“User-centric approach to data & analytics”

Simo Ahava

“Almost all the technological innovation that has taken place in digital analytics over the past years have catered to a vendor-centric worldview. Server-side tagging, in particular, is frequently associated with methodologies that seek to maximize the amount of data collected to vendors, often at the expense of the user whose data is being gathered.

In this worldview, ad blockers are seen as an affront, consent is considered negotiable rather than absolute, and users are treated like pawns in a game where they have no agency at all.

In this talk, Simo begs you to consider a different view. What if we’d allow users to have their say and, controversially, actually listen and appreciate their decisions? What if we allow users to block, restrict, limit, and degrade the signals that we want to collect? It’s possible to work with patchy data; vendors have been modelling against signal degradation for years and years. It’s us that need to catch up.”

Simo Ahava

Co-founderSimmer

Simo Ahava is a recognized expert on customizing web analytics and tag management solutions to improve the entire “life cycle” of data collection, processing, and reporting. His main areas of expertise lie with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, and Google has appointed him as a Google Developer Expert in these fields. He is especially interested in communication structures within organizations, as he firmly believes that communication breakdowns are the underlying cause to practically all data-related problems.

Simo is particularly invested in demystifying analytics development work, and his main focus is on increasing awareness, skills, and critical thinking around data and development.

Simo is a partner and co-founder at 8-bit-sheep, a digital services boutique. He’s also co-founder (together with Mari Ahava) of Simmer, an online learning platform for technical marketers.

Among other things, Simo writes a popular blog on all things Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager development at www.simoahava.com. An experienced speaker and prolific blogger, Simo can be seen and heard in conferences, product forums, support communities, and developer meet-ups alike.