Kicking off 2026 with a bang, we squeezed a healthy mix of long-timers and first-timers upstairs at COhatch Upper Arlington. We opened the event with a bit of a look back and forward on this meetup that has been running since 2008 (!) and followed up with presentation by one of our OG organizers, Tim Wilson, about KPIs.

Some of the highlights of Tim’s talk included:

• How KPIs are at the core of one key way that organizations use data: performance measurement
• How performance measurement—when done well—is the construction of a metaphorical time machine: we establish clear, outcome-oriented KPIs as a way to align on our expectations for what results we will achieve with a campaign, project, or initiative; that then allows us to look at results (in the future) and travel back in time (metaphorically) to objectively compare those results to our expectations.
• This is simple, right? But not easy?
• Can AI do that? Can we just ask AI. “How did my campaign perform?” We can, but the best response it will give will look like the response that a pretty lousy analyst would provide to the question: a puking of data with some arbitrary comparisons to other data that it can access. So, no. We can’t just ask AI. Performance measurement is about humans aligning on expectations for business outcomes.
• What does work for this? Asking two magic questions: 1) What are we trying to achieve (with this effort)? and 2) How will we know if we’ve done that? That second question is a two-parter: it requires identifying one or more direct or proxy measures (KPIs) and targets for each of those measures.
• Business teams (marketers are particularly guilty of this) loathe setting targets. It freaks them out. They have a lot of good-sounding excuses for why they can’t set targets.
• But they’re wrong. No targets. No time machine. Ineffective performance measurement.
• A (Mini) Wisdom of the Crowds approach is a great way to set targets, though, and everyone gets on board quickly: just have everyone come up with a target (their expectation) independently (since everyone’s got the assignment, no one feels individually exposed) and then share what proposed targets they came up with. This will always spark a thoughtful discussion and a quick alignment on what the target (or target range) should be.
• AI also comes into this process when we talk about AI initiatives. They, too, can have their performance measured with those two magic questions—what business outcome is the effort trying to achieve, and how will that be measured?

Lots of good stuff. Tim even dressed up as the AI cartoon that was sprinkled throughout the presentation. And, he measured the performance of the session itself in real-time by polling the audience at the very end, which was also an opportunity for him to give away a few signed copies of his book, Analytics the Right Way, and a signed copy of John Lovett‘s book, The *NEW* Big Book of KPIs. All of that was really an excuse for him to create an R script that he’d have to run on the fly during the presentation. Despite creating the perfect opportunity for this scripting to fail, Tim’s prayers to the gods of R paid off and everything worked.

The slides he used (including the results of the measurement of the session itself! Spoiler: he handily exceeded the target for the two KPIs he’d established) are available below: