World Tour Day Five: Brussels
On my fifth and final (working) day in Europe I had the distinct pleasure of presenting at OX2’s Web Analytics Day in Brussels, Belgium. I had been working directly with Rene and Aurelie to promote this event as our companies have a business partnership and I am very happy to say the event was a tremendous success with over 100 people in attendance.
I presented three times covering my now well documented “Web Analytics is Easy?” presentation, the subject of key performance indicators, and my newest presentation covering what I am calling “Web Analytics 2.0” This third presentation worried me a bit since it is more technical than the stuff I usually present but it was very well received according to everyone I talked to. Aside from my work, there were great presentations from Aurelie, David Rhee, and a handful of vendors including WebTrends, Omniture, NedStat, IndexTools, and of course the now famous Microsoft Gatineau.
Continuing my theme of finally getting to meet some very bright folks in Europe, here are a few I was smart enough to get photos of while at Web Analytics Day.
Rene Otamendi from OX2, Marianina Chapin (the Web Analytics Princess) and “Wanderin” David Rhee, super-moderator of the Web Analytics Forum, blogger, and the newest OX2 employee in Germany.
Marianina, her friend from Great Britain (whose name I am forgetting, forgive me!) and Michael Notte from Toyota Europe who gave a nice presentation on behalf of WebTrends.
Luc Peeters, a consultant for Digitmedia in Belgium, who was very nice to talk to and paid me a very high compliment, saying my presentation was better than one he had seen from Nicholas Negroponte of the the MIT Media Labs. Very kind, indeed, if perhaps a wee stretch of the truth …
My best friend in Italy, Giovanni Lorenzoni, who writes an Italian web analytics blog at blog.webanalytics.it. Giovanni has a lot of enthusiasm for web analytics and is excited about how things are shaping up in Europe of late.
I was also sent a handful of photos from my presentation in Rotterdam at eDay. Now, I’m a bit camera shy normally but you can get an idea of what eDay was like via this photo of me (probably asking the audience if they thought web analytics was easy or not)
The behind-the-ears microphone was classic and made me feel like I was on American Idol.
All in all I have to say I very much enjoyed my European trip. Thanks to great people like the folks at SATAMA and OX2, the nice people at eDay, and all the great fans of my blog and my writing that I met all across Europe proving positive feedback about the work I’ve been doing since I left Visual Sciences four months ago.
I hope to get back to Europe this coming Spring, and hopefully I’ll be able to bring my wife and spend a few days actually relaxing and enjoying all the beautiful scenery that I had to rush by this time. Until then I’m off this afternoon to sunny Las Vegas for the Advanced Analytics session at Shop.ORG then on to SEMphonic X Change where I will be giving the keynote speech. If you’re at either of these events please come and introduce yourself!
