer.

I came through on my prediction from earlier this week — when the week is over I will be holding the winner’s trophy for the 2014 Dick’s Sporting Goods Open.  Players on the Champions Tour usually are not so brash, but I’m no player — just they guy that carries the trophy from the ceremony on the green back to the press room.

Big Tableau Show

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Tableau 8.2 release

Just wanted to show guys in suits with large displays to prove that I was there.

I had a chance to attend the Tableau 8.2 Roadshow today at The Westin New York at Times Square. Even in the sub-releases of tableau there is always something interesting. As I’ve learned in working with it recently, it is easy to make a case study about how much time Tableau saves you in an on-going production environment. However, the learning curve is big as I try to ramp up on it.

Some of the features that they were presenting were: Easier Data Connections, Mapping Changes, Visual Data Window, Story Points, Tableau for Mac.

Overall the Story Points feature is by far the biggest bang for Release 8, so seeing demos and getting some best practice tips are a benefit. Right now it’s still a much talked about benefit, but we have not been able to easily integrate across our users.

Personally, the Mac demo hit home directly, since I do all my outside work on a Mac so this would make life easier, but the coolest was the mapping updates. Along with the new, more detailed maps, I sat in a break-out presentation where they showed how to connect our data maps to outside map feeds, like weather information, that could overlay our maps. This is one of those situations about ramp-up time, since we were looking at a new pitch for a sunglasses company and figured that it would be great to show results or make predictions based on the weather, assuming that more sunglasses are sold around sunny days, but learning how to make it useful will have to wait to a rainy day (see what I did there) where a deadline is not looming and we have some time to learn.

New York for New Technology

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Save Zac

Call the Emergency Zack Morris Hotline

It’s well after midnight, and I’m on a quiet bus driving across western New Jersey.

Why? I had a chance to attend two tech conferences today in NYC.  In the afternoon it was the ClickZ Conference which focuses on the search industry, mostly on SEO tools and SEM advertising.  Back when I last attended the show, it was known as Search Engine Strategies and it covered 3 expo floors at the NY Hilton.  This event, held at the Marriot Marquis in Times Square, covered 3 ROWS!  I know it’s not because the business is not generating the same revenues, but there certainly has been a pull back.

Later, I caught the subway to NYU for the monthly NY Tech Meet-up.   It’s been almost 5 years since I attended my first NYT Meetup — which I was also a presenter for Hakia.  It’s bigger than ever and there is always a sense of excitement since you never know if the demo that you are seeing could be the next big thing.  In the past, I’ve seen the first demos from Foursquare and MakerBot and each time you sensed that you just saw something that was going to be big.  But note that they’re not all that special — you can call Zack Morris at (718) 395-5255.  You can watch the rest of the April event here.

 

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Ralph Kiner’s Place in History

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NelsonMurphyKinerLegends_medium

Mets Broadcast Team – Lindsay Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner

If you’re not a NY Mets fan, Ralph Kiner’s passing may not be as big a part of your childhood as it is to those of us that grew up in the WOR-9 area.   For those of us that waited every night for Kiner’s Korner following the night’s broadcast this is a great loss.

For baseball fans, Kiner’s place in history is overlooked as current day numbers pile up. When Kiner retired in 1955 after just 10 seasons. He was #6 in career HRs. Check out the Top 6 list at the time:
1. Babe Ruth (714)
2. Jimmie Foxx (534)
3. Mel Ott (511)
4. Lou Gehrig (493)
5. Ted Williams (394)
6. Ralph Kiner (369)
He led the NL in HRs in each of his first 7 seasons in the majors. No rookie has ever led his league since 1905, and Kiner did it his first 7 years.

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Meeting Mr. Tony

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Today was my first day at the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open where I volunteer each year in the media room — and sometimes I see golf.  Since today was Pro-Am day, I looked down the list of amateurs to see if I knew anyone playing in case I go for a walk.

About half way down the list, I see “Tony Kornheiser.” Mr. Tony is in Endicott and I don’t know this? This is the same town that advertised a Roy White appearance for a month. Can’t be Tony from PTI.

His playing partner: Harvey Stenger. The President at Binghamton University.  I guess that was Mr. Tony.

If you follow this blog, you may remember how I had my letter read on Tony’s show, and the premise of that note was that they would send me a “TK” sticker that I would then pass along to President Stenger.

So I ran out and found them on the 5th hole. After they finished the hole, I introduced myself and told them the story.  Now I have President Stenger AND Tony, but the sticker was at home. They were both very nice and laughed at how this worked out.

The best line: I told Tony I don’t have know what to do between 10 am – noon since I can’t listen while he’s off for the summer. His response: “Now I’m here in person.”

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The Big Data Role

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Big DataI had an interesting meeting today with the Sr. VP of a marketing and data processing services company (being vague to protect future interests). They are sitting on years of data and generating more each day, so they are vetting ideas on how to improve their offerings based on this data, starting with plans to hire two executives focusing on “big data” and digital strategy.

Of course, for full disclosure, I was trying to get myself hired. However, the real challenge was getting hired into roles that are fairly undefined at this point. I won’t bury the suspense, it’s not going to happen for me this week, but it’s more of a “It’s not you, it’s me” thing, since it was apparent after a while that he was looking for a Data Scientist for his “data” role, so I would have to take up the data strategy role with an organization that he did not manage.

As we talked through the roles it become more clear where my technology and marketing background offers the most value — as usual it is in hybrid role. Let’s look at a three possible job roles in the digital data cycle:

Product Manager >> Generates & Consumes Data

  • Traditional digital product owner where a carve out of their role relates to data generation and usage, such as a mobile app that has its design and application requirements, but also generates and uses location-based data.Could this be me >> YES! No surprise since it’s a role I’ve held before.

Big Data Manager >> Owns data strategy and implementation — along with evangelism.

  • Responsible for owning the carrying out the organization’s data strategy. This is a cross-product role in a way since the BDPM needs to make sure all the traditional products are on plan for generating data to help the organization and standard data access is available to support products.Could this be me >> YES! Excited by this opportunity, since it is a great blend of using my tech experience and applying the output to building and supporting business cases.

Data Scientist >> Builds data systems and crunches the numbers.

  • Could this be me >> No.  I’ll have this person on speed dial. Earlier this week I was reading my newest Big Data (http://www.manning.com/marz/) book, and was excited by the applications and business opportunities around monetizing data.  Then I hit chapter 2 where the discussion turned to data tools and structures, and my brain started melting — a natural sign that I was over my head.

The outcome: I have to find the Big Data Manager type of role where I am responsible for finding the business opportunities, maybe get my hands a little dirty by working with the engineers, and then hand it off for the data scientists to make the magic.

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