Jordan Salvit

In honor of the Jewish New Year, I decided it is finally time to post again.  In the spirit of the new year, I am posting a resolution.

Although, I love taking on many things and participating in new exciting ventures, I don’t always know when to say no or know when I am over committing myself.  I apologize to all the people I have neglected and all the projects I have not given 100% to.  This year I will make an effort to only start something new when everything else is wrapped up.

My goal is to be more focused on the important things and let all the detractors fall by the wayside.  Actually, I am going to shove them all to the curb!

Wish me luck!

Over the last few weeks I have had some very interesting conversations with people who rationalize situations very differently than I do.  These conversations were all theoretical and stirred a heated and loud debate.  It wasn’t till afterwards that I realized these debates were fueled by the T-F dichotomy.  

One of the conversations happened yesterday with a friend who said he thinks we should NEVER fire people.  I asked him if there was any situation when he thought someone should be let go and he responded NO.  I was in shock until I realized that he strongly prefers Feeling and is very empathetic.

I personally prefer Thinking and am clearly not as empathetic as my friend.  I generally approach a situation by assessing all the facts before I assess people’s emotions.  If my goal is to cut $100,000 from the budget, I look at my expenses and see what I don’t need.  This analysis is unrelated to the people that may be effected by the cuts.  

I tried very hard to explain my thought process to my friend and he wouldn’t even listen.  Granted, I also had a hard time listening to him.  The best part was when we both realized that we were much better off having had the conversation.  We were finally able to show the other person the value of extreme Feeling and extreme Thinking.  We agreed that starting from both extremes makes the middle so much more meaningful.  

Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone preferred Thinking?  It would be a place where facts and figures would rule.  People would lose jobs regularly.  There would be no leniency for rule breakers or punishments.  

The world would be very different if everyone preferred Feeling.  It would be a place where empathy and camaraderie ruled.  No one would ever be let go and punishments and rules would differ for each person.  

As a T, I think the F-World would be chaos.  To an F, the T-World would be prison.

Next time you have a heated debate with someone, think if it is driven from the T-F dichotomy.  If it is, I hope you learn as much as I have from the other person’s perspective.

I have been an avid reader of FlowingData ever since I stumbled across it.  Every day, Nathan posts about some new visualization or data set that we should look at.  Today, Nathan launched your.flowingdata.com and I am really impressed with the amount of work he put into it.  The idea behind your.flowingdata is that you can track, trend and visualize your own habits.  The one catch is that you need to direct message these actions to @yfd.  

For all those out there that are interested in data visualizations, FlowingData is a great place to start.  If you have a twitter account and are trying to track how much you eat, when you sleep or whatever else you want to track give your.flowingdata a try.  

I’ll be honest, I am horrible at logging the minute details of my life, but I am debating doing it now!

Corporate America is often criticized as being bureaucratic and stodgy.  The complaint is that every decision takes much longer to be made and execute.  On the flip side, it is often said that small businesses make decisions quickly because there are only a handful of decision makers and the decisions can be executed swiftly.  Over the last few months, I have come to realize that this dichotomy has nothing to do with the size of an organization.  It is completely based on management’s leadership capabilities and style.

My boss at the consulting company I work for is an example of a good leader.  He is straightforward in his approach and always sets expectations very clearly.  He gives both positive and negative feedback regularly, reenforcing good habits and hoping to expunge bad ones.  He entrusts decisions to his team and supports their work.  At the same time, he makes sure he is not hypocritical at all and leads by example.  The combination of these traits are admirable and highlight what it means to be a good leader.  Under his leadership the organization moves forward quickly and nimbly as if we were a five person company.

On the other hand, I also work with a small five person company and their lack of similar leadership perpetuates a sense of stodginess thought of in thousand person companies.  Decisions are made slowly and followed through even slower.  This is in part because the head of the organization is indecisive, inconsistent and rarely follows through.  These traits reenforce bad work habits that are very hard to get rid of.

I find myself asking, is the success of any organization tied to its management’s ability to lead?  Although I wish it weren’t true, I am beginning to think the answer is YES.

This morning’s NYTimes business section had an article titled “Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise.”  The article talks about the use of Wall Street analysis techniques on Madison Avenue.  For the last year and a half I have been doing the kinds of analysis that the article talks about and know that counting clicks is only the beginning.  The web allows for so much tracking and data collection that we can look at return on investments for clicks and impressions, but can do even more.  

During the last year and a half, I have been working with Webmetro to look at the value of an ad.  To come to some conclusions we look at clicks, impressions and effectiveness during certain times of day, month and year.  We look at how ads tie into seasonality, how latency should effect spend, and we look at the effects of other marketing efforts on our web based ads.  These are some of the metrics we look at and some of the things you should be looking at also.  

Even with all the tracking out there and all the analysis that needs to be done, the first thing any marketer should do is learn their client’s business.  For every client that you work for, spend time to understand their inner workings, their priorities, what they need to operate.  Without knowing all that, all the advertising tests you do aren’t going to be anywhere as successful as they can be.  Chances are that you will spend many thousands of dollars before you get it right and that is money your client can’t afford to lose.

Don’t get me wrong, I run tests all the time and think they are very important, but you must understand what the metrics for success are before you start spending.  If you are looking for brand awareness, then impressions and clicks are a decent measure.  I would probably take bounce rate into account also.  If you are looking for sales, then true ROI needs to be the metric you look towards, but don’t forget to compare it to other marketing channels! 

There is so much out there and the space is still growing and changing!  This is truly an exciting time to be in online and interactive advertising.

I am a firm believer in the power of innovation and have been waiting for something to wow us out this economic recession.  Unfortunately, I came to a pretty sad realization today and am afraid that we are stuck in a viscous cycle that may not end anytime soon.  Now that you are either scared or think I am a lunatic, here is why.

Small businesses no longer have the capital to innovate and are too busy figuring out how to survive.  They are cutting expenses daily and trying to operate with less in the bank.  Although banks are “turning profits”(I put that in quotes because I don’t believe them), there aren’t many new loans being given.  Honestly, small businesses aren’t even looking for the money because who knows when they’ll be able to pay it back.  

Large corporate businesses aren’t innovating either.  They are looking at this economy as a time to squash the competition and gain a larger portion of the market share.  From a business point of view, if I were the CEO, that is exactly what I would do.  It makes sense to spend money to beat the competition while they are hurting, this way when things turn around revenue will increase exponentially.  

From a consumer’s point of view and the idealist in me, I want large corporations to spend money on research and development.  If one new sensational product came out this year from a proven corporation, spirits could be lifted and new cash would be infused into the economy.  This would start a chain reaction and help lift the global economy.  

Am I asking too much?

As I continue to work with new people and personalities, I realize how insightful Carl Jung’s theory is and how useful the MBTI tool can be.  MBTI is based on the premise that everyone has 4 basic personality preferences.  The first preference shows where you get your energy from (my E vs I post). The second and third deal with how you take in information and how you rationalize your decisions.  The 4th preference deals with how you approach the task at hand.  I find that how you decide to approach a task causes the most issues between people and is directly related to the last preference, Judging vs Perceiving.  

People who prefer judging are planners by nature.  They likely have a schedule of tasks and meetings set in advance and probably think through each meeting agenda ahead of time.  J’s rarely like to change plans unless they have allotted time and room for change.  This may sound rigid, but is more about closure.  J’s like to come to closure in a timely way, and usually that involves setting a plan and finishing on time or even in advance.

On the other hand, people who prefer perceiving are the exact opposite.  They don’t like plans and are constrained by rigid schedules.  Their tendency is to go with the flow and enjoy changing things.  When working on a project, P’s are likely to want to leave the research phase open ended.  P’s accomplish tasks when under pressure and will likely do the bulk of work towards the end of the project timeline.  

Imagine, if you are a J with a preference to plan and working for a P, it might feel like you aren’t accomplishing anything because of the ongoing research phase.  As the deadline approaches , you might feel resentment for the last minute requests.  In the opposite situation, if you are a P with a preference for flexibility and working for a J, you might feel constrained.  You might feel resentment for having to work on tasks that aren’t needed for weeks or months.   

People who are aware of their preferences try to facilitate situations that make them comfortable.  I have a preference for Judging and set schedules and plans.  Every time I have worked for someone with a preference for Perceiving, I either enforce a schedule for the whole project or make my own mini schedules and plans.  This helps me focus and accomplish at my best.  Every time I have had P’s working for me, I have noticed their ability to avoid plans and facilitate change.  For myself, I plan a longer research phase to help satisfy their need.  I also try to keep changing things for them, or allow them to change things, but I always set clear and hard deadlines.  Once the deadlines are set, I leave them be and trust they will deliver on time.  P’s can have a perception that a J’s need for status updates comes from micro managing, when often it is just a way to make sure the plan is being followed.

Since I am a J, my tips are slightly biased towards J’s working with P’s.  How do you react in similar situations?  Are you a P and worked with J’s like me?  What helped you?

In 2006, I started my master’s thesis under the advisory of Elizabeth Sklar, PhD. At the time I was very excited about new web technologies and everyone’s use of web services. I had the idea of creating a simulation visualization platform using web services.  In multi-agent research, a subset of artificial intelligence, you create simulations to understand how each AI agent, or program, would react in a certain situation.  Very often those simulations are not monitored in real-time, instead they are reported on afterwards.  My idea was  to create a real-time view into those simulations.  Fortunately, I took a job in corporate america.  Unfortunately, I didn’t finish.  

In the last 3 years technology and my interests have changed.  Web services is still as popular as it was, but it isn’t new anymore.  The visualization problem is still an issue, so I have changed focus.  Since a lot of my interests now lie in social media, and there is constantly new data out there to process, I have decided to start researching twitter visualizations.  Thanks to a few twitter followers, I found a handful of great resources and have already started compiling a list.

My goal is to take the list of what is out there and figure out how to bring them all together using artificial intelligence.  Some of the visualizations are word based, like twitscoop.com, some are time based like TwitterStreamGraphs and some are geo based, like TwitterVision.  They all have great uses, but are very different and are used very differently.  Now imagine a tool that learns what you are looking for and presents the best visualization to help you find what you need.  That might be a hybrid of a couple different views, but the AI agents would figure it out.  

As I continue to research and find out new things, I will post more.  As always, if you have any ideas that you think are helpful, I am all ears!

Friday’s Op-Ed piece by David Brooks, ‘No Picnic for Me Either’, got me thinking about my own education and what made it a success.  Brooks pointed out that there are

“two traits necessary for academic success: relationships and rigor. The young Obama had a loving relationship with an adult passionate about his future. He also had at least one teacher, his mom, disinclined to put up with any crap.”

This rang true for me.  My family support got me to college, but I attribute my college success to one teacher who saw my potential and helped motivate me to work on challenging and inspiring projects.  Some people will tell you that I was setup for success because I attended an ivy league college, but I don’t believe that is true.  My success started when I became a research assistant for Prof Elizabeth Sklar, PhD during my junior year at college.  I started by helping out with a project that required a methodical analysis of the robot kits on the market at the time.  Once that project completed, Sklar pushed me to work on more projects and soon I was working on Educational Robotics, Computer Vision and Robotics projects with her and her team.   

I am confident that I would have walked away from college with a very different experience had I never found a professor like Sklar.  I am not saying that I would have failed out, but I don’t think I would have gained nearly as much.  

Is Obama’s push  to motivate teachers to be more engaged the right path?  Based on my own experiences, I say yes!  How many teachers names do you remember?  I only remember a few, but those names will likely stay with me forever.  Do you think their interest in your success helped get you there?  or were you self-motivated?

On Friday, I sat down with someone I work with who made a prediction that someday soon there will be a backlash from all the time spent using twitter.  His argument was that he doesn’t see the value of these interactions during office hours and that it seems like a distraction from the work at hand.  During our conversation I defended social media, especially twitter, but I have been thinking about it ever since.

I believe that interacting with people in your field is very helpful to accomplish daily goals related to work.  I also believe that interacting with people outside of your field can help give perspective to the same goals.  Here is where I am having trouble: is a constant stream of interactions from both groups at the same time helpful?  Especially when they are trying to feed you new articles and videos and enticing things to view.  Personally, I follow all the “cool” tweeple like @MackCollier and @guykawasaki, but I am not in PR and am not a full time entrepreneur.  I follow tech superstars too, but is my colleague right? Is all of this just a distraction from my day job?

With my MBTI training and my post on extroverts vs. introverts still fresh in mind, today I will defend social media as an outlet an extrovert needs to be successful at all times.  I am an extrovert and sitting in an office by myself or working at home can seem draining.  I need to know there are people out there talking.  I may tune them out. I may listen in here or there, but that chatter keeps my mind revved.  The little tweet notifications from TweetDeck don’t always drive me to see what’s going on, but it reminds me that I am not the only one connected.  I feed off of the 140 character bites that my friends give me and use that energy to deliver good work.  

Of course there are situations where I already have a lot of going on around me and my focus is being tested.  In those cases, I turn off TweetDeck and disconnect from the social media world, but I have a feeling I am not the only one to do this.  

So, is social media a distraction?  You tell me.  Do you find social media takes away your focus from work or do you feed off the buzz like I do?  Is your MBTI type preference for introversion or extroversion?  Do you think it makes a difference?