Some web analytics items of note

I’ve been on a family vacation this week and have largely been offline but the kids are finally sleeping, the wife is reading a book and so I have a few minutes to comment on some great stuff I’ve read in the blogosphere and online this week:

• Robbin Steif declared Portland, Oregon the capital of web analytics based on what sounds like a fun visit to the Rose City where she met with Brent Hieggelke, Lauren Hadley, Andrea Hadley and Eric Butler and some WebTrends folks including Greg Drew. I’d hoped to join Eric and Robbin for dinner but I have a standing date with my three-year-old daughter on Fridays …
• Jason Burby, hot of ZAAZ’s acquisition by Wunderman/WPP, has some advice for companies looking to hire web analytics professionals where he reminds us that “it isn’t really about Web analytics; it’s about improving Web businesses.”
• Avinash Kaushik is interviewing some of the very interesting folks in the web analytics industry. His first interview is with someone widely respected throughout the web analytics industry, Dr. Stephen Turner. Dr. Turner wrote the forward to Web Site Measurement Hacks for me and wrote some of the most compelling hacks (the “do it yourself” tag-based analytics solution, still the only open source tag-based solution in the world as far as I know.)

There was more but my battery is just about dead. Hopefully I can catch up next week!