#NMX Speakers Measured! Who Are The Big Kahunas?

This weekend, AIMCLEAR has the pleasure of attending a new conference for us, NMX originally blogworld.  Since 2007 bloggers, podcasters, web TV, video producers and other digital content creators have been gathering in Las Vegas to attend what organizers tout as: “The biggest New Media expo in the World.” Sounds awesome!

A handful of the speakers are well known to us from our other conference communities, which include SMX, PubCon, SES, SearchInsiderSummit and numerous others around the world. Still, we don’t know many of the dozens over dozens of NMX speakers.  Being AIMCLEAR, we asked our data team to measure this year’s NMX speakers algorithmically to understand the community better, who runs with the big dogs if you will.

The data is in! This post shares the results of our study.  Read on to find out which speakers are NMX big Kahunas segmented by biggest blogger, podcaster, YouTuber, social media and biggest overall!

How Speakers Were Measured
Let’s face it. Some “ranking” and “scoring” factors out there in the world are kind of lame.  That’s why after we share the big winners below, there’s a detailed explanation of the algorithm we used, including a downloadable spreadsheet with the data and an explanation of each tab.

Essentially, we aggregated multiple first and third party sources to come up with curated averages of other services’ rankings, reviews, ratings, scores, etc. Social score data included aggregated sources such as: Moz, Kred, PeerIndex and Klout.  We looked at how multiple third party services ranked speaker’s reach for each discipline. Then, we aggregated and weighted them for each category to get our results.

No score is perfect. So, please feel free to download the data, add new sources and data points, tweak the scores the way you believe they should be and let us know what you come up with.  No matter what, we hope you’ll find the spreadsheet itself an asset as a DIY algo example.  We can tell you that the process certainly helped AIMCLEAR decide which speakers to focus on here this weekend at NMX and should be useful to others. We totally learned which speakers we’re going to check out at NMX!

Biggest NMX Blogger & Podcaster Speaker: Leo Laporte

Leo wins the blogging category based on his massive RSS following.  He has 22,775 subscribers across his blogs in Feedly, which is 6,000 more followers than the next contender.  Check out Leo’s content at TWiT.tv!  He launched the network in 2005 with its first show, “This Week In Tech”, and continues to host that show and others on the network including “Macbreak Weekly,” “The Giz Wiz,” “Before You Buy,” “Security Now,” “This Week In Google,” “Triangulation,” “Windows Weekly,” “iPad Today” and “The Tech Guy.”

Leo wins the podcast category as well, based on the sum of his podcast ratings (average rating x # of ratings) as the total number of ratings.  His totals were aggregates of 9 different podcasts operated on his podcast network, TWiT.tv.  Check out his NMX 2014 sessions, “The Future of Podcasting” (Monday, January 6 • 9:00am – 10:30am) and “Delivering HD Video at Scale: What you can learn from Leo Laporte” (Monday, January 6 • 1:45pm – 2:30pm). Here’s Leo’s NMX speaker profile page.

Blog runners up are: Robert Scoble, Lee Odden, Darlene Hildebrandt & Tamsen Webster. Podcast runners up are: Christof Laputka, Scott Sigler, Pat Flynn & John Lee.

Biggest NMX YouTube Speaker: Greg Benson

Greg wins the NMX Big Kahuna YouTube category by having the most YouTube subscribers – blowing the competition away at nearly 10x the #2 speaker.  His credits include acting, directing, editing, producing, writing and composing.  With more than 300 million video views and over one million subscribers across his channels, Greg Benson is one of YouTube’s most popular comedians. He’s scored dozens of viral video hits with his outrageous pranks, comedy sketches, music videos and web series. Greg also created and/or directed the popular series “The Guild,” “Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show” and “Retarded Policeman” and works directly with advertisers such as MTV, Sony, Microsoft, Gillette and Pizza Hut to create viral branded videos.

You are likely to enjoy his YT channel, MediocreFilms described as, “Insane pranks and stuff from the guy you probably wish was your dad.”  Don’t miss his session, The Business of Prank Videos, Saturday, January 4 • 11:45am – 12:30pm. Here’s Greg’s NMX speaker profile page.

Runners up are: Jennifer McDonnell, Antonio Centeno, Kent Nichols & Matt Enlow.

Biggest NMX Social Media Speaker: Matthew Berry

Matthew wins the social category NMX Kahuna based on a combination of his Moz, Kred, PeerIndex, and Klout scores as well as his Twitter stats.  Universally regarded as one of the leading voices on fantasy sports, Matthew Berry is ESPN’s Senior Fantasy Sports Analyst. Known as the “Talented Mr. Roto,” he’s an Emmy winner for ESPN2’s Fantasy Football Now. As one of the most popular columnists & podcasters on ESPN.com, he appears regularly on many ESPN TV & radio shows. He is one of only four people to be in the Hall of Fame of both the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association. Matthew’s first book, Fantasy Life, debuted at #5 on the New York Times best seller list.

Don’t miss Matthew’s entertaining tweets from @MatthewBerryTMR.  His NMX 2014 session, “Welcome To ESPN PodCenter… Wait, Don’t Go,” is at Saturday, January 4 • 2:30pm – 3:15pm. Here’s his NMX speaker profile page.

Runners up are: Scott Stratten, Amy Lupold Bair, Robert Scoble & Dr. Drew Pinsky.

Biggest Overall Speaker: Pat Flynn

Pat just eked a big Kahuna win out over Leo Laporte for this category as a result of  his YouTube channel!  Pat received the highest score with 64%.  Congrats on being a well-rounded internet citizen with an active blog, podcast, Twitter, and YouTube channel! Pat Flynn is a beloved thought leader in the areas of online entrepreneurship, digital marketing, and lifestyle businesses. He is routinely celebrated for his transparent leadership style and authentic principles.

His Super Session, “How to Convert Your Casual Readers into a Thriving Community of Raving Fans,” takes place at Saturday, January 4 • 10:30am – 11:30am. Have a look at Pat’s NMX speaker profile page.

Runners up are: Leo Laporte, Michael Hyatt, Lou Mongello & Scott Sigler.

Download the Excel File

• ·Results Tab
  • These are the results for top speakers in each category.

• Raw Podcast Tab
  • This is where we warehoused the podcast data.  Some speakers are listed multiple times because they have multiple podcasts

• Temp Pivot Tab
  • This is where we aggregated and crunched the podcast data for each speaker.

• · Metrics Tab
  • This is how we scored everything.  The left section includes data about each metric (like max and average) as well as the total weight in the score.  Blogging received 25%, Podcast received 25% (split between the 3 submetrics), etc.  Feel free to change this weight and it will affect the scores on the next tab.
  • The right-hand section is the scoring thresholds, which list the minimum number to achieve each score.  For example, to score a 3 in the “Feedly Subscribers” section you must have at least 219 subscribers.  This is a linear progression based on the maximum and average numbers for each metric.

• Final Metrics Tab
  • These are the final numbers AND scores for each speaker.  Changing anything on the previous tab (Metrics) will affect the scores in this tab.  Remember to scroll over as the data goes all the way to column AE.

• Final Pretty Tab
  • This is the same data as Final Metrics, but with actual scores removed for better viewing.  A green cell indicates the highest scorer(s) in each category and a yellow cell indicates the 2nd and 3rd highest scorers.  Note that this tab is NOT dynamically updated, so if you change metrics around they will populate to Final Metrics, but not to this tab.

About The Data Points Gathered

• Social
  • Aggregated and weighted Moz, Kred, PeerIndex, and Klout scores
  • Raw Twitter data
• Feedly
  • A reasonable indication of readers, although the data excludes people that receive emails instead of using RSS.

• Podcasts
  • Podcasts were only listed if a) the speakers listed them on their NMX profile page or b) we were able find additional podcasts searching for the speaker’s name (using PodBay.fm).
  • A concern with podcast ratings is that they don’t  tell us how many people listen.  Some genres have people more likely to rate podcasts, while others may have many listeners but no raters.
• YouTube
  • All numbers were gathered directly from YouTube.  These are based again on a) channels speakers listed on their NMX speaker profile page and b) channels we found while searching the speaker’s name.