I had a great trip in California this week and today was a packed and busy day, but one of the most productive I have had.

Worked at Military.com part of the day then paid visits to Buzzlogic and Quantcast with evening dinner at Gary Angel’s house.

Flying home now and will try sleeping on the plane back home.

I had some footage of Rachel Scotto’s Huddle at Semphonic XChange that took place on Monday morning - plus a few more minutes of things I saw in San Francisco - here’s that footage in a small movie:

At the morning panel at Xchange here at the Ritz.

TECHNOLOGY
The first question came from Mark Maletesta, a former coworker, when I worked at IBM.

The next came from WebTrends about Social Network Analysis.

Is there going to be a war between Yahoo! analytics (IntexTools) and Google Analytics?

Megan Burns was asked by Dylan from Intuit about getting Web Analytics up the food chain to C level Execs? She said it is not about data and keeping track of the hidden costs of Web Analytics.

Eric Peterson noted that many people spending 80% of time on reports no one read. Megan was asked to give a example, and did. Getting attention from a C level exec is the first hurdle, then extrapolating.

What should you be looking for in a Web Analyst? Passion, experience and communication. More experiened people who are focusing on what you did with the tools you use, not so much the tools, themselves.

Is the role of an analyst to just clean data? Or is it to make data available more widely.

PROCESS
Where does WA belong in an organization? Compatacy center for Web Analytics with a corporate sponser.

Cross channel marketing and corporate peformance strategy with a Web Analytics Compatancy center. But john Lovitt says “let chaos reign” unless your company is ready to do it right.

A question about reporting was actually one I found I had further questions (and an agenda) focusing on getting rid of reports we can’t provide insight on.

Is analytics an accelorater? (look, I am writing on an iPhone …. Need I say more)?

Eric sited a case of using Visual Sciences to detect fraud in paid search campaigns resulting big refund checks from Google and Yahoo.

Dilligence and small gains over time is one way to measure the ROI of web analytics data.

Is Web Analytics a Universal Gateway Drug?

What have people used web analytics to show? Often it’s just showing traffic numbers which justified their jobs. Often, analytics is used as a focusing mechinism.

Do web analytics right?

Minimum 250K according to John Lovitt (he did not say if this is a yearly or monthly spend).

End of industry panal.

I had a wonderful time tonight at the Opening Welcome Reception Streets of San Francisco at Semphonic XChange and had several great conversations as well as hanging out afterwards in the Ritz Hotel Cafe.

I managed to pull my self away from conversation, or to have some more conversations, while filming this online video, hope you enjoy it - thought it is over 9 minutes along.

I'll be attending New York, New York… NewTeeVee Screenings and it will be interesting to meet  Om Malik if he's present.

"…I am looking forward to the New York event, which is on September 24th. The event will be held at The XChange which is at 640 West 28th Street (9th Floor) between 11th and 12th avenues. While not quite the Pier, you can still see the waters. The event kicks off at 6.30 pm and will go on till 9.30, and the theme for this event is Love Stories. You can watch the videos on this site. Please register for the event if you haven’t done so. "

Interestingly, I'm going to a conference in Napa Valley later this week called XChange, and here I am, coming back into New York and going right to a clug called the same name - what's the chance of that?

Finally! Finally Google Reader added Search and I heard about it from Matt Cutts.

The little window in the upper left part of the Google Reader screen was in front of me all evening but I didn't notice it.   I so wished for this feature for so long, I had no idea what took Google so long to add it but I'm sure glad they did.

By the way, I was searching on the XChange Conference again - easiest thing for me to remember I just bought my plane ticket today.  I mean, what combines Web Analytics, Wine and Plush Sunlight?  XChange…and if you don't believe me watch this video.

You know how things get better and better - well, every time I read about XChange - the Conference I'll be speaking at next month - it gets better and better. 

So I just read Gary Angel's last post on All-Star Game Comes to San Francisco and the XChange gets yet better, because he describes how it's going to be different than any other Conference you've ever been to.

And it' makes me glad I'll be there ….. and I decided to speak about … Virtual World Metrics … because I wanted to talk about something different than anyone else.  Besides, I have more experience with it, as a Web Analyst, and doing it for IBM's Virtual Business Center in Second Life, plus my industry contacts, than anyone else I know of.

Yes, I could have talked about Web Analytics, but everyone else is doing that …. and I want to do something no one else is doing.  I hope to have some additional help with Jared Freedman, creator of V-Tracker, a Virtual World Analytics and backend Advertising Platform - of Code4Software.com, who can describe not only what has been done both at CordWell Banker and IBM, but the coding that would be needed to do things like Geo-segment Visitors arriving in a Second Life Island, or any number of things that are now becoming possible.

To be sure, I work best with someone like Jared, who is one of the foremost developers in Virtual Worlds - who comes up with great ideas and who often listens to mine.  My strategy is more of a combination of several approaches, data gathering - and I think the blend of actual hands on - and what we've learned so far, is going to make the Second Life Presentation Unique.   I don't think you'll find anything like it anywhere else.

But your not going to hear any of this unless you at XChange - and the way to get to Xchange is with this link http://www.semphonic.com/conf.

Gary Angel and I had dinner last night at the Restivo Restaurant in Chelsea, Manhattan and discussed Semphonic's upcoming XChange Conference, Avanish Kaushik's new book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.   We also talked about Compete.com's new Search Analytics package that I just got access to as a Beta Tester.

It's always a pleasure meeting with Gary, who's one of the most knowledgeable, hands on people in Web Analytics and Search today - he's able to both discuss high end topics having the first hand knowledge of how to implement. Some people are better at speaking (but don't actually practice Web Analytics that much), others, like Gary, really can do both well. 

We also discussed V-Tracker - the Second Life Web Analytics platform from www.Code4Software.com I came across recently via Jared Freedman, it's creator. Gary Angel and I discussed the capabilities of V-Tracker and what the future might hold for Web Analytics in Second Life - it seems we're at the turning point here - things can go one way or the other with Virtual Worlds - we get the metrics and, either we get the measurement processes established soon, and move forward, or we don't (and the Web Analytics Association Social Media Committee, which I direct, can help by working with the rest of the WAA to propose Social Media Standards, and this fact is discussed in the video I took at our dinner below):

I wrote about the X Change Conference recently in Attending Semphonic XChange Conference - Sept 20th - 21st; now Gary Angel, one of the principal organizers, has blogged about the event:

"…It’s a change in paradigm – and one that I hope can drive tremendous value to real-world practitioners in web measurement who feel like they are near or at maximized out with traditional conferences."

"…What I’ve found, and what I think most people discover, is that the first time you go to a Conference the learning's can be profound. But the returns diminish rapidly with – well – each return."

I've attended a fair number of conferences lately and I can say the above statement is true for me - most conferences, attended to repeatedly, have less to less to offer from a knowledge standpoint (but more to offer from a networking / social media perspective).

Gary goes of to say:

"…Or for a trip on the wild side consider sitting down with Marshall Sponder and finding out how to measure Second Life. Marshall’s done real-world work here for IBM – and if your company is experimenting with Second Life, wouldn’t it be nice to talk with someone who’s actually doing Second Life measurement?"

This is going to be some conference ….. and look where it's being held …at the American Center for Wine Food and The Arts.  Pretty cool …and I'm going to enjoy every minute I'm there.