Statistically significant moments in the experimentation industry this decade

"This is the year of CRO," said André Morys. It's 2010. He's in San Jose, California. He's hot. He's eating a fish taco. And he's talking about taking over the world with Chris Goward. They set up "Conversion Alliance" and wait for the CRO dollars to pour in. Ten years later, the decade is over (or is it?) and the industry is just getting started.

Looking backward...

1. Sean Ellis coins "Growth hacker" in 2010 and the experimentation industry is forced to play along.
2. Peep Laja founds the CXL Institute in 2011, teaching CRO best practice at scale. A/B test practitioners revel in yet another good reason to visit Austin.
3. Chris Goward publishes, "You Should Test That" in 2012. The book evangelizes A/B testing and promotes the Lift Model and the Infinity Optimization Process.
4. The first Opticon conference launches on April 17, 2014 in San Francisco. Optimizely announces their mobile A/B testing product. We see Siroker's latest sneakers.
5. In 2015, "This is the year of personalization" begins its undefeated reign.
6. Google Optimize goes free in 2017, lowering the barrier to testing.
7. Accenture Interactive scoops up Matty Wishnow's Clearhead in July 2017. "Customer experience" is a winner. A/B testing grimaces.
8. Harvard Business Review publishes "The Surprising Power of Online Experiments" helping validate experimentation for C-Suite holdouts in September 2017. The article launches Thomke and Kohavi on the speaking tour circuit and coins overall evaluation criterion (OEC). North Star metric fans scoff.
9. The international consultancy, GO Group Digital, officially forms in 2018, servicing companies with international experimentation programs.
10. Optimizely launches on-demand A/B test development in fall 2019, accelerating the commoditization of test development. Server-side testing gloats. 
11. Jeff Bezos cements his unofficial status as the ambassador of experimentation in his 2018 letter to shareholders (released April 2019). "As a company grows, everything needs to scale, including the size of your failed experiments. If the size of your failures isn’t growing, you’re not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle."
12. AI-powered, Machine-Learning, and Big Data algorithms rocket up the Hype Cycle. Kameleoon Predict™ joins chorus in 2019.
13. It's December 2019. Recovering from a Christmas party, CRO sits back and reflects. Decides to rebrand. "2020 will officially be the year of experimentation," says CRO. "And, of course, personalization."

What did I miss?

Special thanks to Peep Laja, André Morys, Chris Goward, and Nima Yassini.