This is an extraordinarily busy time at Semphonic. X Change is just around the corner, we added Think Tank Training this year, and we happen to be bursting at the seams with business as well. Maybe we really are turning the corner on this recession. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
We actually closed registration for X Change on Thursday afternoon. Thanks to everyone who has registered – I can’t wait to see everybody!
It’s not like we have more people than last year – we’re at about the same number of attendees – but I’d scaled back slightly on the number of rooms/Huddles anticipating a challenging year and we have pretty much maxed out the sessions. Since you can’t have too many people in a group at X Change, the fundamental limitation on size is how many groups are going simultaneously. With the most popular Huddles already bursting at the seams and almost everything already at what I consider the ideal size (12-15), we decided to turn-off online registration.
If you have a compelling need to come out, you can contact me or Eric and we can still probably get you in. We don’t have a hard and fast limit – but just like school, class-size is all important at X Change and I wanted to make sure we kept the experience right. I certainly didn’t expect - this year - to have to close down registration.
It’s almost the same story with Think Tank Training but a little more ragged there. Many of the classes are maxed out, but a few didn’t draw that well (including one of mine – which is a bummer – but I keep telling myself it’s all about topic, it’s all about topic, it’s all about topic…). Of course, we are limiting Think Tank to very small classes (seven is our target maximum) since we are striving for graduate seminar style training not Geology 101 (or “Rocks for Jocks” as it was known at Duke; my daughter and I tried to come up with web analytic equivalents but all we came up with was “Numbers for Dumbers” and “Stats for Prats”).
If you want to sign-up and don’t mind taking some of the lesser draws, drop me an email – we can still accommodate two or three more people.
Jesse’s course on User-Driven Excel Reporting has been the most popular class (it’s all about topic, it’s all about topic…) – I had to add a second class of this and even the second one is nearly full. My “Warehousing Web Analytics” class also had to turn a few people away; which, if it is all about topic, I take as a good sign that people are finally beginning to focus on warehousing and data integration this year.
We’ll see how the training actually works. If it seems effective, I might try to make it a regular multi-city event, perhaps on a quarterly basis (though how it would work without X Change I don’t know). I firmly believe there is a real need and a viable niche for advanced training on this model. The proof will be in the pudding, though, and I’m just hoping it doesn’t come out half-baked.
I also wanted to mention Phil Kemelor’s recent blog on WebTrends. You probably already know that WebTrends has put out a major new release and we’ve been seeing it both from WebTrends and as part of client tool evaluations. Phil’s take is quite positive and, in fact, most of the Semphonic people who’ve seen the release are very impressed.
I’m probably at the more skeptical end of things in Semphonic. I agree with pretty much everything Phil says – I love the REST API approach; the RSS and open-strategies are excellent and exciting; some of the UI takes are very insightful; but the new UI doesn’t cover a big chunk of analytic functionality (that’s why you still have two GUI’s to deal with) and I’m not sure they’ve yet transitioned the most challenging parts of an analytic UI.
I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what comes next and I think the Analytics 9 release is well worth a look.
There are ideas there that are definitely in advance of Omniture, GA, or any other web analytics tool. That’s the sizzle part – and it’s pretty good – but I’m still not sure how big the steak really is. I hope to write a more in-depth take once the pressures of the Conference are past.
I’m also not sure if I’ll be up to blogging from X Change – we’ll see. Perhaps I’ll actually manage a Twitter-posting or two. So far my Twitter output has been limited to updates whenever I post a blog and I tend to read tweets just about that often too. Terse is just not my thing.
Or, in twitter-speak:
Not Terse.
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