Omniture, Europe, SAS, WebTrends, and Twitter!
You may be wondering “What do those things have in common?” You may also be wondering “Did Eric drop off the face of the Earth?” The answer to the first question is the explanation to the second …
Despite changes in Analytics Demystified’s client portfolio–changes that I believe accurately reflect the current economic climate–we are busier than ever here in Portland, Oregon. Or rather not in Portland, Oregon as Q1 2009 has me bouncing around the globe to talk about web analytics, something I enjoy tremendously.
World Tour 2009 (Part I) got started a few weeks back at the Omniture Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah. If you haven’t been to an Omniture Summit, assuming you are an Omniture, WebSideStory, Visual Sciences, Instadia, Mercado, Offermatica … am I forgetting anyone?! … I definitely recommend attending if you have the chance. Aside from excellent production and plenty of attention to detail I felt like Omniture did a great job on the content, something they took some criticism for in years past. The break-out sessions I saw paired an Omniture employee with a customer, analyst, or industry leader and in general the result was informative without being overly sales-y.
Perhaps the thing I enjoyed the most was that, despite my occasional open criticism of Omniture and some of their practices, senior management seemed (or at least pretended) to be happy enough to see me. I had a wonderful conversation with President of Sales Chris Harrington, spent some time with Gail Ennis and John Mellor, and even got to share Swedish Fish with Brett Error (who is now in Twitter @bretterror) Even Josh James and I had a chance to catch up … but no, I didn’t hug it out with Matt Belkin 😉
The World Tour continues here in Portland, then off to Milan, Madrid, and Washington, D.C. Locally I am excited to get to present at SearchFest 2009, but I have to admit I’m somewhat more excited about my first trip to Milan, Italy for Web Analytics Strategies 2009 and my first return to Madrid in several years. Perhaps most excitedly, following a special presentation with MV Consultoria, I will get to meet Rene and Aurelie’s new baby Lucca! After a brief return home (to spend time reading with my five year old daughter who has recently adopted her dad’s great love for reading) I fly to D.C. to deliver a keynote presentation at the SAS Global Forum.
And that is just the beginning. You can see the complete schedule under “Consulting” at Analytics Demystified, and I am actively booking conferences and presentations in June and July.
Which brings me to Twitter …
I wouldn’t say I was an early adopter of Twitter, not by a long shot. I actually met co-founder Biz Stone in Rotterdam and admitted “No, I don’t really understand the service …” I was eventually goaded into trying Twitter by Aaron Gray of WebTrends and started seeing the inherent value after getting people to use the #wa hashtag to identify web analytics (and Washington State) related content.
Of course, if you know me, you know I was unlikely to stop there …
After a short beta test with something I called the “Twitter Influence Calculator”, last week I rolled out The Twitalyzer. With tongue-in-cheek I have described the service as “Google Analytics for Twitter” and by all measures the service has taken off. To date nearly 20,000 unique Twitter users have tried the service which summarizes your use of Twitter and provides a handful of interesting measures of success (influence, generosity, velocity, clout, and the signal-to-noise ratio.)
Rather than spend a bunch of time telling you about it I encourage you to check it out at http://twitalyzer.com
While I have been incredibly busy between these travels, client work, writing proposals, and messing with Twitter I am of course always happy to hear from readers. Send email, Twitter me (@erictpeterson), or look for me at one of the conferences above!
