World Tour Days Three and Four: Rotterdam and Brussels

I finally got a little time to relax on Wednesday when I arrived in Rotterdam, Holland, the site of Emerce’s eDay conference where I presented my “Web Analytics is Easy” presentation. The event planners and the City Council of Rotterdam invited the event speakers out on a nice boat trip. I was lucky to connect with serial entrepreneurs Mark Fletcher (Bloglines, Startupping.com) and Biz Stone (Xanga, Google, Twitter), two tremendously nice guys and both serious movers in the Bay Area Internet scene.

Biz and I had a pretty good conversation over dinner about “Web 3.0” and I was also lucky enough to catch up with Rolf Skyberg, Disruptive Innovator at Ebay, on the same subject. What is “Web 3.0” you ask? Come to SEMphonic X Change and find out!

The only web analytics vendor at the conference was Holland’s Nedstat but it was nice as I got to chat with the company’s CEO and VP of Marketing. I was also surprised when one of their newest consultants produced a well-used copy of Analytics Demystified which he asked me to sign.

My presentation at eDay went well I think. The Dutch people in attendance seemed very engaged despite (or perhaps because of my very non-European presentation style) and many stuck around after the session to ask questions. The woman in the back (standing) told me that she believed me when I said that web analytics was hard. I think I said something like “Hallelujah!”

After a quick Internet radio interview, my good friend Aurelie Pols and I had a nice drive to Brussels to the Global Headquarters of OX2. It was my first visit to Brussels and to meet many of the employees of my partner in Belgium and it was quite fun. Here is Aurelie with her newest web analytics specialist (whose name I didn’t write down, please forgive me!)

Here is Aurelie’s husband and the President of OX2, Rene Otamendi (right) with the infamous W. David Rhee, OX2’s newest employee, who is perhaps best known for his incredibly valuable contribution to the Web Analytics Forum.

I am hugely excited about Web Analytics Day here in Brussels.  Not only will Ian Thomas be on hand to show off Microsoft’s Gatineau application for the first time in public, but after nearly 150 requests to attend Rene had to stop registration due to space limitations.  While we’re obviously disappointed that everyone cannot join us, it is very encouraging that so many people are interested in measurement here in central Europe.

For those of you who have grown tired of reading about my jaunt about Europe, fear not!  Tomorrow will be my last post on the tour and I promise to not blog next week from Las Vegas.