Archive for August, 2008

This week’s X Change conference in San Francisco was very successful, at least by my measure, and I wanted to briefly summarize some of what I saw and heard for those of you who couldn’t join us.

• Before the event, Bill Gassman from Gartner commented to me “the more things change,  the more things stay the same.”  While the technology has become more sophisticated and the practitioner base (at least the sample represented at X Change which clearly skewed towards expert status) become more experienced, internal process and organizational challenges continue to dominate the conversation and negatively influence our ability to get the job done.
• For sophisticated companies, there are still many questions but far fewer answers.  Campaign attribution, data privacy, reconciling panel-based and census-based methodologies, data sharing and integration, and I’m sure hundreds more topics are on our minds but in many cases some critical connection cannot/has not been made
• Points #1 and #2 aside, some of us are doing amazing things with web data!  I was amazed at some of what I heard regarding how companies are evolving their use of web analytic data.  Despite the difficulty associated with many aspects of doing our jobs, some members of the larger web analytics community are definitely Competing on Web Analytics and will undoubtedly raise the bar higher and higher.
• All in all, the expert analytics community appears to be a pretty happy bunch.  Nobody was complaining about layoffs or lack-of-budget, at least not that I heard.  The complaints I did hear were typical: “our vendor promised this but has not delivered”, “we simply cannot find qualified people”, and “this stuff is a lot harder than some people make it out to be.”

We will be publishing a document in the next few months providing a much more detailed look at what was discussed at the X Change (watch my blog for details) but if any of you participated in the event and have other insights please feel free to leave them below in comments.

I am tremendously honored to be a partner in the X Change conference and look forward to helping produce the conference for years to come.  If you missed the event this year, don’t make the same mistake twice.  Keep watching my and Gary Angel’s blog for details about X Change 2009!

I was surprised to learn this morning that there are fewer than 10 open registrations left at the 2008 X Change conference in San Francisco August 17, 18, and 19.  We set the limit for the conference at 100 paid attendees to ensure an intimate setting and for the ten of you who are able to complete your registration in the next few days I can assure you that decision will pay off in a big way.  This year’s conference has attracted some of the best companies and most experienced practitioners working in the field today, and despite the generally lousy economic climate, has folks coming from as far away as Sydney, Australia to participate in the conversation.

If you’re already registered for the event, don’t forget to return your huddle selection forms, your tete-a-tete requests, and the list of questions that you’d like to ask our distinguished analyst keynote panel!

If you’ve been considering the event, don’t delay: Register now and join us at the 2008 X Change!

Since we’re about two weeks away from X Change 2008 I wanted to bring a few networking events that will be happening around the conference, one for participants only and the other for anyone in the Bay Area who wants to join us!

For X Change conference attendees we’ve added a networking reception on Monday afternoon that will occur concurrent to the “Expert Tete-a-Tete” event already planned.  Gary Angel, the CTO of Semphonic and our partner in the X Change has a great write up in his blog about the tete-a-tete.   When conference participants are done chatting with the great expert vendors and consultants who will be in attendence they’ll be able to join their peers in a private networking event designed to promote additional idea sharing and communication over wine and cheese or similar goodies.

For those you in the Bay Area unable to join us at the X Change, June Dershewitz is throwing another gala Web Analytics Wednesday event in conjunction with the conference but that is open to all web analytics practitioners.  Last time we had a conference-associated WAW in San Francisco it was crazy with over 400 attendees.  Hopefully this time things will be a little more subdued … you can sign up to join us at the official Web Analytics Wednesday web site.

Hopefully I will see some of you reading my blog at one or the other of these events, or both!