My good friends Eric Peterson with Web Analytics Demystified and Gary Angel of Semphonics are sponsoring this year's X Change conference, to be held August 17-19 in San Francisco.
I can't believe I won't be able to make it this year, though Eric Head, our director of business development, will be there. In preparation for the conference, Eric Peterson answered a few of my burning questions.
LF: What is the objective of the X
Change and how does it differ from other analytics conferences?
EP: The objective of X Change is to promote conversation, sharing of ideas,
and peer-based education between expert users of web analytics and related
technologies. The conference differs from other analytics
conferences because we eschew the traditional Conference 1.0 "Sit and
Listen" format for a Conference 2.0 "Gather and Talk" format.
This format, facilitated by small group conversations on highly relevant
topics, allows participants to learn directly from their peers and contribute
in a way not possible at other conferences.
The
conference format is a response to the tremendous body of knowledge on digital
measurement that has built up in the expert user and practitioner community.
We learned last year at the first X Change that if you give exceptionally
bright people a highly personalized venue to share their ideas, they will
gladly do so.
LF: With a “total absence of sales
messaging and sponsored talks”, who will pick up the bar tab?
EP: We do. The X Change conference is run as a break-even
proposition for Semphonic and Web Analytics Demystified, a decision that the team
at Semphonic made early on to eliminate the vendor posturing that has become so
common at conferences today. No booths, no sponsored talks, no goodie
bags full of stuff you don't really want ... just highest-quality content
targeting people who are serious about web analytics.
It's not
that we don't love the vendors --- you know I love you Larry! But we've
taken a different approach towards that segment of our community.
Semphonic and Web Analytics Demystified have personally invited a handful
of recognized experts in the web analytics vendor community, people like Aaron
Gray from WebTrends, Eric Hansen from SiteSpect, John Squire from Coremetrics,
Eric Head from ForeSee Results, and around a dozen others. By
specifically inviting vendor thought leaders we're again able to increase the
quality of content and conversation at X Change.
I suppose,
as usual thanks to my participation in Web Analytics Wednesday,
there will be some type of uber-analytics event held separate from the X Change
on Tuesday, August 19th in San
Francisco where I will (again) be cajoling the likes of you to help me
pay for drinks --- it wouldn't be a web analytics conference if I wasn't asking
my buddy Larry for money for drinks, would it?
LF: Okay, assuming my readers
are sold on the conference already, with or without an open bar on my dime, how can they get registered?
EP: Thanks for asking! Since the conference is designed to be very
intimate we're only accepting 100 registrations. Since we're well
on our way to selling X Change 2008 out completely, your readers might want to
head over to:
http://www.semphonic.com/conf/registration.asp
I am
personally happy to take any of your readers questions about the conference, as
are the folks at Semphonic. You can reach me at
eric@webanalyticsdemystified and Gary Angel at gangel@semphonic.com.
LF: What are the expected outcomes
or takeaways?
EP: The key takeaway that we hope to provide to all participants is a much
refined sense of the state of the industry today and a personal sense of where
their organization needs to be headed. We have conversations
planned on tons of important topics
including mobile marketing and measurement, video, data integration, industry
standards, process ... there are over 30 different topics for participants to
join over the two day event. Our hope is that every participant,
regardless of experience level, will walk away from their conversations with
action items they can take back to the office and integrate into their web
analytics efforts.
Additionally,
Semphonic and Web Analytics Demystified will be summarizing all of the
conversations and producing a "Proceedings of the Second Annual X Change
Conference" document that will be free to all participants. We're
doing this in recognition that A) conference attendees cannot join all of the
conversations but they will surely benefit from knowing what was discusses and
B) the outcomes from these conversations have tremendous potential to shape our
industry moving forward.
LF: Is this conference only for
advanced practitioners, or is there a way some of those earlier in their
maturity in the web measurement field will be able to benefit?
EP: While we are certainly targeting
more advanced practitioners, based on last year's conference I think that web
analytics professionals of any level of experience will benefit from the X
Change. Several of the attendees from last year's conference who were
newer to the field expressed to me that X Change was hugely valuable despite
being somewhat of a fire-hose of information. All that is required to benefit from the X Change is a profound interest
in web analytics and a desire to know as much as possible about the whole
process of measurement in the online world
LF: Explain the “huddles” and what
attendees will get out of them.
EP: The "huddles" are our conversational format, the basis for the
entire conference. Rather than having a room of 300 people sit and
listen to some expert pontificate, the X Change format has around 15 people
around a table talking to each other about their experiences, challenges, and
successes. Facilitated by expert practitioners from companies like AOL,
PayPal, Yahoo!, Avaya, Sony Pictures Imageworks Interactive, The Gap, Intuit,
Turner Broadcasting, and a dozen others, this format is a refreshing change
from Conference 1.0.
The huddles
target a certain type of individual in our industry --- someone with enough
experience to know what they're talking about and are not afraid to share those
experience. Honestly this is really the only venue in our
industry that I know of where people can share their experiences
openly. The Web Analytics Forum I founded in 2004 isn't really
appropriate, other conferences have gotten pretty large, and the vendor events
are, well, about the vendors. But the format works, trust me, it works!
The best
way to get a sense of what attendees will get out of the huddle format is to
have a look at the 2008 Huddle Topics that we've put online. Here you can see exactly what we'll be talking about and make a list of
the topics that most interest you personally.
LF: What about this conference are
you most looking forward to?
EP: Well, this is the first year that I've been a partner in the conference
so personally I'm looking forward to everything! Gary and Joel
from Semphonic asked me to coordinate the huddle leaders and content for the
event so I'm hugely excited to see the conversations in action. Also,
given the star talent that has already registered for the event --- industry
rock stars like Jim Sterne and June Dershewitz from the Web Analytics
Association, all three web analytics industry analysts (Megan Burns from
Forrester, Bill Gassman from Gartner, and John Lovett from JupiterResearch),
Josh Manion from Stratigent, Andy Fisher from Avenue A/Razorfish, and Aurelie
Pols from Europe's LBi/OX2 --- I'm also looking forward to the
side-conversations, the dinners, the Lobby Bar, and general networking we'll be
doing.
Plus, did I
mention that the conference will be held at San Francisco's Ritz Carlton hotel?
Gary and Joel really outdid themselves on the venue, booking this five
star hotel and getting conference attendees a special rate. A lot of us
remember the "good old days" of Emetrics at Santa Barbara's gorgeous Four Seasons Biltmore hotel --- we hope that the Ritz will be our Biltmore.
The only
thing I'm not looking forward to is sleeping. I guess I will sleep on
Wednesday when the conference is over.
LF: Tell me about last year’s
conference. Any changes from last year to this year?
EP: The major change we made is that last year vendors and consultants led
the conversations but this year all of the conversations are being led by
end-user practitioners. We made that decision for one major
reason: At the end of the day, we believe the conference is about making things
better for the people in our industry who are actually on the hook to produce
results. It is our belief that conversations led by expert users of
analytics and joined by vendor thought leaders and some of the great consultants
working in our industry will simply produce better sessions.
This was
kind of a controversial decision to make, especially since we are consultants
and it meant that even we wouldn't be able to lead huddles! But
by-and-large the vendors and consultants have been pretty understanding and
have still signed up to attend the conference. I think this speaks
volumes to the quality and uniqueness of the conference --- we said, "Not
only can you not lead a huddle but you also have to pay your own way to X
Change" and still they are coming, how great is that!
Also new
this year is the "Proceedings of the Second Annual X Change" document
I described above which will be free to all conference attendees. One of
the few complaints about last year's event was basically "I wanted to
attend all of the huddles!" While we can't stop time, we can capture
the essence of each of these huddles and document it such that every
participant can see what the key questions and key insights were in each
session.
Finally,
did I mention the hotel? I think I did. Last year the location was
nice (in Napa Valley) but I am personally expecting
the Ritz to be a whole different experience.
Larry, thanks for interviewing me about the X Change. I'm hugely bummed out that you
personally cannot join us but I understand, family first. It will be nice
to see Eric Head from ForeSee playing the part of Larry Freed! Remember, we're limited to the first 100 people
who sign up so if your readers are interested in the conference I encourage
them to head over to:
http://www.semphonic.com/conf/registration.asp
Again, I am
personally happy to take any of your readers questions about the conference, as
are the folks at Semphonic. You can reach me at
eric@webanalyticsdemystified and Gary Angel at gangel@semphonic.com.
