Tom Dalton :: Doer of Good

Hey! Tom LeBaron and I won first place in an Omniture-sponsored web analytics contest. I've always, always wanted an oversized novelty check. That's even better than a trophy! We just appeared again on the front page of the Marriot School eBusiness Center newsletter:

Web site analysis technology became the buzzword across campus this past semester through the first Web Analytics Competition. Students who participated in the competition had the opportunity to expand their knowledge of web site analysis and develop skills that put them ahead of their peers.

Seventy students composed the thirty-two teams that participated in the competition which was sponsored by the Kevin and Debra Rollins Center for eBusiness and Omniture Inc., a web analytics company.

“A lot of them did it just for the experience,” said Derrick Davis, the eBusiness Center student lead in charge of curriculum and competition. “Students wanted to learn more.”

Students used Omniture’s SiteCatalyst, a product that tracks statistics from other companies’ web sites. Omniture sent one of their own trainers to explain how to use SiteCatalyst and to introduce the company hobbytron.com, which served as the students’ client during this hands-on experience.

“‘Omniture University,’ is the training Omniture gives its professionals, which usually is a two-day class,” Davis said. “This was condensed into two hours for students.”

Students had two weeks to work on the project by themselves until they presented their finding to the judges, which consisted of Omniture CEO Josh James, NextPage Marketing Vice-President Cydni Tetro, and other Omniture executives.

Four finalist teams were called back to the final competition on 11 November. Davis said that the judges commented that half of the groups did better than their employees.

Cameron Barnes, Omniture group manager, said they were not disappointed with students’ performance and were very pleased with the quality of their work.

“Students displayed high caliber of work and professionalism,” Barnes said. “The site they were working with had some hard-to-find traps, and yet some of the students did.”

The final presentations had the flavor of real world events, with surprises such as the fire alarm going off in the middle of a presentation.

“That’s something I didn’t expect,” said Davis, who was in charge of coordinating the competition from its concept to the final day of events. “I told everybody to get out and come back as soon as possible when the alarm was cleared.”

Tom LeBaron and Tom Dalton received the first prize of $2,500. Brent Dance and Patrick Hillery’s team placed second and was awarded $1,000. The third place prize of $500 went to Jarom Adair. These team’s members received a job interview with the company. “We are grateful for the Omniture Team’s financial and logistical support of this event,” said Dr. Stephen Liddle, director of the eBusiness Center. “Omniture is a great partner and they help us deliver a high-value experience for our students.”

Davis said Omniture executives showed interest in participating again and making it an annual competition.

I'll try and hunt down our Powerpoint presentation -- it has more headlines than content, because we wanted to be able to adjust our presentation to the types of questions and feedback we got from the judges, but it's still interesting.

The tactic that won the day (in my opinion): we presented an executive-level overview. Enough specifics to show that we knew what we were talking about (and some very, very specifics to show that we knew better than anyone else) and then a strategic discussion of how to move forward in cooperation with their IT and marketing teams. Nobody wants to hire an arrogant, hard-to-work-with consultant, and nobody wants to be dependant on that consultant forever. You're going to hire the guy who will work well with your existing (and permanent) teams. We stressed that we didn't want a lifelong dependance, either -- one of our chief goals is to train your team to be able to do this on their own.

It was a great, great day.