Analytics Camp, or I cannot fathom numbers.

This weekend I went to Analytics Camp, held at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at UNC.  The event was an unconference, where the sessions are proposed in the morning and then the event-goers vote which ones they want to see by going to them.

I’m new to analytics.  I really know nothing about them.  What I wanted from the camp was a crash course in Google Analytics, which I’m using here on Jay Dolan dot net and over at The Anti-Social Media.  I knew how to read the information it is spewing back at me, but I didn’t know how to use some of the more powerful features to figure out how many of the visits are me versus real readers, and how to figure out which posts are most popular.

I realized going in that there would be a lot of different topics to pick from to learn, but what I didn’t realize was how advanced that a lot of the sessions would be.  I’m pretty good with numbers, but analytics is a new field for me I’ve really only dipped my toes in.  Unfortunately, it was really hard to gauge what level sessions were aimed at, especially if you are a newbie like I am, so I ended up completely lost in a few sessions.

While I didn’t take away everything I wanted to, I am glad I went to the event.  Adam Covati lead a really useful session about how to use analytics to measure all different kinds of sales, conversions, leads to websites.  Seeing as I have recently launched a new website, it was a good way to see where I’m drawing the traffic in.  I also learned a teensy bit about behavioral analytics for dummies.  I’m not sure what I learned, but I got a copy of the book, so I will read it and hopefully learn something cool eventually.

I have to give a special shout out to Angela Hall.  Angela runs an awesome blog about SAS BI, which is something beyond my mortal understanding.  Angela sat down with a few of us at the last session of the camp and went through a lot of the things you can do with Google Analytics, including filters and segmenting.  It was a really basic breakdown, but it was really helpful because she helped with my blog and the blogs of a couple of my friends who weren’t getting it.

Would I go again?  Probably not, given what I do right now, but I wouldn’t rule out going again if I move into a more technical field where I need to report the numbers more.  I’d also highly recommend the event to my number crunching friends.  It seemed like the type of event that would really benefit them, and I think it’s exciting to see this type of event spring up in my backyard.  Kudos the the many organizers, volunteers, and sponsors who made it happen!