Things are starting to heat up for the X Change conference in August (17, 18, 19 in San Francisco … more details here) with two announcements made this week and last.

First, we’ve announced the X Change Scholarship program which will allow us to encourage and promote the innovative use of web analytics for improving web site performance. Our goal with the scholarship is to help one deserving web analytics practitioner join us at the X Change free of charge; all we’re asking is for a well written essay describing a great use of web analytics. You can read the details here and I’m happy to answer questions directly as well if you’re interested in applying for the Scholarship funding.

Second, we’re starting to announce more about the content of the 2008 X Change beginning with the news that the conference keynote will be a “Town Hall” type event with three of the most respected industry analysts in the business today: Megan Burns from Forrester, Bill Gassman from Gartner, and John Lovett from JupiterResearch. Gary and I will be facilitating a discussion between X Change attendees and these three analytics insiders to help get to the bottom of the relationship between people, process, and technology.

As I’ve said before, X Change is like no web analytics conference you’ve ever attended (unless you went to X Change last year …) If you’re really interested in web analytics, I hope you’ll come to San Francisco and join us in August!