Announcing "Demystified Days"

UPDATE MAY 6, 2011: Under threat of litigation we have decided to postpone Demystified Days for the time being. You can read more about this decision here.

I am incredibly excited to let all of you know about something that Adam, John, and our friends at Keystone Solutions will be doing this coming September that builds on our long-standing commitment to local web analytics communities and our more recent efforts to support nonprofits around the world … something we are calling “Demystified Days!”

Check out the mini-site for Demystified Days right now!

For years we have been helping local web analytics communities around the globe connect with each other as part of Web Analytics Wednesday, and by every measure, Web Analytics Wednesday works. Thanks to current and past sponsors — great companies like I.Q. Workforce, Coremetrics (an IBM Company), SiteSpect, and hundreds of other companies who have hosted regional events — Analytics Demystified has brokered more personal introductions (and served more beers) than any other organization or group in our industry.

This past year we have been trying to leverage our connections in the industry to do something truly good and solve bigger problems. The result was, of course, the Analysis Exchange — the world’s only effort to provide free analytics support to nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations — which thanks to the efforts of great people like Wendy Greco, Emer Kirrane, Jason Thompson and our mentors and students has changed how people learn how to tells stories with data.

Now we are taking it to the next level, one city at a time.

Starting September 12th in San Francisco we will be bringing a day long educational and networking event to cities across the globe.  The format will be one you are all familiar with — great presentations in the morning and great conversations in the afternoon, of course followed by drinks and networking at Web Analytics Wednesdays in the evening.

We could easily do these events for free … but we aren’t going to. Instead we are going to find awesome sponsors to help us offset costs and ask everyone who participates to buy a $99 ticket to the event. Then, at the end of the day, we are going to add up all of the revenues, subtract out all of the costs, and donate every penny that is left to two local charities decided on by the event participants.

Our hope is to be able to donate a total of $50,000 to six charities in the United States. You can help us achieve that goal by doing three very easy things:

1. Helping us spread the word about Demystified Days within your social network. We have created a short URL http://bit.ly/demystifieddays and you can tag tweets about these events with #demystifieddays.
2. Joining us in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Boston. We are finalizing venues right now and will post ticket purchasing information in the next few weeks so watch for that!
3. Email us and let us know you are interested in Demystified Days. The mini-site has a form at the bottom that will let you indicate your interest. Fill out the form and we will keep you in the loop!

On behalf of the teams at Analytics Demystified and Keystone Solutions we sincerely hope you are excited about what Demystified Days can become. We welcome your questions in comments or directly via email.

Help spread the word!