Support your local…Web Analyst

It’s that time of year again when the Web Analytics Association (WAA) open board slots are filled via election. I don’t really get much involved in the politics of the WAA and I’m not fundamentally a joiner but in the past I’ve endorsed a few friends (Marshall Sponder and June Dershewitz) and I’ve seen just how tough the job is. It may not be quite as bad as squaring off with the Danby gang (the violent but rather dim-witted clan that James Garner tackles in Support Your Local Sheriff), but it can certainly make you wonder if you wouldn’t be better off just passing by and heading on to Australia.

But as I looked over the candidates for the Board this year (I believe there are six slots open) I was struck by their remarkably high quality. I hope it’s not that people have more time on their hands because of the economy – truly this is a standout group.

Of course, a few of the WAA’s notoriously strange categorizations persist. How is the Director of Web Analytics at Aspen Marketing a practitioner and not a consultant? Oh well...

It will be hard for the Association to go far wrong with almost any of these candidates, but I thought I’d call out a few that I think would make particularly good choices and encourage you to give them a vote.

I know many of the people in the “Consultants” group and they all seem like pretty good choices but I particularly wanted to call out Anil Batra who I think would be really good on the board. He’s smart, sensible, experienced, practical and nice (and nice really matters for this kind of work). Olivier, Rene, Daniel and Stephane would all be great choices. Perhaps I should educate myself on how the voting works (I remember it was quite complicated last year) – but there are enough fine choices right here to fill a ballot.

I’ve met a couple of the practitioners as well. I think Ed Wu from Dell and Rachel Scotto from Sony are both strong choices. Obviously, it’s especially important to get practitioners on the board since they are the only ones who don’t have a business agenda that they must occasionally fight to set aside.

Choosing in the vendor category is really tough. It would be hard to argue against Alex Yoder of WebTrends. I know Jonathan Levitt from iPerceptions and I think he’d be excellent. I also really enjoyed working with Matt Langie on the Omniture Summit MindMeld sessions – he’s a great choice from Omniture and having someone from Omniture on the WAA Board just makes sense.

I see that I have already listed more than the six open slots that I believe are available. As I said, it’s a strong group and that’s nice to see. The WAA does important work in our field – and the current crop of candidates suggests that the organization is rapidly becoming international, diverse, accomplished and influential.  You can view the entire list of candidates, read their short pitches and even hear them on the WAA site at http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/consulting-nominees-2009! So get out there and support your local web analyst.

Comments

[Stéphane Hamel]

I totally agree with your comment on the "remarkably high quality" of the runners. I don't know if I'll make it to the board, but the experience itself is rewarding, and the most important outcomes of this election are to continue to educate people about analytics, move our industry forward despite the state of the economy, and foster the networking and communication among all of us who are involved with web analytics and online optimization. The years ahead will be exciting!

Stéphane