Another Great Web Analytics Wednesday in Columbus
Tonight (Tuesday) was our fourth Web Analytics (Wednesday) in Columbus. We switched venues this month, and it looks like it’s going to stick — settling in at The Spaghetti Warehouse. Bryan Cristina’s concern was warranted — I don’t know that I’ve ever been to a restaurant that has beer on tap…but only two beers, and one of them really doesn’t count. But, I’ll deal with it. And I’ll make sure I’ve unzoomed the camera the next time I hand it to a waiter for a picture, so the flash is actually in range of the group!
We had attendees from far and wide. Judy Thaxton-Borlin from Brulant, who sponsored the evening (thanks!) headed down from Cleveland. And we had the entire Chicago office from Resource Interactive (that would be…Ty)! Unfortunately, our speaker fell through due to a scheduling mix-up — we were slated to have the Community Manager from Bazaarvoice, but settled for a couple of handouts from the recent Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit 2008. We had a good discussion about social media — where, when, and how ratings and feedback work on a site (Bazaarvoice’s specialty, and Nicole West of Bath & Body Works discussed how they’ve used the technology, as well as the challenges they’ve come across in mining the data and assessing the impact of the initiative). We had a conversation about Twitter — myself (@tgwilson) and Bryan Cristin (@bigbryc) being the biggest users in the group, although neither of us are diehard advocates. That led to the tale of #wa and Twitter.
A good time was had by all. We’re planning a multi-pronged assault on various WebTrends contacts (Noe…we’re gunning for you!!!) to get beyond the Coremetrics and Google Analytics-centricity of the group.
We’re on tap to have our next one on July 15th — another Tuesday, again at 6:30, again at Spaghetti Warehouse, with Coremetrics as the tentative sponsor. Details to come at the WAW site!