Thumbs up for xChange!
This September I attended the xChange summit in lovely Monterrey, CA. If you haven’t heard of it, I can tell you that it’s UNIQUE! The magic is all in its structure: it encourages open conversations with undoubtedly the smartest people in the measurement world.
The topics covered are similar to events like Omniture and eMetrics, but the difference here is that you get to be a real part of the discussions. Dubbed huddles, these groups are small, with about 7-10 people. Each huddle generates great conversations because they don’t just present challenges facing their community, but also genuinely brainstorm about how to get past them.
The two huddles that I enjoyed the most were ”Predictive Analytics” led by Kim Weller (ESPN), and “Analytics Best Practices” led by Andrew Bakoni (HP). “Predictive Analytics” included an awesome discussion by Gary Angel from Semphonic about the increasing use of econometric data in models. Jing Suk’s team from Reuters spoke about their in-house Firefox extension. Knowing how hard it is to come by a good extension developer, I was impressed. The extension overlays analytics data on their live site, giving them real-time intelligence to anticipate what content will keep bringing them traffic.
In the “Analytics Best Practices” huddle, I was interested in Karl Reinhold (Nike) and his team’s nifty handling of complicated tag deployment. Incorrectly implemented tags are a common issue, and it’s too late to fix them once you find an empty or inaccurate report. From a build and deployment perspective, I liked the safety nets their team has in place for this.
This was my first time out the Bay Area. I’m glad I made the trek. If you can manage to get a ticket for this event next year, you should absolutely attend!
