One of the Best in the Business will be at #MDMC16

By: Amy Cabanas
Kaiser Fung provides training and advisory services in business analytics and data visualization. He has over 10+ years in the business and has leadership positions on data teams at Vimeo, SiriusXM Radio, [X+1], and American Express. He also has directed the Applied Analytics program at Columbia University, in NYC so let’s just say the man’s been busy.
He will be attending #MDMC16 as a breakout session speaker, so don’t miss this cool opportunity to take a mini class with a professor at the high esteemed Columbia University in New York. Not only is he a professor at Columbia teaching business analytics and data visualization, he also teaches at the well regarded New York University. Kaiser is the author of two books, Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probability and Statistics on Everything You Do, and Numbersense: How to Use Big Data to Your Advantage, both published by McGraw-Hill. Numbers Rule Your World has been translated into five languages. He is also the creator of two popular blogs. Since 2005, he has written dataviz criticism at my pioneering blog, Junk Charts and the other blog is Big Data, Plainly Spoken, where he discuss the media’s use of statistics.
Kaiser is a person you would want to ask questions regarding trends so we set up a few to see what we could learn. First we asked how he felt about the wearable tech industry and will it become a marketing platform, and I was surprised at his answer. He is not a believer unless we have much better power systems. He also felt that it could be a marketing platform purely as a brand but he sees people wearing tech for show. Which we all know the statistics with millennials at least that they would rather have their hearing taken away from them as opposed to their technology. So he may be right! His view on what content means to him was that it is really anything that users consumer, meaning text, images, movies, tweets etc. which make sense seeing how content really is everything. Kaiser also felt that the award for the digital word of 2016 will be “brand.” I think he wants to keep us interested and plans to explain further in April. Stay tuned!
More about digital metrics an Kaiser, his top 3 are ROI, reach and conversion so no surprises there but we think in his breakout session we will hear more about this subject for sure since he does these types of workshops all the time back in NYC. Kaiser is also a firm believer in the web not being out of date with so much going to mobile and social he feels it delivers a different audience segment which also makes perfect sense, I think he’s on to something….? When it comes to how Kaiser feels about marketing as a discipline and what coursework should one pursue for a career in marketing, we felt he above all people would be a great person to ask. He explained that “marketing is becoming ever more important. Marketers need to blend art and science when making a decision to further their careers.” He also elaborated on the fact he feels that the next big disruption in the world of marketing and communications is “digital marketing getting in bed with brand marketing, oh la la. The over-emphasis on the tail end of the conversion funnel has starved the front end, which is not sustainable in the long term.” So please don’t wait too long when planning your day in April and make sure Kaiser talk is part of you day!
 
Follow Kaiser Fung: @junkcharts