Yep, it’s that time of the year again, time for my bi- (soon to be tri-) annual pilgrimage to Europe to meet with some of the best and the brightest overseas. I’m very excited about this trip for a handful of reasons:

1. The trip begins in London next Monday at what is likely to be the largest event in the history of Web Analytics Wednesday. Thanks to the fine folks from SCL Analytics and Unica and a little support from E-Consultancy there are currently 128 people registered to attend the event! London has always been a hotbed of WAW activity and this is my first time attending the event. I’ll be giving a short presentation on “The Future of Web Analytics” and taking questions from the audience.
2. On Tuesday I will be presenting at Nedstat’s “Streaming Media on the Move” event at London’s Soho Hotel and talking about the white paper I recently authored with Nedstat’s Chief of Innovation and how measurement is changing in a Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 world.
3. Wednesday and Thursday I will be in Amsterdam doing private presentations. Over the years I have grown to love the beauty, culture, and diversity Amsterdam has to offer (despite the presence of what Aurelie lovingly refers to as “the narcotourists!”)
4. Friday I will be in Brussels, Belgium with the fine folks at OX2 giving a private presentation and participating in another special Web Analytics Wednesday event (albeit a somewhat smaller affair)
5. The following Monday I will be in Helsinki, Finland working with my partner Trainer’s House/Satama and giving a presentation on Measuring Lead Generation site. The folks at Satama are great to work with and I’m very excited about getting to spend more than 18 hours in Helsinki this time …
6. Back to London on the 8th for some client work and home on the 9th. Phew!

If you’re in or near London or Brussels I’d love to meet you at one of the Web Analytics Wednesday events. I suspect I will also have a little free time in Amsterdam and Helsinki so if you’d like to meet in one of those cities, please feel free to drop me a line and we can try and meet!

Long-time readers surely know that I hold June Dershewitz in high regard; not only do I consider her a friend, I respect June as one of the most talented web analytics practitioners and consultants I have ever met. More importantly, June is one of the most fair-minded and thoughtful people working in our industry today, which is why I’m so delighted that she has decided to run for Web Analytics Association board of directors.

To help spread the word about June’s candidacy she allowed me to interview her via email. My questions and her answers follow:

June, can you tell me what made you decide to run for the Web Analytics Association (WAA) Board of Directors?

The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until last month, Eric, when you suggested that I put my name on the ballot. The more I considered it, and the more people I talked to about what I could possibly bring to the Board, the more I realized that it was a great idea. I’ve invested a lot of energy in developing the web analytics community in my own local area, and I know that I could bring the same energy up a level to help the web analytics community at large on behalf of the WAA.

In a nutshell, what are the top three reasons you believe yourself to be qualified for the board position?

1. I’ve been a hands-on web analyst my entire professional career, I love this work, and I am one of the strongest advocates you’ll find for our trade.
2. I take volunteer work seriously. The Board is made up of volunteers who’ve agreed to spend 15-20 hours per month on the cause. That’s a lot to ask, but I’m ready to make a serious commitment to the job.
3. I don’t play favorites. I want to make sure that we all benefit from the WAA’s efforts, and to that end I will strive to move the organization in a direction that’s in the best interest for all of us.

Have you given any thought to the kinds of things you would like to see the WAA accomplish in during your term if you are elected?

By all means we need to expand our member base at a rate that keeps up with the growth of our field, and at the same time we need to make sure that existing members continue to find value in their memberships. I’m all in favor of finding new ways to provide tangible, useful benefits to members. I also believe we need to form tighter bonds with related associations whose missions overlap with ours, especially as the scope of web analytics becomes broader. In terms of topics that are near and dear to me, I would like to see the formalization of local chapters and the development of a mentoring program.

I know you’re really involved in the web analytics community (being a founder of Web Analytics Wednesday!) Can you describe some of the other work you’ve done for our community in the past?

Web Analytics Wednesday has been a huge focus of my community involvement over the past couple of years. It’s evolved to the point where I’m not only heading up a monthly event series here in San Francisco, I’m also helping other organizers get started with their own events throughout the Bay Area and beyond. My work with WAW has really helped build an established local presence for the web analytics community, and I’m pleased to see similar developments in other cities where WAW has taken hold.

Within the WAA proper, I’ve been involved in the Education Committee, where I helped develop the document that will become the Web Analytics Body of Knowledge, and more recently I’ve become a member of Marshall Sponder’s Social Media Committee. I’m also contributing articles aimed at people who are new to the field of web analytics; my first one came out last month.

You’re running against some pretty heavy hitters in the field, folks like Avinash Kaushik and Jim Sterne to name a few. As you’ve looked at the slate of candidates, who would you like to see elected in this cycle: Who would you like to work with in 2008 and 2009 and why?

I would be honored to work with any previous Board member, especially those – like Avinash – who’ve voluntarily put themselves up for re-election a year early just so we’d have a balance of open positions this year and next.

As far as new people go, it would be great to get to work with Alex Langshur and Vicky Brock. After reading through all 17 candidate statements, I really like what those two have to say: Alex, because he’s committed to achievable goals aimed at bringing value to members, and Vicky, because she sees (as I do) web analytics evolving into business analytics.

Recently Lars Johansson of Satama proposed the idea of term limits for WAA board members, something that I don’t think is in place currently. What do you think? Should WAA board members be limited to one or two terms, or should people be free to serve for as long as they’re able to be re-elected?

The WAA has finally been around long enough for us to consider that issue. I’m definitely in favor of having a 2-term cap on Board membership. Our field is growing so quickly - there are great new people getting started all the time. If they have the energy and the inclination to run for the Board, I want to make sure they have every opportunity to get a spot – even without the name recognition that long-time Board members necessarily have.

Four years from now I’d love to see the Board made up of an entirely new set of people, full of enthusiasm and fresh ideas. By then we’ll be established enough as an association that our mission will be clear to whoever happens to be sitting in the driver’s seat.

You’re a web analytics blogger (one of my favorites!) so here’s an easy one: who’s blogs do you like to read and why do you like them?

Blogs are such a great way to keep up with our field and our community; I make a point to subscribe to everything I come across. Lately I’ve enjoyed Florian Pihs’s blog (I’m outing myself, he doesn’t know I’m a fan) because he’s covering web analytics in China and it’s a unique perspective that I could never hope to get on my own. Oh, and I like to follow bloggers whose sense of humor shines through in their writing, like Alex Cohen and Ian Thomas and (the occasional) Bob Page.

Some have accused the WAA of being somewhat close-minded and having a “not invented here” attitude, something that has the potential to negatively impact the community as a whole. Can you tell me if you encounter this how you might approach the problem?

I believe this attitude tends to propagate when the WAA’s activities are perceived as being shrouded in mystery. As members it’s really tough to figure out why certain policy decisions have been made when you don’t know what’s swirling around behind the scenes. I think it would be a lot better for everybody if more of what the WAA did, decision-wise, happened out in the public. I think we can do a better job being open with all members about what’s going on. Better communication - more honest, thorough communication - would keep negative sentiment in check.

What is your favorite thing about web analytics?

It’s a good intellectual challenge. There’s something about the natural shape of the data that lends itself really well to interesting, solvable story problems.

What is your least favorite thing about web analytics?

The occasional mistaken belief that what we’re doing is spying.

Ours is an increasingly international community and I firmly believe that some of the most exciting opportunities for growth in the industry are in Europe and Asia. Can you describe your experience working with international members of our community?

Over the course of my career I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a pretty global group. For 2 years I was employed by a first-generation web analytics vendor whose main office was in Britain; I spent some time working there, which was a great learning experience. Later, as a member of the central web analytics group at Oracle, I collaborated with an international team of marketers, analysts and developers. Now, as a consultant, I often find myself on the phone with clients many time zones away. Outside of work I’ve also enjoyed meeting international members of our community at conferences and through my blog.

Like you, I believe that our industry has a lot of growth potential beyond North America, and I want to make sure that the WAA does all it can to support international members by encouraging regional/local community, providing non-English language resources, and acknowledging the differences in the way we do business.

Fill in the blanks (here June’s responses are in bold print)

1. At Emetrics, after 10 PM, you’re going to find me in the middle of a great conversation.
2. On a long flight, I spend most of my time photographing my snack to post on Flickr as airplanefood.
3. The one thing most people don’t know about me is I have a herd of dairy goats named in my honor.
4. Everything I know about web analytics I learned from all the smart people I’ve gotten to work with and for over the past decade.

Anything else you think my readers should know about you as they prepare to vote this week?

If, after reading this, you’ve got any questions about where I stand or what my values are, you can write to me directly at june.dershewitz@gmail.com. I aim to represent every one of you, and I welcome your feedback, now and at any point in the future.

Following up on my post from Monday of this week announcing that Joseph Carrabis of NextStage Evolution will be joining “The Engagement Project” and bringing his mathematical expertise to the table, Mr. Carrabis has summarized what he’ll initially be doing for the chef in all of us.

According to Mr. Carrabis:

“Eric’s already posted that I’ll be working with him to make the formula more applicable to a wider variety of interfaces with greater general use features. I also know that I can always use help and have repeatedly and publicly stated that I don’t know web analytics.

So, first steps? A semantically exact statement of what we’re hoping to measure. I suggest this step because it’s much easier to know if your variables will result in the desired solution if you are exact in what the solution looks like and what you have to put into that solution.

Think of it this way; You want to make some chicken soup and you use your grandmother’s recipe. I want to make some chicken soup and I use my grandmother’s recipe. But your grandmother is Irish and mine is Italian. I’ll bet we’d use different spices, different vegetables, different noodles (if indeed we both did).

But I’d bet we both use chicken stock as a base. And is your chicken stock from the leftovers of a roast chicken? What spices did you use there? Or is your stock from bullion?

So the first step is to decide what we all mean by “chicken soup”. One of my mentors was a genius of an author who use to write “speculative fiction”. I would ask, “What is speculative fiction?” and he’d reply “It’s what I’m pointing at when I say it.” This is a great anecdote and an undefensible statement (except in cultural anthropology). If one person “owns” the definition of “speculative fiction”, “chicken soup” or “engagement” then that definition is only valid so long as there exists a market for that definition.

However, a definition that says something like “Basic Chicken Soup”, that is something I can start with to make “Italian Chicken Soup” and allows my Irish friend to extend it to “Irish Chicken Soup”? Now that’s a good definition.

I snuck the concept of “extendable” into the above. “Extendable” means the definition accommodates special cases (Italian, Irish, etc). Think of a recipe for Italian Chicken Soup that begins “Step 1: Make the Basic Chicken Soup. Step 2: Now add garlic, oregano, …” That “Step 2″ part means that the original definition isn’t limited, that it can be extended to incorporate specific features to make it unique to a given environment (Italian, Irish, …).

The concept of “extensible” has two parts; First, you can substitute one thing for another if they share some basic properties. For example, you can substitute a glass of wine for a glass of water in the recipe because they’re both liquids. You can’t substitute a lamb chop for a glass of water, though. Mathematically, this means that if we want to include “clickthroughs” we can use whatever product A calls clickthroughs, whatever product B calls clickthroughs, etc., so long as they all meet some definition of “clickthroughs” (I’ll let the WAA worry about things like that).

Second, “extensible” means new spices, new vegetables, new types of noodles, etc., can be used to make the chicken soup better. This means that you can add a new spice to your recipe in addition to the existing spices already in it. Extensible (in this sense) means you’re doing what you already do to make your style chicken soup and now you’ve discovered something more you can add to it to make even more “your style”. You’re not watering it down or adding more vegetables to make the soup go further. That’s scalability and the equation should be scalable without needing to define it as such.

The sum of these two concepts of “extensible” translates to “the equation is valid across all interfaces including those we haven’t thought of yet.” Mathematically extendability and extensibility form the axes of a very rich solution space.”

Joseph says “Basic Chicken Soup” and I say “a measure of the depth and degree of visitor engagement online” … clearly he and I both have our work cut out for us. If you’d like to join us in our quest for a better measure of visitor engagement online, please let me know.

In the last few months there has been a tremendous surge in interest in my framework for measuring engagement online. Lately, some of the largest and well-known companies in the world have approached me about working with them to bridge the gap between the metrics they have today and something similar to the composite metric I first described back in December 2006.

While I am tremendously flattered that I have somehow become the focal point for this conversation, I have been thinking lately about how the framework has been developed and how it might end up being used by the measurement industry in general. And while early tests using the framework I’ve described are very encouraging, the calculation in it’s current state was meant to move the discussion along and get more people to “think different” about how engagement could be calculated online.

Given that interest in the framework has clearly increased, one primary concern comes up again and again: the need to apply mathematical rigor to the framework and calculation so that A) the result is repeatable, reliable, and trustworthy and B) when naysayers inevitably emerge to criticize this small side project of mine, that I have a suitable response to their criticism, regardless of where and why it comes.

I believe that the need for “A” is obvious. The need to address “B” is perhaps less obvious, but I believe that I owe it to those of you who are investing your time, energy, and money into this framework. Especially as the stakes seem to increase exponentially with every presentation, every conversation, and every high-visibility blog post on the subject, I believe now is the time to approach the engagement framework not just as a hobby but as a serious project with committed resources.

To this end, I am extraordinarily happy to say that the single smartest person I know, Joseph Carrabis the Founder and Chief Research Officer of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global, has offered to bring mathematical rigor and analytical precision to what I am officially dubbing “The Engagement Project.” Those of you not familiar with Joseph and his work are advised to A) meet him in person at the upcoming Emetrics Summit in San Francisco or B) read some of his recent work at iMedia Connection.

Joseph will be working to make the formula universally applicable and universally defensible. Suffice to say I can think of nobody better to bring mathematical and scientific rigor to the framework I have been evolving over the past year. Watch this blog and Joseph’s blog at BizMediaScience over the next week or so for a more complete analysis of the framework in it’s current state, something we’ve agreed is the first step towards creating a true function capable practically describing the degree and depth of engagement a visitor is displaying towards a web site over time.

At the end of the day, without regard to my framework, Joseph’s analysis, or any person or group’s particular position on the use of the word “engagement”, my goal is to solve one problem and one problem only:

If you’re interested in working with Joseph and me on The Engagement Project please feel free to contact me directly.

I am incredibly honored to be able to announce that Web Analytics Demystified has partnered with the fine folks at Semphonic to present X Change 2008 in San Francisco at the Ritz Carlton, August 18 and 19, 2008.

In my decade in the web analytics industry I have attended and presented at hundreds of events around the world. While each have their own unique value proposition and are truly great in their own way, X Change is the only conference I left both completely energized about our industry and actively scheming about how I could become more involved in presenting the event. I said as much after last year’s event.

You can read more in the press release but here’s what you’re not going to read in the release:

• For me, X Change was like no conference I’ve ever attended as a practitioner, consultant, analyst, or business owner. At the end of the day I didn’t want the conversation to end!
• The key is the “huddles”: far more structured than “birds of a feather” sessions or round tables, yet informal enough to encourage everyone to participate, and loaded with analytics experience and talent.
• The small size of the conference is intentional, and Gary, Joel, and I are working to bring some of biggest brains and folks working on the most exciting projects out there to participate. The net result is an amazing ratio of experts per attendee.
• No booths, no vendor pitches, no literature you don’t want under your door. At least last year, the vendor representatives were senior people working at the top of their game (folks like Matt Belkin, Olivier Silvestre, Aaron Gray, Rand Schulman, etc.)
• More web analytics bloggers per capita than any conference ever thrown. (Okay, maybe that isn’t really a selling point but it led to a lot of really good PR …)

Again, I am incredibly pleased with Gary and Joel’s decision to allow Web Analytics Demystified a greater level of participation in the event this year. If you’re a long-time reader of my blog and would like more information about X Change, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

I hope to see you in San Francisco in August!