Last month I had the opportunity to attend and speak at the 2013 eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in SF. What is always a good conference seemed even better this time around. The sessions I attended were high quality (as always), but the biggest (personal) take away was how close this industry is and how talented a group of people I fairly regularly (via the conference cirucit and a few other random get togethers) get the pleasure of hanging out with. I couldn’t imagine another industry with cooler more talented people. What makes it even better is that we all have the opportunity (and a lot of us do!) to interact on a daily basis via twitter and other social channels which helps foster the awesome relationships you make at these
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Conferences
The other week I had the privilege of attending the DAA 2013 Awards for Excellence along with 180 of some of the brightest minds in the analytics industry. The talent in the room was unparalleled! A quick recap of the nominees, finalists, and winners: Digital Analytics Rising Star (individual) Nominees (** indicates finalist): Eduardo Cereto Carvalho** (Google) Chauncy Cay Ford (Dell) Rachael Gerson (SEER Interactive) George Lee (AOL) Abbe Lefkowitz (MaassMedia) Mathieu Llorens (AT Internet) Tim Patten (Localytics) Mike Pedicino (Catherine Plus Sizes) Krista Seiden (Google) Himanshu Sharma (SEO Takeaways) Elizabeth Smalls (Abercrombie & Fitch)** Pradeep SV (Cognizant) Jared Vestal** (BrightTag) Tiffany Zimmermann** (MillerCoors) Randy Zwitch** (Keystone Solutions) And the winner is: Liz Smalls (@SmallsMeasures) Most Influential Agency/Vendor (group) Nominees (** indicates
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Two weeks ago in Salt Lake City I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend and speak at unSummitSLC (I spoke about mobile & cross-channel analytics). unSummit is a half-day, intimate gathering of digital marketers from all over the country and local university students that takes place the day before Adobe Summit each year (this was it’s 3rd year). The idea is to share content/presos about relevant topics in the industry without the pitchiness of many of the presentations at larger conferences. It’s also a great learning platform for students who are interested in analytics (I wish something like this had been around when I was in college!). This was my first unSummit, and I walked away very impressed and inspired by the day. Some of the biggest
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This past week I had the unique opportunity to attend Adobe Summit as a part of the industry but not a part of the Adobe community (currently). In a prior life I worked as a web analytics manager for Adobe and attended Summit as an employee and active user of the Omniture suite, so attending this time with an outside-looking-in viewpoint was quite an experience. Many things have changed since my time at Adobe, and many things remain constant. For me, one of the biggest changes is the push towards the Marketing Cloud (and an active effort to kill the Omniture brand). In many ways, I see the benefits of this type of front-end collaborative interface, but I do have my doubts and concerns. Benefits: Drag & drop flashy interfaces
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A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend eMetrics in Boston. (I actually started this blog post on the plane home but am only now finishing… I blame on-boarding a new job for taking up all my free time ;)) No surprise, it was a great time. I learned a lot, met some great industry people, and had a fun time. Given that there was 3 full days of content, I’ll give a recap of the major takeaways and some notes from a few of my favorite sessions but I won’t break down each session individually. Let me know what you think! Big Takeaways: 1. Tag Management! With the announcement of Google Tag Management, the acceptance and proliferation of tag management across the board will see a sharp
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This past week I had the pleasure of seeing months of work come together in the form of the DAA San Francisco Chapter Inaugural Symposium. It was a great afternoon of analytics insights and learnings as well as networking and catching up with nearly 200 other industry professionals. The theme for the day was “What’s Next” in Analytics and was carried throughout 3 different tracks: LoSoMo, Big Data, and Careers. Jim Sterne (@jimsterne) kicked off the event with a keynote titled ‘The Key to Omni-Channel Marketing Analytics’ which focused on bringing together the theme of the track ‘Local, Social, and Mobile’ (as well as other marketing channels) to give the consumer a single experience across multiple channels. Jim talked about using online and offline data together to give each customer the
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The other week I had the opportunity to attend a few networking events and 1 day of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in San Francisco. I have to say, I was quite impressed! While the conference itself was jam packed with relevant and interesting content (I had a seriously hard time choosing which sessions to attend), the caliber of the talent who attended the conference was out of this world. I can’t stress enough how important it is in our industry to network, troubleshoot, and spend actual, physical time with others from the industry – it’s a great way to build your personal brand within the industry. It drives home concepts and points that otherwise may have been fuzzy. It allows for building relationships which one day may lead to
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It’s that time of year again… you know, the one where every week brings a new industry conference and you are having trouble choosing between them?! I’m in that boat right now, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on what I find valuable/look for in a conference when choosing amongst the many many options. First of all – is it industry related? Yes? Check. But what parts of the industry? Social Media? Digital Analytics? Mobile? Specific to a vendor? Cross-vendor/tool? There are a lot of ways to slice and dice these conferences (just like data!), so it’s important to know what you are interested in and what will provide the most value to both yourself and your business (after all, it is their time and $$ sending you, right?).
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