alt/events•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•1d ago

Office Hours today!

Join us at 7pm CEST, 1pm ET, 10am PT to discuss open questions, ideas or any random things. I invited you all with a calendar event, but you can also use the link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85683691915?pwd=GYMwH2goyCdbqD7fmILzlAKDdD4Ngc.1

alt/public-square•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•3d ago

ALT+ Updates

I am just back from traveling one week to Sweden and enjoying the calm surroundings of the western Swedish archipelago. And I also met Juliana in person for the first time at the cold airport of Copenhagen on my way back. We used the time to brainstorm about what we want to try and do next here on ALT+. The cohort was a first approach to make knowledge more accessible. But it comes with two challenges: the production takes more time than I have initially planned and it needs you to block time to watch and follow. To really get group benefits like shared results and thoughts it needs a much bigger group of people. Therefore we want to keep experimenting with formats. Next up we want to launch a first playbook - about heartbeat events. The playbooks are designed to make it easier for you to walk through a specific topic and apply the learning to your setup immediately. It is more chunk-sized and applicable than the foundational videos I did in the first cohort. I kicked off development yesterday and thanks to the very eager and rarely tired coding assistants I hope I get the first playbook out by the end of next week. Instead of a second live stream I want to do a next office hour instead and focus on these for now as live format. The next open office session will be on 23.10 at 7pm CEST, 1pm ET, 10am PT. I will plan these more ahead of time for the future to make it easier for you to plan them on your end.

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•3d ago

Day 9 - Define the Properties for ChatGPT

If you have watched the lesson on Day 4 already you will know that I have a close relationship with properties. Reason #1 -> they can give you the hints in your data that will move the needle in your setup. A specific customer attribute that performs better, a campaign that brings in new users that beat every other cohort. Let's have a look at some properties for ChatGPT that can help them to surface these segments. We define the properties based on the entities we have defined: Account: - account_id: we love ids to later enrich the dataset - account_type: free/paid - in a freemium model this is an existential property to segment two very different account types. Also to understand how well the free model works as channel to paid conversion - account_range_lifetime_chats: how many chats does this account had in its lifetime. This is a range property to make the analysis straight_forward but we would also track account_num_lifetime_chats - account_days_since_last_chat: helpful to understand power and from time to time users (could also need a ranged property) Chat chat_id chat_range_tokens - to understand the size of the chat, could also be broken down into input and output tokens chat_days_active - to understand how many chats last of days or weeks Again the fun part about properties is that they are quite flexible and often tied to specific analysis use cases. Therefore they can change over time.

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•9 days ago

Day 8: ChatGPT - Define the activities

After defining the entities for ChatGPT now it is time to define the activities. Again, remember to think about a lifetime journey with core milestones. Here are the entities that I would use and the activities I would start with: Account - created - the start of the customer journey. Important event for top of the lifetime events - deleted - not a significant event unless you delete accounts after time of inactivity. If you don't do it better use inactivated or set inactive. Subscription - created - renewed - contracted - expanded - cancelled - churned Just the classic MRR bridge/waterfall events Chat - started - finished - if we don't track messages, we would need an event that determines when a chat is finished. This is a classic session calculation case. You could start from the backend to send this after 10m of inactivity. - restarted - important event to send after the chat has been flagged inactive. This helps you to understand if your finished event makes sense or not (when you have plenty of restarts that are just minutes away from the finished) In general, you need to watch this and see if it better needs the messages tracked. Again tracking messages would be semantically a lot easier but it creates massive volumes. If you track messages, you just need a message sent event. Task - started - finished The tasks are special tasks that the model will perform. It would be an abstraction on top of a tool use. This would need a good task categorization, like deep research, web search, image generation, code generation.

alt/introductions•Posted by u/User•9 days ago

Tim Frazer

Hey, I am Tim, 💼 What I do: I'm a director of data & engineering - mostly focused on startups and I am a Part-time consultant Data, Engineering, and analytics. ❤️ Why I’m here: I wanted a place to ask questions and double down on this pretty important part of being successful on the web 🌍 Location: Based out of Philadelphia, USA - but frequently in NYC,London,Vancouver. 💬 Let’s talk about: Tracking Setups, Product Analytics, Product + Revenue, MRR, Unit economics, Event Data Models, Metric Trees, Freelancing, Managing Stakeholders

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•10 days ago

Day 7: Getting our hands dirty: ChatGPT entities

It's now a good time to practice more our skills that we have developed now over the last seven days. What I want you to do is to think about how would you design the entities for ChatGPT. Let's be warned, this is not a simple example. The simple examples we had in the videos. ChatGPT is something that is a little bit exotic because it behaves differently like other products, but therefore it's a super interesting exercise. The exercise for today is: 1. Define the core fundamental entities for ChatGPT. Really think about what is maybe the core entity that is really driving ChatGPT. This might be quite obvious, but also think about the entities surrounding that. 2. Think a little bit more about current strategic moves that OpenAI is doing (just with latest releases). Where they have Operator that is doing stuff for you on the Internet, then they have this new Agent Mode where you can build workflows then they have Codex where you can develop applications from your command line. There are different kinds of directions, so feel free to just pick one and think about how could you create the entities for that. I will create my versions of this as well tomorrow morning, so I will let you know what my thoughts are about that. If comments are not working here, make sure that you first join the space and then write the comments. If they're still not working, just send me your answers via email, and I will have a check. I will also check how we can get the comments up and working, so that we all have the possibility to participate in that.

alt/wip-alt•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•10 days ago

Issues to be solved

Hey, I added some fixes over the last days but heard that for some people core functionality is still not working (I am testing these cases with different test users, but can't reproduce them right now). One thing to work around is to first join a space and then try to comment and post. I will add a fix for this in the next days, but this might solve some of your problems.

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•11 days ago

Day 6: Monday, October 13 - Implementation Strategy

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•13 days ago

Day 5: Friday, October 10 - Properties That Matter

Properties can be like magic! You can establish a basic check out funnel, that will give you baseline metrics. But when you have good properties you can break down the funnel by product categories, sales labels, ranks, and so much more and all these break downs will show you different conversion metrics. And quite often you find a combination of property values that will outperform the other. This is what the video today is about - what types of properties are there, what makes them powerful and what fragile. Here is the video: https://youtu.be/YNxcGvYSnsc Exercise: Define Properties for One Entity** 1. Pick your most important entity 2. List 5-8 meaningful properties 3. Mark which enable segmentation 4. Define one calculated property (e.g., account_age, total_users) 5. For each: "This helps me understand..."

alt/introductions•Posted by u/Mike Harmanos•15 days ago

Mike Harmanos

💼 What do I do: Manager of Marketing Analytics for Savvas Learning Company, a K-12 education platform provider in the United States and Canada. ❤️ Why am I here: I have hacked and gutted my way through learning how to conduct marketing analytics. I do not have a clue whether my methods are sound and delivering value to any organization. I am here to discard old best practices, pick up new ones, and plot a course for my future as an analyst and manager. 🌍 Where am I located: Born in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Work from home 100% of the time from Napa, California. 💬 Let’s talk about: Analytics practices in a world of Artificial Intelligence, Managing Stakeholders, Event Data Models, Marketing Data Warehouses, Performance Measurement, Hypothesis Validation, Data Visualization, and Organizational Effectiveness from An Analytics Perspective.

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•15 days ago

Day 4: Thursday, October 9 - Activity Mapping

We talked about activities already yesterday in our longer session. But this one takes a bit more time to focus more on them. Activities make your setup to something dynamic. It helps you to measure progress, adoption and valuable moments for the users and your business. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/k8X-Odzh95Y Exercise: Map Activities for 2 Entities 1. Pick your 2 most important entities 2. Map 5-8 activities per entity 3. Use format: [Entity] [Activity] (e.g., Account Created) 4. Mark which you currently track vs. missing

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•17 days ago

Day 3: Live Session

No daily video today because we will have our live session in the evening (my time). In the session we will look why classic tracking setups often don't deliver the value they should and how to work with my framework to create analytics setups that are closer to product and business problems. Link to the Zoom Recording: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/7inNUCKKIwgvTwE_s6qNi_ynIFWLotLOa2uStx2XnBxTDsk-6f7Kskbfa71RKAM.HygUjtYYo56C6SwN - Passcode: K*vxB0h. I will edit the video a bit over the next week and then integrate it here directly.

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•17 days ago

Day 2: Tuesday, October 7 - Think in Entities

Day 2: Entities Went from thinking about 100+ events to just 4 entities. User → Account → Project → Asset Everything else is just activities on these. Today you will learn how to zoom out from your current tracking setup and think in entities. These are the building blocks of your product and marketing setups. And when you work with them, they are a nice companion. They rarely change, they are easy to understand and communicate. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/KQ9bF7lwv_U Exercise: Define Your Core Entities 1. List 3-5 core product entities 2. Write one sentence per entity explaining why it's essential 3. Note which team "owns" each entity 4. Check: Can you build your product without any of these?

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•18 days ago

Day 1: Monday, October 6 - Tracking Fitness Assessment

Day 1 of the Tracking Bootcamp! Just did my tracking audit. 147 events. Using 23. That's an 84% waste rate. Time to get fit. What's your tracking fitness score? So - we could start with that. But that is the reason why most people are not happy about their setups. We kick things off with this video, I recorded about "Too Many Events" - open it in YouTube. You will not find it there searching only the link works: https://youtu.be/qu-1L6FMaKs Exercise: Complete Your Tracking Audit: 1. Export your current event list 2. Count total unique events 3. Mark events used in last 30 days 4. Calculate your "tracking fitness score" (used/total × 100) 5. Identify top 10 most-used events If you don't where to find these, let me know, so I can try to help. Ps - I am working on a video post format, so you can watch the videos directly here. Should be coming in the next days.

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•19 days ago

We are starting today!

The first lesson / video will drop later today together with a tiny exercise for you. Maybe do some jumping jacks to warm up.

alt/introductions•Posted by u/Bruno Candeias•19 days ago

Bruno Candeias

Hello everyone, 🌍 Connecting to you all from Portugal. 🛠️ I am currently working as a Global Product & Data Insights Manager, meaning that I am in that hybrid profile, in both applying business expertise during the day, and building resilient data product solutions during the night, 'pipeline dreaming' is a thing!! I have 6 years of consulting experience in technical implementation of data pipelines, GCP, and business process automation, in large financial and telecommunication companies in Portugal, Spain and Canada. 🎯 My goal with this course is to force me to explore other tools and update my tool stack to be more equipped with this new modern frameworks, but also to look for opportunities in proper data engineering roles, and understand more about the space. 🧠 In my current company, in my product, we use both transactional information but also events data, created mostly for billing purposes. However, in my view, the people who created the EDR (events data records) did not plan what they wanted to track and how to create metrics on top of them, specially operational ones. Which is then my role to make magic with very few datapoints. I want to improve this situation, so, here I am learning from the best :)

alt/wip-alt•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•19 days ago

New Releases in the last days

I just added some new fixes and features: - fixed a bug that you could not comment on a post (this happened when you have not joined the sub alt) - added image posts and comments - something we need for the starting cohort.

alt/introductions•Posted by u/Miguel Curiel•21 days ago

Miguel Curiel

Hi! I'm Miguel. 💼 What I do: Currently doing full-time product analytics in tech (Bloomberg) and writing a book on product analytics on the side. Before this, I've held other data roles in smaller tech companies, worked as a consultant in market research, and even did neuroscience. ❤️ Why I’m here: I genuinely love learning and have become passionate about product analytics. I've also enjoyed becoming more active in the community for the past couple of years and want to learn more from some of the best and kindest voices out there! 🌍 Location: Born in Mexico, currently based in Washington, DC 💬 Let’s talk about: Product Analytics, Data Science, Machine Learning, User Behavior, Psychology, Sociology, Storytelling, AI, Content Creation

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•22 days ago

Tracking Fail #2: "We Forgot to Add Tracking, But We Have to Go Live Tomorrow"

The most expensive sentence in product analytics. Picture this: Six months of development. Countless sprints. Multiple rounds of QA. The feature is polished, tested, and ready. Tomorrow's the big launch. Then someone asks: "Did we add the event tracking?" Silence. We all have been here. The Sliding Backlog Syndrome Here's how it typically unfolds: Sprint 1: "We'll add tracking in the next sprint" Sprint 5: "Let's focus on the core feature first" Sprint 10: "We're too close to launch to risk breaking anything" Launch day: "Can we add it quickly?" The answer is either a rushed, error-prone implementation or launching blind—neither option is good. Why This Keeps Happening Event tracking consistently slides down the backlog because it's never seen as "blocking" the feature. The feature works without it, right? But here's what you're actually launching without: -> No idea if users even find the feature -> No way to measure if it solves the problem -> No data to guide iterations -> No proof of ROI for the six months invested (ok, this is even hard with data) The Simple Fix One line in your definition of done: "Tracking implemented and tested." (you don't have DoD - well, we should have a different talk). Make tracking requirements part of the initial user stories, not an afterthought. When you write "User can upload video comments," include "Track when video comment is started, completed, and viewed."

alt/introductions•Posted by u/Tomek Karwat•28 days ago

Tomek Karwat

Hey I'm Tomasz, 💼 What I do: Digital Analytics Engineer & Consultant ❤️ Why I’m here: I am a nerd, I enjoy learning and I came across Timo book lately (after reading one interesting article). I'm growing my own digital analytics agency and want to build more knowledge and processes for it. 🌍 Location: Wrocław, Poland 💬 Let’s talk about: Tracking Setups(Server-side and Client-side), Event Data Models, Marketing Data warehouses, AI usage for Analytics efficiency

alt/events•Posted by u/Juliana Jackson•29 days ago

After Hours tonight!

Join the fun with me and Timo! https://meet.google.com/wnz-cwat-sar?authuser=0

alt/introductions•Posted by u/User•29 days ago

Ana Burciu

Hey 👋 I'm Ana, 💼 What I do: Product Consultant & Coach at Just Mad (https://www.justmad.co/) ❤️ Why I’m here: as I don't have a technical background, I want to learn more about tracking setups, event data models, operationalizing metric trees, combining usage data with revenue data, and so on. 🌍 Location: Based in Cluj, Romania 🧛 💬 Let’s talk about: designing workshops for product teams to figure out how to measure success (goal definition, NSM definition, KPI Trees, metric maps, generating experiments, etc), consulting, selling workshops

alt/cohort-1-build-better-tracking-setups•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•about 1 month ago

Tracking Fail #1 - Lost identities

I would say I spent most of my time when debugging tracking and analytics with finding out why the funnels look weird. Identity issues can be nasty, because they often are not binary (works, works not), but just in part of the data (people with specific flows). And they can create a lot of distrust in the data. Sign up on desktop, confirm email on mobile? That's two different users in your analytics. Your backend sends beautiful events with user IDs, but they never connect to the frontend because you forgot one identify() call. In B2B marketing it is even worse site → app → payment flow. Each step is another chance to lose the thread. That enterprise deal that closed last month? Good luck proving it came from that LinkedIn campaign. You need a clear identity strategy (I usually have a Miro board with user flows and systems involved) to understand potential break points and where to test regularly.

alt/wip-alt•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•about 1 month ago

We need your feedback!

As you can see - this is almost a blank page here. And that is on purpose. We want to create this space together. And this is the sub-alt for it. Feel free to add new feature ideas, content ideas here and let us discuss them.

alt/public-square•Posted by u/Timo Dechau•about 1 month ago

Welcome to ALT+

It's great to have you all here. As you can see. This is a real move in and warm up party right. All is pretty basic at the moment. And there will be some rough edges. But this is by design. We can make it to the place we want to have. Things to do, before the first cohort kicks off in two weeks: 1 - Add Thursday 25th 8pm CEST, 2pm ET, 11am PT to your calendar since we will do our first office hours. I will send invites later this week 2 - Write a short introduction- you can use my template or just write it however you like 3 - Go to https://goalt.plus/alt/wip-alt - and add your ideas about features and topics we should add here.