It’s going to be a busy Spring! I’m taking the quarter off at The Creative Circus to give four presentations and head to a couple of industry events.

Here’s an overview of my speaking schedule for Spring 2012:

“Testing and Analytics for a Better Customer Experience”
Digital Summit 2012
Pre-Con: Content, Design & Usability track
Wednesday, May 9th, 10:30am
Cobb Galleria, Atlanta, GA

“Does Quantitative Data Kill Design or Set it Free?”
A Web Afternoon
Saturday, May 19th, 1pm – 6pm
Georgia Tech Research Institute, Atlanta, GA

“Mastering User Experience: Winning Customer Interactions Online”
Customer Experience Summit
Wednesday, May 23rd, 1:45pm
Miami Marriott Biscayne Bay, Miami, FL

“Case Study: Increasing Conversion through a Radical Redesign of NationalBuilderSupply.com”
MarketingSherpa Optimization Summit
Tuesday, June 12, 11:00am
Denver Marriott Tech Center, Denver, CO

If you attend any of these conferences, please come up and introduce yourself. I’d like to meet you.

My week started off with a fascinating presentation by Mark Tabladillo, a statistics PhD, on data mining techniques. Mark was invited to speak at the National Builder Supply HQ by our newest developer, Mark Monts de Oca.

(To avoid the confusion of multiple “Marks”, I’ll refer to each gentleman by his more unique surname.)

Mr. Monts de Oca made an immediate impact at NBS by bringing his expert knowledge in building data cubes—a multi-dimensional, dynamically sortable data array—to our business intelligence efforts. Building on Mr. Monts de Oca’s presentation of a data cube of our company sales reporting, Mr. Tabladillo introduced our team to four core data mining techniques. One technique that struck me is known as clustering.

The groups of customers assembled by clustering like demographic and geographic data points is akin to the common user experience (UX) technique of writing personas based on the behavioral use cases and situational brand touch points. Where personas are primarily a qualitative information exercise, clustering is absolutely quantitative. Mr. Tabladillo’s 180-degree opposite approach is fascinating when contrasted against the work I’ve done in leveraging our call center reps interviews and discussions with our customers.

With the demand of big data and user experience growing rapidly, I’m excited to have the opportunity to collaborate further with Mr. Tabladillo and Mr. Monts de Oca.