Good Time Had by All – Web Analytics Wednesday Toronto

Posted onAugust 28, 2008 Edit on by Christopher Berry

A huge shoutout and thank you to Patrick Glinski of Critical Mass for organizing Web Analytics Wednesday at Bar Wellington last night.

I had a particularly good time meeting a few people, talking to regular favourites, and being trolled by Mike Sukmanowski and co. (as always). We had attendance of roughly 35 to 40 people, representing a really good cross section of Toronto’s anlaytics and eMarketing talent.

One of the more major discussions was around ‘talent’ and the labor market. What was interesting was that at least 5 people I spoke with were looking for new jobs. Good news for companies looking to get an eMedia or Web Analytics prescense. Bad news for the companies that are hemoraging talent.

Another area of discussion was mobile measurement, and the entire Canadian imperative. I recently downloaded the SDK for the iPhone, and I’ve started reading really deeply into the documentation, and some programming, to figure out just how much functionality I can measure. I suspect that a lot more web analysts, or at least those with a technical background or a computer science background, are going to start doing the same thing. Overall, and most people last night agreed, the opportunities in mobile measurement are absolutely huge. I want to do way more of it.

I saw Mark Dykeman there last night too. I keep on trying to find time to show him some new SPSS techniques, especially around pre-click analysis. Hopefully that can happen sometime before mid-month. And, of course, June Li was there in full force, as perennial contributor Jason Dong of CIBC.

I’ll drop more names in the coming month.

Patrick remarked last night that we’re really lucky to have a WAW culture the way we do. It’s an environment, a rare one I suppose, where most people feel comfortable actually saying what they really think – and laugh. There’s always a ton of laughter at these events. Fun and useful.

We’ll see which other blog entries the Toronto community makes. Maybe they’ll start trolling us all out.