Some of the topics discussed in this podcast:

• Where should someone new to testing begin?
• Does method matter?
• Is suboptimization a risk?
• Can we trust the statistics behind tools?
• What test result has been the most surprising?

Download the podcast

The panel in this podcast about testing:

Bryan Eisenberg is the co-author of several best-selling books: Call to Action, Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?, and Always Be Testing. He is also the co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Web Analytics Association. Bryan serves as an advisory board member of several venture capital backed startup companies (such as Bazaarvoice, iPerceptions, UserTesting.com, and ClickEquations) and is on the board of trustees of the Direct Marketing Education Foundation.

Lance Loveday is the founder and CEO of Closed Loop Marketing. His company has become highly sought after, serving a wide array of clients—from startups to big brands such as Hewlett-Packard, Brocade, and Lockheed Martin. Lance is co-author of the book Web Design for ROI.

Anne Holland is the publisher of WhichTestWon? and president of Anne Holland Ventures Inc, an online business media company. She is the founder and former president of MarketingSherpa, and has for more than 20 years been conducting tests and research into what works best in marketing.

Chris Goward is the CEO of WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization and an expert in website conversion rate optimization. Chris has been optimizing online and offline marketing for companies such as eBay, Epson, SAP, Getty Images, BabyAge.com, Rudder.com, Outrigger Hotels, and Google.

Why do you think there is a need for a conference only dedicated to predictive analytics?

Eric: No matter how you use predictive analytics, the story is the same: Predictive scoring of customers optimizes business performance. Because of this, predictive analytics initiatives across industries leverage the same core predictive modeling technology, share similar project overhead and data requirements, and face common process challenges and analytical hurdles.

There’s plenty of activity out there to cover. The conference program is booked with over 25 speakers presenting case study after case study, from companies such as Amazon, 3M, Charles Schwab, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Netflix and more.

What is your definition of predictive analytics?

Eric: Predictive analytics is business intelligence technology that produces a predictive score for each customer or prospect. Assigning these predictive scores is the job of a predictive model which has, in turn, been trained over your data, learning from the experience of your organization.

For more information, see our Predictive Analytics Guide.

What’s Jim Sterne’s involvement in the conference?

Eric: Jim Sterne is serving as a priceless adviser helping us steer the kickoff of Predictive Analytics World. In fact, PAW is run by the same killer team behind Jim’s eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, headed by Show Director Matthew Finlay.

Who’s Prediction Impact?

Eric: Prediction Impact is my consultancy, offering services and training in predictive analytics.

IMC New York is the smallest, and most experimental, of our IMC events. The focus for IMC New York 2008 (and IMC New York 2007, for that matter) was on everything relating to mobile marketing. Since mobile Internet is still in its infancy, this is still a fairly small niche conference.

IMC was part of Internet Week New York.

The Internet Week New York commercial.

IMC was co-marketed with Future Now’s seminars.

Hotel Pennsylvania, straight across from Madison Square Garden, was the venue for the conference.

HOPE, a conference sponsored by 2600 The Hacker Quarterly, has also been held in Hotel Penn.

Hotel Penn has the phone number that has had the longest continuous use. The number, Pennsylvania 6-5000, inspired Glenn Miller to write a song. The phone number was also asked for in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

The lobby of Hotel Penn. Bands like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dorsey Brothers have played in Hotel Penn’s Cafe Rouge Ballroom.

Panelists at IMC had a stunning view of New York as their backdrop. The conference was held in Penntop North on the eighteenth floor. A curious fact is that some elevators will continue for three more floors despite the hotel claiming to be just eighteen stories.

The view from the conference room included MetLife and the Chrysler Building.

Also part of the view.

Panelists and speakers could look to their left to see a spectacular view of Empire State Building.

Bryan Eisenberg spoke about testing at IMC and gave everyone a sneak peek at his upcoming book.

Watch a short clip of Bryan’s presentation.

Ethan Dreilinger spoke about how CBS distributes mobile news.

Jeff Weitzman spoke about mobile coupons.

Location Services Roundtable with Peter Olfe (Yojo Mobile), Dan Melinger (Socialight), and Bob Page (Yahoo!). Moderated by Lennart Svanberg.

The panel.

Networking during one of the breaks.

Read the program in its entirety.

All of the photos and videos in this blog post were taken by yours truly, Lars Johansson.

Professional photos by Michael Berggren of Blink Photography will be available shortly.

Some videos featuring (in order) Jeff Weitzman (Coupons, Inc.) , Alan Levy (BlogTalkRadio), Ethan Dreilinger (CBS Mobile News), Wil Tan (Moji Labs), the mobile web analytics and testing panel (Phil Kemelor of Semphonic speaking), and the mobile marketing strategy workshop.

Extra emphasis will be placed on panel discussions. Topics covered by panels include maximizing return on marketing spend, creating outstanding content, leveraging social media, taking a new Internet business from good to great in no time, testing, and web analytics.

The target audience for the conference includes marketing managers, sales managers, web analysts, and all other occupations that see Internet as key to business success. The motto of the conference is that it’s by experts, for experts, and for those who’d like to become experts.

Speakers and panelists include Jonas Hombert, co-founder of JayCut and one of Europe’s most promising entrepreneurs according to BusinessWeek; Tomasz Matuszczyk from Seedcamp winner Tablefinder; Anders Östlund, CEO of Ticket 2 and one of Sweden’s most promising entrepreneurs according to Internetworld; Peter Bergström, vice president of MTV Nordic; Brian Clifton, head of EMEA for Google Analytics; Aurélie Pols, Europe’s most prominent web analyst; and Dag Petter Svendsen, data mining expert for Komplett, one of the leading European players in Internet shopping.

IMC is the longest-running conference produced by Europeans about Internet marketing. In the past eight years, it has been held in four European cities as well as in USA and Canada.

Participants will learn how to:

• produce the best creatives to meet their goals
• use scientific tests to decrease visitor friction and increase conversions
• leverage social media to attract new visitors and make them want to come back for more
• find the most profitable advertising opportunities
• use competitive intelligence to outsmart competitors
• analyze website visits to gain new insights

… and much more.

For more information, visit www.internetmarketingconference.com.

Press release

The 2007 presentation
GapCast 2007
The 2006 presentation
The Gapminder tool
Gapminder example

The set up:

• Live presentations in Gothenburg.
• Live presentations broadcast on the web (same as above).
• User-only meeting afterwards in Stockholm.

Twenty-two people were signed up in Gothenburg.

The webcast was full – 50 people had signed up. Unfortunately, some were unable to log in for reasons that are still a mystery to us. Sven Gerber, the German coordinator of WAA and owner of the webcast license, had never experienced that problem before. We also had the bad luck of having the uploaded slides crash when the webcast began. We did several trial runs prior to the event and were logged in 30 minutes before the actual event – we didn’t experience any such problems during any of the testing.

It was quite fitting that Justin Cutroni of EpikOne, one of the speakers, did a presentation about learning from your mistakes. We’re not certain what the mistake was yet, but we’re trying to figure it out and learn from it.

It was my experience that Justin’s presentation ran pretty smoothly, while Fredrik Strauss from Admeta had worse luck. None of my introductory slides worked either. When it rains, it pours. Fredrik has promised to give a personal presentation if someone would like. You can contact him at fredrik (-at-) admeta.com. Fredrik’s presentation was about automation of online ad optimization.

We received very positive feedback about the webcast despite the initial technical difficulties, and I was not the only one who really enjoyed what Fredrik and Justin presented.

Unfortunately, Christopher Ahlberg of Spotfire was unable to attend due to something unforeseen happening in the family.

Sixteen people were signed up for the non-sponsored user meeting in Stockholm; unfortunately, some couldn’t make it. Those of us who did make it there, despite beautiful weather and sports, had a great time. It was like we were back to where it all started a year ago – an intimate gathering in an Irish pub.

The feedback that I have received from Gothenburg so far has been positive.

In total, 88 people were signed up for the three events. Only the webcast had limited “seats”.

The good news is that we’re generous people! We’re providing a recording and access to the slides:

Fredrik Strauss: Automated Optimization of Online Advertising
Justin Cutroni: Mistakes and Lessons Learned

And don’t forget about Fredrik’s generous offer.

I’d like to extend my gratitude to everyone who made these events possible: Fredrik Strauss and Leif Jägerbrand of Admeta, Fredrik Engvall of Spotfire, Sven Gerber of WAA Germany and e-dynamics, and Justin Cutroni of EpikOne. OK, I had a hand in it too.

I don’t know, but have a look at their products.

QlikView from QlikTech
Spotfire DXP from Spotfire.

And why not find a wine for the weekend using the QlikView Wine Selector?