eMetrics, Day 2 And what’s the deal with Hotel WiFi?

eMetrics Day 2 had a few surprises.

The first was an appearance by the Avinash Kaushik. He had a few new goody announcements to make about Google Analytics. (hooray, I’m no longer bound by NDA!). If you have an account, log on in and check them out. If you’re in the Hilton with me, don’t bother trying on the wireless network, as the awesome speed of 14.4k dialup connection just isn’t doing it for me.

Another surprise was that fewer than 20 people showed up for mobile analytics, presented by Michael Bayle of Yahoo!. It was a very good presentation, very apt, and he had concrete answers to some very concrete questions. Next year, expect a turnout of 100 people.

A non-surprise was a very good presentation by Jim Novo of the Drilling Down project. Sorry to all the people there for delaying the start time by 5 minutes. Novo, Boone, and myself were engaged in a fairly vigorous discussion and it took the likes of the aptly capable Judah to pull us apart. Jim’s book is essential reading if you want to know about actionable analysis.

Here are a few findings and reflections from the day:

Google Analytics’ new functionality is just what we asked for 12 months ago, and it virtually mitigates the production of ‘reporting personae’ (AKA Kittae), if you’re using that tool.

Novo’s major point – communicating cash flow projections is highly valued by finance and the C suite at this time. Well, it always has been. I just don’t think most people do it. It’s vital to work with Finance a lot more these days…and we have a lot in common. In fact, we spent a significant portion of our day talking to Finance looking for ratios and percentages to punch into our sheet.

Maybe more on that pain later.

Day 3 kicks off tomorrow. I’ll have deeper details then. It’s rather all hazzy a bit.