• "Why and how do men and women view images differently? I've done some small level testing, and am amazed that you can show the same image and men and women come away with a really different interpretation."

  Excellent question. How much time do you have for an answer?

  The simplest response that retains a high level of accuracy starts by recognizing that cultural training and evolutionary biology play huge and unequal roles.

  Evolutionary biology - men and women are designed to serve very different functions in order to insure the propagation of the species. Each different function we retain as a species has been selected from millions of others that we didn't retain over millions of years of evolution. Think of this as the nature side of nature versus nurture. You simply can't defeat the way evolutionary forces have shaped humans over millions of years with a few thousand years of "civilization"'s rewiring. Especially when you consider that civilization wasn't all that civilized for the majority of humans during those few thousand years.

  Cultural training - a very powerful function that evolutionary biology has caused us to retain (and probably amplify) is our dependence on culture. We are creatures that do not exist well or long in isolation. We identify and self-identify based on the culture we're in and the cultures we see around us. More to the point of this question, we learn what is good and bad, right and wrong by identifying with one culture over another. This is the nurture side of nature versus nurture. One of the things culture does is ceremonialize evolutionary functions.

  Put these two elements together and you have a very powerful testament to why men and women see the same scene differently. A truly fascinating take on this subject can be found in Dr. Katherine Frank's work (especially G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire. The NextStage library contains (at present) 473 resources on the subject of male-female perception/cognition/behavioral differences and we're adding more (almost) daily (if you really want a treat, study this stuff and throw in cultural biasing. Whoosh!). Give me a call or Skype me if you'd like me to make a complete bibliography available.

• "I am an advertising salesperson for strong B2B publications. I know the importance of including online aspects into a full marketing campaign, but I don't feel completely confident about the vernacular and especially about the differences in measuring metrics: i.e. DoubleClick, Google Analytics, etc. Can you help me?"

  Another excellent question, simply one that I'm recognizably unqualified to answer.

  Let me think (minutes go by).

  There is a scene in The 13th Warrior where Antonio Banderas' character learns Old Norse by listening to those around him speak it. That method, immersion, is largely recognized as the best method for learning any language (or jargon).

  My suggestion therefore is to go where online analysts gather (and I don't mean blogs, websites, online trainings or newsletters). Find out what local meetings are going on, where local groups get together for beer and pizza and go to them. In short, go to where real live analysts are talking and sharing. Electronic venues (even virtual worlds) won't cut it, at least not yet.

  Once you're there, sit and listen. A lot. Only start asking questions after you've been to a few such gatherings, have become recognized and accepted as a newbie. People tend to be remarkably patient teaching their own (that's the recognized and accepted part) and tend to be remarkably cautious around outsiders.

  Your goal isn't to become an online analyst, it's to understand what online analysts are talking about when metrics are under discussion. Attending a few meetings in a row then a meeting every now and then is the equivalent of learning a new language then talking to a native speaker once in a while to keep your ear and accent up.

  Is there a quicker way that works? Probably. Do let me know when you discover it. I promise to sit and listen while you explain it.

Ah, it's nice to know people are paying attention...

First (and to a comment made earlier in this newsletter), I'm not writing for iMedia any more. The new editor there wanted me to write rants. I had to ask people what a rant was. Sorry, not my style. Yes, I do get upset by things and my training is to talk with whomever is upsetting me personally, not publicly, so rants are out. I was also told that my writing was way over the heads of most iMedia readers. Don't know what this says, really. Anyway, being freed from twice-monthly contributions to iMedia has freed me to pursue other literary endeavors.

Currently I'm contributing posts on the use of semantic concepts in business on An Economy of Meaning. Did your eyes glaze over when you read semantics? Most people's do. That's one of the reasons I'm contributing there, to make the use of semantics more accessible, more recognizable, to people. I've been a Senior Fellow at the CSE for over a year now and still I wonder what "semantics" means during some of the meetings. I know it's "the study of language meaning" and sometimes I think the greatest challenge to semantics is semantics. Currently the CSE is going through a rebranding and remissioning effort. We'll see what comes of it.

Anyway, on An Economy of Meaning you'll find posts such as Three Rules for Providing Expected Solutions, How to be Understood and Close Deals in Business Meetings, Measuring Measures and others. These all deal with semantics issues in the real world. Enjoy.

Meanwhile, over on AllBusiness.com I'm writing about doing business more easily, watching for trips, tricks, traps and offering some tips. Things like 7 Things Clients and Providers Need to Pay Attention To, The Third Bowl of Porridge (A Business Retelling of Goldilocks) and Determining Solution Costs. My goal here is to provide actionable information based on NextStage's research and my experiences in business over the past eight years.

Of all my blogs, BizMediaScience is probably my most personal, most "me". I tend to post random items there, things that fascinate, intrigue or interest me, things people send me, outlandish and startling things that come from NextStage's research, stuff like that.

I would offer that The Future Of is (to me) the most "out there" blog. It's definitely become a fascinating study for me (maybe I should write about it in BizMediaScience?) as different voices share their thoughts. It can be a study in semantics itself at times as I'm often sure the other contributors and I aren't using the same language to express ourselves at all.

Traffic on it has quieted down considerably. I've contributed the last few posts and my last comment, a systems and behavioral ecology take on What if all we had was Omniture and Google Analytics? was the last item entered until I posted The Analytics Ecology which has remained commentless.

Perhaps this lack of activity will allow me an opportunity to bring it back to where I thought it should be, a study of how technology and society co-evolve, what we can learn from their symbiosis and what we can plan for based on some simple rules, the first being something I shared at an SNCR conference over a year ago, "The history of technology is a study of economically placing the most power in the most people's hands."

Or perhaps I do write over some people's heads. At least enough heads to not be financially rewarding. I know that I'm read because of the occasional comment and the much more frequent Skype sessions, phone calls and emails I get from readers wanting to share their thoughts and responses with me.

I did ask one correspondent why they didn't put their responses into comments on my blogs. They felt more comfortable contacting me directly. I'm quite good with that. Flattered in fact. It's nice to know people find me so personable based on my writings. Thanks.

I recently received a call from an international brand. I actually received several calls from this international brand. Each time we talked on the phone, I was told (repeatedly...ad nauseum...perhaps they weren't sure, now that I think of it) that by golly, this major international brand had world class marketers.

I offered that I was very happy for them.

What we're dealing with here is really Joseph's ignorance. I have this mental construct of "world class marketer" ("world class" anything, really). I hear "world class" and I start thinking of Olympic athletes, Roger Penrose, Audrey Hepburn, Brian Blessed, Danny Kaye, most of my teachers, my wife, Susan, ... so I really had no idea what these folks were calling me for. I asked if they wanted me to give them a presentation on some of NextStage's findings.

No. They were world class marketers. They didn't need a presentation. On anything. These people had PhDs and MBAs. They already knew all that stuff.

So they weren't interested in our research?

No. They were world class marketers. They probably knew more research than I did.

Did they want me to come in and give a training on some concepts we study and publish on?

No. They were world class marketers. They already understood everything there was to understand about all kinds of marketing concepts.

Finally, close to the end of the third or fourth call (they were always calling me, I never called them), I was told it was "execution".

"Execution? I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean as in how to do something? 'What colors to use where to make something happen?', 'What images should we use on our website?'? Things like that?"

"Yes! That's exactly the kind of thing we're looking for."

I admit to being a little...dumbfounded. My mind tends to work in equations and I'm having lots of trouble forming the equation:

Then again, I'm truly not sure why this should surprise me. The majority of people I've met who claim marketing expertise have remarkably low success rates hence, to me, are not world class. It's kind of like investors. If they knew what they were doing their success rate would demonstrate such.

The funny part of this is (to me) if they had said something like "We'd like to become world class marketers and could use a little help" or even "We're world class marketers, have hit a wall and need some help" I would have gone into overdrive to help them figure out exactly how to do what they wanted to do and how to do it repeatedly. But they didn't want to learn how to do it, they wanted it done for them. I even suggested that a training might be better because then they'd know how to do it themselves.

But no, they were world class marketers. They didn't need classes or trainings in anything at all.

And do recognize I'm really ranting about myself, my ignorance. I do not speak the language necessary to understand the meaning of "world class" the way this international brand wished it to be understood.

Mea. Culpa. You know this is going to end up as a post on the semantics blog, yes?

Soon NextStage will release the results of a test conducted by some independent analysts, researchers and marketers. These varied folks were asked to test Evolution Technology (ET)'s ability to determine the age and gender of people navigating a website without ET knowing any demographic data about them before hand. I won't bore you with the gory details here, Rene (have you met NextStage Analytics' new CEO, Rene Dechamps Otamendi? He's starting a blog and (if you haven't already) you can see the new NextStage look) will be sharing them publicly next week.

I'll be providing research details and a pointer to a whitepaper in the next newsletter. Hopefully you won't have to wait a year for it.

• I'll be teaching a master's class among other things at the iMediaConnection Brand Summit 7-10 June 09 in Colorado Springs, Colorado
• Towards a Science of Consciousness 2009 11-14 June 09 in Hong Kong, China
• The 7th International Conference on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies: CCCT 2009, The 2nd International Multi-Conference on Engineering and Technological Innovation: IMETI 2009 10-13 July 09 in Orlando, Florida