X Change 2009
A couple of weeks ago I went to the new Yankee Stadium for the first time. Even though I am not a Yankee fan the stadium awed me – it was like a baseball temple. As a baseball fan I had to be impressed.
I had a similar feeling at the X Change Conference in San Francisco this week. It was awesome. If you are a true web analytics fan, it is the place to be.
Everyone goes to eMetrics - and for good reason. eMetrics is the expo for the digital measurement community. All of the vendors, the practitioners, the agencies, senior level people, junior level people, people who are just curious about web analytics all converge. There is an expo hall, big keynotes, lots of presentations – most of them excellent.
X Change is totally different. It is a small, intimate conference of 120 or so mid-to-senior level web analytics geeks. They are almost all practitioners. There are only two presentations – an opening and closing keynote…
The opening keynote was an interview that Eric Peterson conducted with four of the “founding fathers” of web analytics (Brett Crosby, Bob Page, John Pestana and Matt Cutler). Very cool. The closing keynote was a quick thank you by Gary Angel (Semphonic) and Eric followed by a discussion of how to make next year’s X Change better. So essentially there were zero presentations. A relief to ADD guys like me…
Otherwise the conference is made up of “huddles”, or small discussion groups led by huddle leaders. Huddle leaders facilitate discussion. They ask questions, prod people along and get things flowing. The discussions that follow are priceless if you are a fan of the space.
Vendors have to be invited and they are careful to just sprinkle them in with the practitioners so there are little-to-no sales pitches.
I attended five huddles, led by top people in the space such as Tom Cattapan of Turner, Bill Gassman of Gartner, James Robinson of NY Times, Matt Jacobs of Adobe and Dylan Lewis of Intuit. They were all excellent conversations. Participants in each huddle were amazingly honest and open about their experiences, successes and challenges. There were common themes that ran through each group, even though they were on widely different topics.
Working in the trenches every day, I have not fully appreciated the true media revolution that is taking place right now. All of these companies are jockeying for position and developing their strategies to dominate (or at least stay relevant) in the next phase of the online / mobile / social media world that is evolving. Who has the content? Who has the delivery? Who has the devices? Who has the service? Who has the customer relationship? Who has the customer data? What are they doing with data? What should they be allowed to do with the data? And most of all, how do you measure all of this stuff to determine if your strategy is working?
What is a metrics-driven company? How do you make one? How do you attract and retain the best talent? What are the challenges that are specific to different industries? These were just a few of the questions that were tackled in these huddles. Really great stuff and a unique opportunity to helicopter up and brainstorm with some really smart, experienced people.
I had more “aha” moments at this conference than all of the others that I have attended… combined.
Gary Angel’s Semphonic and Eric Peterson’s Web Analytics Demystified co-host the event. Gary’s wife Grace is the driving force and event manager. This was only their 3rd conferences, but Grace, Vicki and their team have already mastered the details, including the tete-a tete’s. This is an genius little structure of scheduled 15-minute chats with the vendors.
Since there is really “no selling” at the conference, practitioners that are interested in talking with a vendor about their product or service can schedule a quick cup of coffee with you on Friday morning. It gives the vendors a little bit of bang for their buck and it gives an appropriate, controlled format in which to show your stuff to potential customers.
The event was at the beautiful St. Regis hotel in San Francisco. (Starwood points!) I did not step foot outside the hotel for 36-hours, but if you have to be locked away somewhere, you could do a lot worse. They stuff you with gourmet food and supply more than ample free alcohol to grease the wheels of social interaction.
I told Gary and Eric that I will attend any X Change that I am invited to in the future. It was great fun, I learned a lot and I got to meet a ton of people in the space. What else do you want??
Based on that kind of recommendation (‘I had more ‘aha’ moments at this conference than all of the others that I have attended… combined), I’m definitely going to have to look into attending the next one!