Did you know many Metrics people are also Artists and Writers too?  I read a couple of years ago that most Search Engine Optimizers were formally Liberal Arts students, Artists and Writers, Musicians, Creative People.   I don’t recall the exact source of where I read about the background of SEO people.

Being an artist in a former life but not painting anymore - i still look at my Metrics and SEO/SEM work as a painting - and when I look at other people’s paintings I can often imagine what it’s like to paint it (i can relate to the work on a gut level).   Most of the time - I don’t feel anything great when I look at someone else’s work.

But every so often, I look at a painting and I understand what the artist felt like (which is different than what the artist is deplicting), and what that makes me feel like.  When the artist is dead a long time, esp, and I can still "feel" something - I know the work was good, maybe great. 

I felt that way when I saw Manet’s Dinner in the Park (if that’s what it’s called - I don’t remember the exact name anymore) in Paris several years ago.

Anyway - that was then.  Today, everything is different and something like this moves me.

It’s empty - there’s no story here - and it harkens back to 1970’s, Al Held type Abstract Expressionism - Op Art, or whatever came after.  But do you know how hard it is to make a 3D space look like a 2D space?  Very hard.

The real problem though - is that for all the ingenuity to create effect (3D-2D-3D) it really does look any differenet than if I took a photo or computer image and added the lines over the picture.  And the way these images move me is different - i respect the work that was done but the work is still empty - the work is technical - even creative - yet missing the creative spark.

While it’s interesting to fool the Brain and Eye to see 3D spaces as 2D - it does not all anything to my life.

When I think about WebMetrics - about showing my Institutional Investors’ Group how well thier Podcasts were downloaded last month - that moves me - and that helps them know how effective their work is.  I make a nice chart and give them percentages and the numbers behind them, and that, to me, is Art.

The real goal of Web Metics - is the same goal of the Artist - it’s to imform and inspire; it’s more than a bunch of numbers or a cute PowerPoint presentation.  Good Metrics has the power to move organizations, to literally define and possible change their goals.