The first Code Camp & Bar Camp, which is joining forces, was held tonight.  With representatives from Code Camp, Legion of Tech, and the SQL Group Organizers were all on hand to kick off the discussion.

One of the primary focus points was, should we have a two day or single day event?  It makes me wonder what would be better for a 800 person or so event.  Two days better, one day better?  Short days, longer days that run until 10pm?  What is your take on the matter?

More to come later, so keep an eye out for the Code, Bar, SQL Camp Event o’ the year!

Week before Mardi Gras, the Saints rocked and won the Super Bowl, and @webtrends threw an awesome #wtengage Conference.  Props out to the long list of Webtrends People there;  @DashLavine, @caseycarey, @webtrendspeter, @justinogarrity, @sullybridgetb, @kaykas, @justinkistner, @michelewarther, @mrdiggles, @yodera, @vkenkal, @derekfine, @ekrobi, @mccook, @robinoula, @benfogarty, @noexg, @thomschoenborn, @mediachick, and others!  The event was awesome, great sessions, great knowledge transfer, great food, just great ? period!

Also must say the meetings, meets, and introductions were great.  I’m glad to have met dozens and dozens of people and get those names and faces connected.  Finally caught up with; @seanpower, @johnlovett, @christineconley, @ed1chandler, @bullfrogmedia, @ebeane, @cgrantski, @drcasio, @nadolski, and many others.  Then there are others I met and caught up with and still got more catching up to do; @aknecht and @bosilytics.

Seriously, all of these individuals are rock stars in the analytics community.  The conversations, new ideas, thoughts, and general kicking around New Orleans was a great time.  If you are interested in the next Webtrends Engage (and you ought to be if you do anything with analytics), check out the 2011 Conference coming to San Francisco.

Code Camp Kick Off

In other news, Code Camp is kicking off real soon.  Specifically, the kick off meeting is tonight here at Webtrends.  This year Code Camp is going to be pretty huge.  I am guessing at around 400-500 people, more sessions, more geeking & nerding about, it will be an awesome time for all.  So keep reading and I will be posting more tidbits about the upcoming Code Camp.

Read Part 1 & Part 2 of this series if you haven't already. 

Last entry I worked up the basic origins and destinations for the data we have. Now we have to start turning this into something real, something concrete. The following processes include a whole soup of acronyms and other cryptic vocabulary. The most common thing I will probably use is the ETL acronym, which stands for Extract, Transform, and Load. This is the process of bridging the data to the various originations and destination and moving that data appropriately.

In the last entry I finalized the originations and destinations as shown below;

Originations
Excel & Access (Office 2007)	*.mdb, *.xlsx, and *.csv/*.txt data stores
Internal Account Software (IAS)	This one is a prospective can of worms.  Proprietary layouts, de-normalized & normalized data, and all sorts of redundant, non-atomic data.  This sounds like an accounting package right?  :p
Webtrends Analytics Data Exchange Web Services (DX)	Webtrends web services provide REST style architecture, with the ability for data to be retrieved in XML, JSON, HTML, or other formats (we can add more if need be, just let us know).
Point of Sale System (POS)	This system provides two daily exports, one at 6:00am and one at noon for processing.  The export format is *.csv.

Destination
SSRS	SQL Server Reporting Services, with the core underlying data stored in SQL Server.

In my previous entry you may have noticed that I had posted SSIS with the Destination list.  Being one that corrects themselves when mistaken, I took it out, as it does not belong there.  The SSIS is our tool that will perform the ETL functionality for this project.

At this point we are finally going to get into the dirty bits of these pieces of technology, and how we need to tie them together.  I am going to attack them over the next few entries based on the order in the lists above.  The first item, is the Excel & Access 2007 customer relations listings from sales.  Here?s a description and a few shots of what this thing looks like.

The access database is setup with a very simple relational data schema.  This is shown below (click image for larger view).

You can see there are pretty standard pieces of data, in a generally normalized (3rd form for the most part) structure.  This is fine.

Next is a shot of the data entry screen for adding opportunities.  There are respective screens for customers and employees.  Everything needed for a basic customer list & tracking basic things.  Nothing too extravagant here either.  Again, all is fine.

Below is a simple report that shows the available opportunities that are open.

Another report showing the forecasts.

Below is another forecast sliced grid.

So all that seems normal enough.  But the processes are what makes things tricky.  If everyone just managed sales from the database, all would be right in the world.  The first thing that breaks this is that each sales person enters their sales during the day and other information in a spreadsheet that is not linked to the underlying database.  Someone each morning puts the previous days sales information.  This of course, breaks down data integrity.  Below is a sample sheet that is used each day.

One thing that Excel is used for, that doesn?t break reports is the lists of prospective customers to call.  As shown below.

Now that we have a break down of the Excel & Access Customer Relations Management Software, I will move onto the other pieces of technology in the next entry.  This is the data point that has the most prospective data risk, so I put it at the top of the list to cover first.  After I cover each of the systems, we will move into the architecture of the system overall.  So keep reading, more juicy bits to come.

So here is the lowdown on what I will be presenting, demoing, and showing to the attendees & anyone who is interested at Engage 2010.  If you are attending and have not signed up on the Engage Crowdvine Site, please do so.  There are some great conversations going on there.

One other thing I wanted to point out, is that you MUST attend the Ignite in New Orleans.  Ignite events are a blast!  Portland, Oregon regularly has some of the largest Ignite Events, and since we are bringing a whole lotta Portland love, and NOLA is well known for some great parties, I know the NOLA Ignite will be awesome!  So make sure to attend.

First off, Brian Gallagher and myself will be showing off some awesome technology for video tracking at the science fair break out sessions.  There will be a Tuesday Science Fair and a Wednesday Science Fair, and I will be there with Brian going over the tracking.  So if you miss us one day make sure to check it out the next day!

The next speaking session is the enterprise & business intelligence topic I have mentioned in some of my previous blog entries.  The session is titled Make Analytics Work across your Enterprise.  Our topic summarized is, The nerd of the Enterprise;  ETL, EPM, ERP, BI, CRM, and how the alphabet soup works together for real Enterprise Business Intelligence and Insight.

The final engagement I have is a topic near a dear to my work here at Webtrends.  Over a year ago a rock star team of developers; Rob D, James K, and myself started working on the Data Exchange, REST Web Services for Webtrends.  Of course now those have been in production and are now on v2.0 already!  Rob has gone on to rock the current iPhone Webtrends Application (Check out the Webtrends Blog Post Too) & James is coding away at some of the awesome infrastructure that keeps all the data flowing smoothly on the back end (to the web services, to the Insight UI, the whole thing ? James is awesome at that).  So we built these services many months ago and now I get to present them as a workshop session at Engage.  Open web services based on good clean REST Architecture Principles have always been an interest of mine and I have been and will continue to be stoked that we at Webtrends have these available for customers!  So be sure, if interested, to check out the Workshop:  The RESTful Way ? How to Use Webtrends REST Services.

Also for further reading, check out some of my past entries on REST Services;

• REST, So Many Nuances, The Self Signed SSL Cert Override
• REST Web Services Synchronous Request that points at the Webtrends Developer Network Blog Entry.
• Just a Bit More REST which has a really bad example of unit tests, which are more integration tests, running against some REST Web Services.
• File Extension ".svc" Annoyance
• RESTful .NET by Jon Flanders is probably one of the best books on the WCF based REST Services.  So if you are looking for a solid guide, this is a great place to get just that.

Alright.  Here I am working through some analytics trending of my Twitter, Facebook, www.adronbhall.com, LinkedIn, and other various sources of traffic.  Here's the frustrating part.  I don't mean a little frustrating, I am talking about a-grade I almost want to break something frustrating.  I have bit.ly, Webtrends Analytics, a database with cross-correlated results, a Twitter monitor in another window, and other little apps to track what is going on.  Where does most of this data come together?  In my head.  Why do I have to manage everything this way, it is damn frustrating!

So here is an idea, and I am just thinking outside the box here (as I always do since nobody will let me in the box anyway :p ).  How about these things get merged into a good solid single interface.  Maybe even some of the environments get rolled together in addition to the tracking analytics and reports.  How about a solid dashboard that allows drilldown into the various mediums to allow actual interaction with the data and platforms?  Imagine a dashboard, that reports the analytics for all these things but then lets you just kick in and start tweeting or posting the latest bits to Facebook.  Why have a half dozen or more applications and web sites open.

What we need here is some technology leadership.

Others have discussed this recently and are looking for some results.  Ok, some of you readers may be thinking, "do you not work for Webtrends Adron?  Go build this stuff!"  Well maybe others and I am, but I am still frustrated at not having it right now.  It seems this is something that is slowly slipping by in this industry and we need a centralizing effort for all these data points to help in actually making sense of them.

A fellow analytics & marketing professional, Rodica Buzescu writes in her blog Morphing Through Time a post titled Web Analytics ? Leaving a Lot to Be Desired.  She lays out the current analytics situation very clearly.  There is no tool that really bridges the data together easily.  Some BI Pros out there may say "oh but I have all that stuff together".  This may be true, but how much time and effort did that take?  What we need is a centralized management solution for this data.  Something to bridge the data together to make it actual, usable, and actionable information.

I have also had a number of conversations with Eric Peterson about various analytics on various platforms.  One such paltform is Twitalyzer (@twitalyzer), that he and @katzpdx have put together.  This is a prime example however, of a very useful tool, but something that lies outside of other tools.  The question is, how to integrate and what to integrate.

As an analytics advocate, practitioner, and developer myself I have one huge issue with a lot of my analytics that I use.  Webtrends Analytics & Data Mart help me bring most of those together.  However there are a number of things that are still disparate and segmented in the wrong areas.

So with this post as it stands, what do people want joined?  Where are all these data points that people want?  I think something good just may come out of this desire, but the ideas do have to come together solidly.  I have things I can?t disclose, but I know there are minds here at Webtrends thinking about bridging this gap right here and right now.