Musings on the Human Condition

  Covid lockdowns have significantly altered consumer behavior and buying habits. The desktop is Queen. For example, as noted in Gartner's Digital IQ Index 2020 report released recently, traffic originating from desktops is understandably growing (relative to mobile traffic) as more consumers access digital properties from the comfort of their homes. For details, check out Gartner's Digital IQ Index 2020 report for big-box retailers in the US (executive summary). Big-box retailers are superstores generally housed in large buildings that look like a big box (hence the name), for example, Wal-Mart, Ikea, and Home Depot. E-commerce. Another trend has seen the shift to e-commerce (relative to brick and mortar) even more so than before the pandemic. This is an expected result of reduced traffic in shopping malls and consumers being forced to buy online. Companies that had a solid e-commerce and omni-channel presence prior to the shift have clearly benefitted whereas those that did...

Gartner recently published a study " Marketing Data and Analytics Survey 2020 " that finds that most clients aren't getting the value they expected from their analytics implementations. The results of the study are not entirely surprising and represent a huge opportunity for analytics experts. I have first-hand knowledge of multi-billion dollar companies that have purchased Adobe Analytics (AA) but are grossly under-investing in qualified resources to implement and support the platform.  They hire resources that are not required to be experts in AA with the expectation that they can learn on the job, just to save a few dollars in hourly rates. Big mistake! It’s like buying a Ferrari and then filling it up with regular gas and taking it to the local mechanic for service.  Upskilling in-house talent can only work if you have core expertise in-house (or contracted). But we’re often seeing clients who are lacking that in-house expertise and leaving their resources to fend for...

When a pawn promotes (usually to a queen, but could be any piece, i.e. not a pawn), the arithmetic on points seems to go awry. If you were +5 when your opponent promotes the pawn, you should then be +6, since your opponent lost a pawn. Yes, they also gained (let's say) a queen. So they're up 9. So the correct arithmetic would be +3 for your opponent. But, I believe most chess engines calculate it as +4 because they don't deduct a point for the pawn your opponent lost. Not fair!