Review of Emetrics Summit – San Francisco

Today was the last day of Emetrics in so I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts I had about the conference for those who didn’t get a chance to attend.

First of all, the venue was terrific.  It was held at the Palace Hotel in downtown .  The weather was perfect and the hotel was very nice.  The conference rooms were close by the main ballroom and the lunch areas.  Logistically, this was a very convenient show for the participants.

Since I don’t live in the area, I stayed at the hotel during the week.  My room was quite nice for such an old building.  Of course standards have changed since 1875 when the hotel was built; therefore, the bathroom was a bit on the small size by today’s standard.  However, the ceilings are 13 feet high so it makes the room feel larger.

Lunch was an interesting mix of very healthy lunches surrounded by very unhealthy snacks.  The three lunches were masterfully planned.  They included lots of fish and healthy vegetables.  Now, I’m not normally a veggie fan, however, the way these were presented was excellent.  I’m not sure who planned the lunches, but they did a great job.  The snacks were a disaster from a health standpoint, but great for a sugar high.  We had cookies, sodas, ding dongs, and various chocolates and candies.  Where was the fresh fruit?  My suggestion for the future conferences would be to replace the processed sugars with fresh fruit.  It’s much better for the participants to stay awake and provides energy.

When we registered for the conference on Monday morning, we were given a tote bag full of presentation materials and a nifty cell phone charger from Google.  Incredibly, there was no pen or notepad in the bag.  I consider this a major no-no.  I don’t think there was a single conference attendee who imagined that they would need to bring their own pen and notepad.  Heck, I have dozens of conference pens and notepads at the office.  Had I known that we would not be presented with new ones, I would have brought one from home.  Hopefully, this deficiency will be addressed before the next conference.

The conference itself was a mixed bag.  Some of the presentations were terrific and some were more or less self-serving sales pitches.  Let me start by pointing out some of the excellent presentations I attended.

Jim Sterne started the conference with a great talk about the Website Measurement Ecosystem.  His main point was that practitioners need to measure the “Customer Experience.”  Kudos to Jim on giving such an informative presentation.

Avinash Kaushik gave an excellent presentation the following day on “Competitive Analysis: Why You Can’t Live Without It.”  It is very obvious that Avinash knows a lot about web analytics and cares deeply about his audience.  He made a great effort to inform us about the tricks and tools of the trade needed to perform competitive analysis.  It was a pleasure to listen to such a passionate speaker talking about a subject he has mastered so well.  I can’t say enough good things about this man.

Eric Peterson gave a compelling presentation about how important it was to have a process for web analytics.  The vast majority of his presentation was excellent until the last 5 minutes.  In a very awkward moment, Eric announced that he had quit his job at Visual Sciences to start his own consultancy.  Despite the Faux Pas, I would put his presentation in the excellent category as well.

The rest of the keynote speeches were questionable.  The reason I felt they were questionable was because the presenters nearly all touted their own products to the exclusion of their competitors.  By far, the most egregious example of this was the presentation by WebSideStory / Visual Sciences at 2:20.  The representative from Visual Sciences used his platform at EMetrics to make an unabashed sales pitch to the audience.  There wasn’t one single piece of information in his presentation that could be used by anyone not already using or considering using Visual Sciences.  He talked about who he was, what the company was about; the new releases they came up with; and some pseudo technical concepts that they were using called data wheels.  The point of his presentation seamed to be, if you’re not using Visual Sciences, your analytics package is not very good.

I think it must be difficult for an organization such as the Web Analytics Association to attract great speakers on purely benevolent terms.  Usually, speakers have an agenda and agree to speak at these conferences in exchange for the benefit of establishing themselves as the experts and possibly solicit more business as a result.  I believe it is OK for a presenter to take one or two minutes to talk about themselves at the beginning or end of a presentation.  However, with the exception of Jim, Avinash and Eric noted above, the other keynote speakers seamed to abuse their invitations to various degrees.

During the breakout sessions, it was another mixed bag.  However, I would like to point out three vendors who stood out positively in my mind; John Marshall from ClickTracks, Gary Angel from Semphonic, and Jennifer Veesenmeyer from Evantage Consulting.  These three people made incredible efforts to present information they thought would be useful to their audience without any self promotion whatsoever.

I have heard John Marshall speak a couple of times before and I can tell you, he is one of the most thoughtful people I have ever heard.  The first time I heard him speak was during SES in NY a couple of years ago.  Despite being on a panel of his competitors, he stood out, even then, by his objectivity and willingness to talk about the issues in a non-partial manner.

There were probably quite a few other presenters who were equally informative and impartial.  Since there were four sessions going on at any given time, I think it would be acceptable to say that there must have been four times as many great presenters than the three I mentioned here.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend all the sessions so I don’t know who they are. 

Most of the other presentations I attended were moderately informative with quality ranging from good to bad. 

Overall, I’d say that there are some structural issues that need to be addressed by the Emetrics Summit and the Web Analytics Association.  As this conference grows from year to year, it will be important for Emetrics to establish written policies of conduct.  Each presenter should be required to read and agree to these policies before being allowed to speak at the conference in the future.

The problem here is that the audience has paid to attend this conference and does not wish or expect to pay for shameful sales pitches.  It simply feels bad to pay a lot of money for the conference, hotel room and airfare then to be sold to by self serving vendors.  Granted, not all vendors abused the privilege.  However, the ones that did, really made it tough for the audience.

The last point I’d like to make was about the “Agenda at a Glance” in the conference guide.  It was written on vandal proof paper that made it nearly impossible to write on.  And, incredibly, was not color coded and made no indication of the rooms for each break out session.  You had to match the session number to the back of the guide to decipher the room.   I’d like to suggest that the next quick glance in contain a few upgrades:

1)      Make the quick glance a one page pullout or at least perforate it for easy detachment.  Many participants like to fold it up and keep it with their badges.

2)      Allow us to write on the quick glance.  That way, we can circle or check off what session we will attend. 

3)      Better yet, provide a plain white box next to each presentation so we can easily indicate which ones we and our colleagues will attend.

4)      Put the room name at the top column of the quick guide or color code the sessions and provide a convenient legend at the bottom.