E-metrics San Francisco 2007: Busy, busy, busy

So I’m back at my desk after a hectic E-metrics in San Francisco, and now I have a whole bunch of posts backed up that I need to write, whilst also addressing the three-day work backlog that’s built up in my absence. But here are a few lightning thoughts about this year’s conference – actually the first time I’ve been to the US version (have always had to make do with the UK version in the past):

• Great to meet Chris, Stéphane, Justin, Robbin and Ian (and to catch up again with Rene, Avinash and Eric) at the bloggers’ table at lunch on Day 1. Chris initiated an interesting discussion (he’d even made preparatory notes!) about how we measure the success of our blogs, and Rene filmed some of it. I await the exquisite embarrassment of seeing my pasty face on Rene’s blog with considerable anticipation.
• Very impressed by the new Google Analytics. The new dashboard’s nice, the scheduled e-mail reports feature is good, the tabbed reporting interface is a great innovation. But the thing I’m most impressed by is that Google had the discipline to fix what was broken about GA – its interface – without giving in to the temptation to crowbar in a bunch of new features (I know, you could say the new UI is full of new features, but I mean new reports, visualizations and suchlike). I know from experience (here and before) that that’s incredibly hard to do.
• It’s hard for me to judge, being such an expert and all, but my assessment of the quality of the actual conference content is that the keynotes were good (the Microsoft keynote from my colleague Seth Romanow was very well received, gratifyingly) but that some of the breakout content was somewhat ropey.
• I’m still not sure that the conference strikes the right tone with respect to vendors – now in from the cold, vendors seem to be everywhere on the agenda, delivering sometimes thinly veiled pitches for their stuff. Many attendees, I’m sure, are desperate to hear from the vendors, but not to decide which one to go with – to learn about how to get the most out of their existing vendor. So why not have a vendor education track where the vendors can address “power user” topics for their customers? The vendors can still have their booths to attract and influence buying decisions, plus if an attendee wants to learn about what another vendor can do, they can go to their session.

That’s it for now. Must dash off to beat the traffic over the lake. More soon.