Naming as infrastructure
Verb-object events, ticket-named debris, and the social cost of a synonym. You produce the first shore of the Telemetry Atlas and are not allowed to add a packet without retiring one.
Flagship programme
Signal Architecture for Mobile Products
Twelve weeks to rebuild the packet grid of an app you already ship. You leave with a written instrumentation charter, a retention surface that can be attacked in a meeting, and a public limitation you are willing to own.
Learning outcomes
What you should be able to do on week twelve.
- Write a packet charter that names owners, freeze rules, and a deletion list.
- Separate session grain from user grain without hiding behind a vendor default.
- Draw a retention surface with at least one valley you can explain in ordinary English.
- Brief engineering on property types so “plan” does not become seventeen strings.
- Refuse a vanity packet in a product meeting and still keep the room.
- State one honest limitation of your measurement and keep it in the board pack.
Modules
The term, week by week in spirit
Property discipline
Types, nulls, enumerations, and the contour plate. We read a live export from your app — messy on purpose — and mark which columns are allowed to reach a dashboard.
Session against user
Where activation actually lives. Operators from marketplaces and games argue differently; the module forces a written choice rather than a compromise sentence.
Retention surfaces
Not a single curve. Day, week, and the silent interval. You will throw away one chart you have been presenting for months. That is assessed.
Readouts without vanity
A short experiment module: guardrails, peeking, and shipping decisions. Advertising attribution is out of scope and will be named as such in class.
Governance and the United Kingdom edge
Who may mint a name, how long a trail may live, and how to talk to legal without emptying the taxonomy. The viva is the last Friday: a defence, not a showcase.
Principal
Ioan Ellery
Principal of Controlpacketgrid. Previously analytics lead at a Glasgow games studio, then a quiet year inside a London marketplace that had three competing activation definitions. Ioan writes the Atlas plates and sits every viva. Guest operators join for M04 and M06; they do not replace the principal.
Fee
£1,840 for the term.
Informational only — no checkout here. The figure covers twelve studios, the viva, and twenty-four months on the alumni list. It does not cover travel to the twice-yearly London table, engineering implementation, or a warehouse rebuild. Invoices, when a seat is offered, come from the Milton desk. See the fee table and refunds.
From the room
M04 made us admit our “D7” included people who had only opened a push. Awkward in the viva. Useful the following Monday.
I wanted more warehouse recipes than they will give. If you come for SQL theatre, you will be redirected to the charter. I stayed. The freeze protocol is what I still use.
Questions we actually get
Do I need a particular analytics vendor?
No. Bring whatever currently fires. The term is about names, grain, and governance. Switching warehouse tools mid-term is discouraged because it becomes an implementation project wearing a teaching mask.
Can two people from the same company share a seat?
No. Two seats may be purchased at the listed figure each. A third is declined so the cohort does not turn into an internal stand-up. A guest engineer may attend Ledger-style sessions by arrangement; they do not sit the viva.
What will you not teach?
We do not teach advertising attribution, SKAdNetwork workarounds, or paid-media ROAS. If that is the question in your head, this is the wrong room — we will say so in the first reply rather than stretch M05 into a media course. We also will not write your events for you while you watch.
How large is the live room?
Last winter the live studio averaged 3.8 people; eleven were on the list including observers. We cap the viva table at twelve. If you need a private desk instead, that is the Observatory, not this term.