The panel discusses healthcare concerns in the age of data sharing
Cloudcamp in Chicago is an interesting mix of presentations on technology. Presenters are usually from the same industry, and are timed to keep presentations at 5 -10 minute lengths.
I attended the September 3rd, 2014 gathering at TechNexus, an incubator in Chicago which recently moved to the upper office floors of the Opera House. Four healthcare professionals spoke about technological trends and highlights from their industry, specifically about security (HIPAA), the Internet of Things, data security, and health service development from startups. This set of presentations included:
All had fascinating looks at their related issues.
Mark Moschel (@markmoschel), Chief Technology Officer of Factor 75 caught my attention the most with his presentation, QS and Biohacking Movements. His presentation focused on the behavior that has arisen from the budding internet of things era. He spoke about the self-care movement.
You may not have heard of it, but you’ve seen hits of it thanks to consumer-available tech devices that measure glucose levels, heart beats, and other personal metrics. There are two groups of tech enthusiasts that have risen from the self care movement.
One is the Quantified Self Movement. QSM is a belief system of "self knowledge through self tracking”, that users manage aspects of their health through the data they collect. According to Mike, Users:
Users also talk about what they discovered with others, usually in small groups. Mike showed an image in which several execs and well-known technologists, including Wired magazine editorial founder Kevin Kelly, talking to each other about their own experiences with data collection.
The second group are called the Biohackers. The description sound similar to the first, but in the QSM example, practitioners are seeking ways to manage their health. Biohackers seek to improve themselves. Mark calls this system thinking to control and upgrade their own body. Most of the biohacking occurring centers on novel aspects of health, but the outcome is being better able to track posture, heart, mood, blood glucose. The tech that allows for these metrics are include implantable glucose monitors and digestible pills.
The slides for this presentation and all the others are available on the Cloudcamp Slideshare page - shown below is an embed of the presentation.
Annie Swank, a Chicago graphic designer, made a great presentation on User Experience (UX). She gave her presentation, Identifying and Testing UX Assumptions, at the new location for TechNexus in Chicago for Refresh Chicago, a design and development meetup group dedicated to highlighting the local community of technology specialists and their experiences. In her presentation, Annie raises the urgency that designers and business owners must consider in establishing a web layout:
"Your competitor is one tab away. If you are on website and it is not looking the way it is suppose to, your users will check out."
The overview examines the decision-making process in planning what content and information is provide in a navigational structure meant to maximize a user experience with a site or app. The presentation does not cover technical aspects - so no client-side talk of HTML or Javascript - but the overview is a perfect review for small businesses and freelance developers planning a site. Asking what users will accomplish on your website is the most important aspect in web analytics.
The presentation is about an hour long. For more on Annie, check out her Tumbler page and also consider following her on Twitter (@annieswank). Also check out RefreshChicago for other meetups via their site (refreshchi.org) or Twitter (@Refreshchi)
One aspect I notice with clients, be it small business owners or managers of an enterprise, is a hesitancy to deploy a new technique to their paid search campaigns. They feel running digital ads is an empty exercise in marketing futility with an indiscriminate increase in spend. Applying advanced techniques such as remarketing can make that spend more discreet and make the futility less likely.
Remarketing is one of the newest techniques in digital advertising. Remarketing is a strategy in which an ad appears after a website visit. Its purpose is to provide site visitors a "reminder" to return to a site. Many remarketing campaigns are created with adding a small snippet of analytics code to the intended site pages.
The advancement of remarketing reflects the dynamic environment consumers are in. With so many ways to discover a retailer online, providers of paid online ads have had reimaging their ads appearing somewhere other than alongside a search engine result.
The value of remarketing lies in providing additional engagement of visitor who fallout of a conversion path. Take a user for a beauty care product. That customer visits apage, but then remembers the need to pay a bill online to prevent a late fee.As a result, they leave your site to go pay a bill or perform some other related online task. As this same user navigates the internet, ads can appear on other visited sites, reminding the customer of thebeauty care product. The ad may even add an enticement – free shipping ora 10% discount if the customer “acts now”. The customer then recallsthat they wanted the beauty care product. The customer then clicks the ad to make the intended purchase.
One end result from this activity is an increase conversion rate. Conversions from an organic search can reach single digit percentages with the best effort; Remarketing campaigns focuses on the unconverted majority.
Another end result is to cause marketers to imagine a potential customers journey. Reviewing website navigation behavior can indicate ideas for where a remarketing campaign would best complement customer search for products and services. There are signs that remarketing campaigns are providing additional value. An eMarketer post noted that marketers running social media alongside remarketing programs are seeing improve branding and direct purchase response.
Finally, issuing a remarketing plan can be an initial discussion on establishing a privacy policy. Google for example recommends that website indicate a privacy policy when updating its Google Analytics code for remarketing campaigns. Such discussions can rally an organization to understand what can breech consumer data management and ruin customer trust.
Remarketing is on the cusp of breaking out as an expected way to deploy digital advertising. Clickz noted remarketing as among the top 5 marketing trends for 2014. With some imaginative planning, retailers can learn how to leverage remarketing as a personalization tool and not a shopping intrusion.
Many retailers struggle with connecting with customers’ desires and needs. But instead of relying on sole instincts and trial-and-error tactics, retailers should develop their own predictive analytics models to find the right untapped opportunity. They should begin much sooner than later. Retailers in various markets are realizing the potential of their efforts, becoming significant competitors as a result.
Predictive analytics is the rollup analysis of data that determines an anticipated outcome. For retail, this means determining customer segment behaviors through evaluating data patterns related to that segment. Data for advanced predictive models can be from numerous platforms requiring a mix of software and programming to reveal insights. For example, the R programming language is a popular choice to combine with analytic packages to create predictive models for numerous business scenarios.
Demand for predictive analytics is increasing. O’Reilly noted in a Strata article that business analysts are increasing interested in more complex data modeling. And Gartner noted that by 2016, 70% of most business processes will incorporate real time predictive analytics to establish a competitive advantage.
Applying predictive analytics can lead to developing robust process controls that ensures an organization a better chance to choose the right investments or activities.
Price management is a prime example. IT can monitor tech costs associated with a price management campaign, from website maintenance to inventory-related systems. Thus IT teams impacted by predictive analytics can direct resources on tasks that will likely raise or lower costs. Furthermore, the ongoing nature of a price management campaigns can encourage better supply chain management. This can lead to further cost reductions and improved operations.
A recent Forbes article highlights a few examples that analytics firm ForeSee has observed. Hickory Farms, Perry Ellis, and NFLshop.com all saw incremental increased sales through strategic usage of predictive analytics. And last year Chain Store Age noted how grocer Safeway achieved sales success with “Just For U”, a personalized pricing card program for shoppers. Personalized pricing is derived from predictive analytic measures.
To their best capabilities, predictive analytic models address the management of uncertain future outcomes within the organization. No one knows the future with a certainty. But a solid predictive model can provide an important indicator of what profitable activities are best pursued.
CEOWorld named its Top Big Data experts to follow on Twitter...
Earlier in 2014, CEOWorld Magazine named @ZimanaAnalytics among the top Twitter accounts to follow for Big Data. Managed by Zimana founder Pierre DeBois, the Twitter account curates a number of topics on small business, big data, and analytics, as well as regular posts from Zimana Blog, an AllTop web analytics blog. The @ZimanaAnalytics Twitter account was ranked Number 36.
CEOWorld Magazine is a global business and technology information media site. Created by Amarendra Bhushan in 2008, CEOWorld Magazine offers business news features for chief executive officers and senior executives.
...and Zimana was named one of the top Twitter accounts to follow for Big Data and Analytics
Zimana listed among the Top Big Data Experts to Follow, according to CEOWorld Magazine
"I am extremely pleased and thankful for CEOWorld to consider @ZimanaAnalytics among the top Twitter profiles that feature big data topics, " said Pierre DeBois. "By focusing on curating on analytics-related topics, the Zimana Twitter account has become a key resource for small and medium sized businesses that are working to increase their business intelligence knowledge and analytic capability. This acknowledgment from CEOWorld, along with a nod to the Zimana Facebook page being named one of the top Facebook pages to follow by Small Business Trends, encourages me to ensure that the Zimana social media platforms are of great value to clients, customers, and partners."
Read more about the top Twitter list at the CEOWorld Magazine site .
Justin McNally explains the value of web components at the July meetup for the Chicago JavaScript Meetup group. (Picture: Chicago JavaScript Meetup)
The Chicago Javascript Meetup group gathered once again for a rousing discussion on web components. Web components are essentially the elements in a a web page or document that interacts with the web browser. These elements indicate to the browser what should appear in the browser window.
Justin McNally prepared a presentation called Web Components: The Future is Now, one of two for the July meetup for The Chicago Javascript Meetup group. The presentation offered some historical overview of client side development as well as concepts that Justin had learned through his own experience as a web developer.
The function of tag elements are key for understanding the history of client side development. They were first used for annoying text appearances - yes, those texts that would flash onscreen - and tagging images that appear in the browser. Blinking tags were a popular design choice back in 1994, but that was enhanced with the advent of Javascript a year later. Javascript code used tag elements effectively without requiring calls to the server. It quickly became the programming choice for scrolling text and popup windows.
Another historical development was the spec for the Casscading Style Sheet (CSS). The spec was developed and updated by the W3C. According to Justin, the CSS spec usually lagged behind the capability of mainstream browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, and later Chrome). The browsers would come with advanced or different specs that developers would have to work towards in their website design, which made the W3C specs ineffective in some instances. A 1.0 Spec in 1996 meant to make the internet more prettier, but browsers came with features that were later incorporated into the 2.0 Spec.
The recent release of Google Chrome 36 makes a significant departure from the misconnect between browser capability and CSS spec. It represents the first time a browser supported all key components for a web component spec. The release also signals that browser updates will be less of an influence to build apps and sites with web components in mind.
Meetup members listened as Justin provided code examples of web components
Justin elaborated on the key building blocks of web components. These are:
Justin explained what principles are essential in planning and developing a web component.
The historic developments of element tags have lead to the creation of Select tags. Select tags have been introduced as an alternate tag element to divs. Divs are meant to be containers of an object, whereas selects are sophisticated containers that permit more detailed properties. The end result is an increase capacity for usages with object oriented languages and easier functionality when code is planned and created.
Justin wrapped up noting a few great tools that can be used with respect to Javascript. The frameworks that are likely to drive web component development are Polymer (Google) and X-Tags (Mozilla). Both have received support and interest from the developer community.
You can check out Justin’s presentation via this Dropbox link. The presentation includes more detail on web components including code examples.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3bxh3iz348o2a92/JS%20Chi.pdf
