My thoughts on the SEMphonic X Change conference and a wee rant
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Last week I had the privilege and pleasure of attending SEMphonic’s first ever X Change conference. My friend Gary Angel asked me to give the keynote speech and lead a “huddle” on the processes involved in doing web analytics. As I posted back in August, I was pretty excited about the event because of the format SEMphonic had selected — building the event around small-group interactions rather than the “big room, talk-at-you-not-to-you” format so common in conferences today.
Not that I have anything against big conferences, Jim Sterne’s formerly-called-the-Emetrics Summit is still my favorite conference of all time even thought it will probably grow past 600 in Washington next month, and I had a blast at both Shop.ORG (2000+) and Holland’s E-Day (1500+) and hope to be invited to Internet Retailer’s event in Chicago next summer (rumored to be 5000+). But in my experience big conferences actually limit what you’re able to learn if you’re a face-to-face communicator like me. I always end up having short conversations with people in the hallways between presentations or at social events, and the really deep stuff ends up happening in the proverbial (and real!) lobby bar.
SEMphonic X Change was different.
The huddles more-or-less forced us all to expand on our ideas and share our experiences. The one I led on process was great (I thought) and I ended up agreeing to print and produce “NO TAGS, NO TRACKING” t-shirts for all 15 people in the room. But I was absolutely blown away by the huddles I attended:
- Terry Cohen of Digitas, leading a conversation about measuring engagement that covered how engagement can be measured from the microscopic to the macroscopic level.
- Joseph Carrabis of NextStage, leading a conversation about attitudes and communication
- Matt Belkin of Omniture, leading a conversation about combining online and offline data
- Aaron Gray of WebTrends, leading a conversation about using behavioral data (an EXCELLENT huddle IMHO!)
Think about it: Four huddles led by four of the brightest minds in measurement today (okay, three, since Joseph explicitly states that he’s not a measurement wonk like the rest of us, but he’s the biggest thinker I know …) and there were only 10 people in the conversation on average.
How cool is that?
Not all the huddles were apparently as good as the four I attended, but overall everyone I talked to was quite impressed with the format. And everyone I talked to agreed that they would be back at X Change next year (providing Gary and Joel have the event, which I certainly hope they do!)
I strongly recommend that you consider SEMphonic X Change next year if your schedule permits, especially if you’re an opinionated measurement wonk who isn’t afraid to spout off about stuff they believe to be important (yes Ian, you.)
On that point, this event would have been even better if just a few more people would have made the trip, thought-leaders like Avinash Kaushik (shockingly absent, despite being able to basically walk to Napa from his house if you’re in shape), Brett Crosby from Google Analytics, the Jims (Novo and Sterne), at least one Eisenberg (they sent JQvT instead), Stephane Hamel (budget constraints), Rene and Aurelie, Steve Jackson, the aforementioned Ian, and probably a few dozen more people I’m forgetting, apologies!
I say this because I really believe what I said in my keynote:
Collectively “we” are the web analytics industry.
The vendors are not the industry, the Web Analytics Association is not the industry, all of us are the web analytics industry, and collectively we need to debate and discuss what this industry is going to become. But I don’t believe we can make the decisions necessary in the Yahoo! group, on phone calls, or over email. We need to sit down, face-to-face-to-face and talk about standards, debate definitions, compare notes, and use our old fashioned “Web 0.0″ skills to hash out some of the really hard stuff that remains left to tackle.
Jacques Warren made a similar comment in my call for the WAA to “do something” with their recently published standards document and he is spot-on correct. Web analytics is hard, and it isn’t going to get any easier if we just sit and listen. Let’s sit and talk, let’s debate, let’s act.
’nuff said.
I’ll leave you with this parting shot about X Change, a comparison I’m shocked that nobody smarter than I has already made:
- Emetrics is the Web 1.0 conference for web analytics where you will learn a ton and be very happy
- X Change is the Web 2.0 conference for web analytics where you will contribute a ton and be very satisfied
Mad props to Gary, Joel, Grace, Barbara, Phil, June, and everyone else at SEMphonic for throwing such an amazing event!
Posted Thursday, September 27th, 2007 | 5 responses | Add a Comment | Share, Save or Email
