Session Proposals - AnalyticsCamp NC 2010

Most of the sessions will be picked based on pitches in our opening session. The method is simple: anyone who wants to present a session, or lead a discussion, can propose it. We'll fill out the schedule based on which sessions people want to attend (if you haven't been to an unconference before, this works better than you might think). We'll have a few invited speakers to cover some important topics, but most of our day will be based on sharing what we know with people who want to learn.

If you plan to pitch a session, please add it to the list below (you'll need to create a free Wikidot account to make changes to the wiki). Remember to register and join the network, too. If you need ideas, you might find inspiration on the session ideas page, but you're not limited by our imagination. You can pitch anything you want at AnalyticsCamp, and everyone there will decide whether they want that session to happen.

Session proposals

Include session title, description and your name. Link to a reference or blog post if that helps. Adding your Twitter handle would be a nice touch, too (Session leaders list on Twitter).

• Edward Tufte & Information Design Strategies for the Web - "Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity, rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication." —Edward Tufte. Nathan Huening first presents an overview of the work of information design expert Edward Tufte and then discusses concrete applications and examples for applying his principles of analytical design to the Web. Selected themes include: contrast and meaning in design, avoiding "chartjunk" and "computer administrative debris", clarity and clutter, the value of aesthetics, and design from the "inside out". Nathan is a principal at Sprocket House in Chapel Hill. (You can read more about the presentation at Refresh the Triangle.)

• Introduction to Marketing Analytics Tarun Kushwaha will introduce some theoretical aspects of marketing analytics. He plans to talk about important statistical tools which have been very successfully applied in the industry: conjoint analysis, cluster analysis, multi dimensional scaling, bass model, etc. He will delve into a few of the most successful applications of these tools and how they can add value to firms implementing them and add to the skill set of MBA students. Tarun Kushwaha, Assistant Professor of Marketing, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School

• Behavioral Analytics For Dummies - Join the book's co-author, Jason Rushin, as he takes you through the principles and tools you can use to discover your customers' and visitors' behaviors and how they’ll provide insight into improving your on- and off-line marketing, merchandising, sales, and customer service. Jason Rushin, Quantivo (@Quantivo)

• Effective Email Marketing Analytics - Adam Covati (@covati) will cover everything from basics to advanced in email marketing analytics with answers to important questions such as: *when is the best time to send*, *who are my loyal customers*, *how can I raise the lift on an email campaign* with understandable and approachable solutions.

• Know Your Social Media Impact - Don't just have a presence in Social Media circles, learn how to measure and understand the impact your efforts are having. Adam Covati (@covati)

• Marketing Analytics & Marketing Automation - Digital marketing makes it a lot easier to compile useful B2B marketing metrics, because so much data is available. The challenge remains: how do you make sense of all that data? Marketing Automation software can help, because it connects CRM, Web Analytics, Email Marketing and Social Media to generate closed-loop marketing reports. For advanced scenarios, you still need BI, so we'll also take a look at that. Jep Castelein, Lazy Marketer at LeadSloth (@jepc) presentation slides: http://bit.ly/dpbcUU

• Dashboarding Your Way Through Analytics - So you've got a bunch of executives who don't understand analytics? What about using point & click interfaces to help lead them to the answers? Dashboarding can work if you develop a framework. Let's discuss what this framework could be! Angela Hall (@angelahall1)

• Architectures for Success - Don't kill your implementation before it starts by implementing insufficient hardware or software. Take a moment to estimate utilization and deployment goals to determine adequate resources. Angela Hall (@angelahall1)

• Roundtable Discussion: Measuring the Online Impact of Offline Campaigns - Sometimes it's difficult to determine the impact of your offline tactics (Print/TV/Public Relations/Radio), but there are ways to use online metrics to get a closer approximation of the ROI that these tactics bring. Let's chat about some tricks to do so. I have some ideas on how to do this, but would love to hear how other folks have approached as well. Jim Hazen, Capstrat (@hazenj)

• Real-Time Analytics for Mission Critical Systems - The next frontier of Analytics would be in building intelligent systems that need to respond in a time critical manner. Applications may vary widely—examples include managing clean energy supply in real time, providing real time data analysis to mobile corporate clients, etc. Let's discuss on the real-time capability desired from Analytic tools and software packages so that users as well as vendors and makers of analytic tools become aware of this crucial issue. Farhad Islam, Ph.D IAA/NCSU (@farhad919)

• Roundtable Discussion: From Basic Reporting to Advanced Analytics - A challenge in BI is bridging the gap between basic reporting and more advanced analyses - this discussion will cover tools, staffing, or other management issues in adding advanced analytics to your basic reporting, e.g.: 1. starting with a BI reporting tool, Google Analytics, etc. and adding statistical analysis, 2. staffing challenges or coordinating across silos, 3. convincing management to do analytics. I can share a vendor tools perspective and anonymous customer examples but I'll mainly seek to facilitate a small group discussion so vote and attend if you're willing to share pains and brainstorm solutions. There will be no slides! :) This session will be limited to 10 participants to keep the group small for discussion. I-kong Fu (@ikongsgf)

• Roundtable Discussion: Creating a more Data-Driven Organizational Culture - Related to the above discussion but more focused on culture/org behavior issues, this discussion will be a roundtable on what steps you are taking in your organization to create a more data-driven culture, either from a management perspective or from a grassroots IT or analyst perspective. Everyone is talking about "analytics" but we will assume you do not work for Jeff Bezos, Reed Hastings, or an exec who already drives a culture of "competing on analytics". ;) I can share anonymous customer examples but I'll mainly seek to facilitate a small group discussion so vote and attend if you're willing to share pains and brainstorm solutions. There will be no slides! This session will be limited to 10 participants. I-kong Fu (@ikongsgf)

• API-a-go-go: 25 things you never knew about @mom. APIs for social networking tools like Twitter offer unprecedented opportunities for data-mining and real-time analysis of social interactions. With more than 50,000 tools tapping Twitter's API, this session reviews (at least) ten Twitter analysis tools, then brainstorms new directions for mining. Henry Copeland, Blogads and Twiangulate (@hc) Check out this map of the unconference's attendees: http://bit.ly/acampnc

• Understanding the Twitter Conversation - Most of the analysis on who to follow, watch is all about associations, assumptions and reactionary. In this talk we will take a different approach and look at topics vs association. We will use text mining as an approach to find out whom to follow and learn about any new and interesting trending topics and fad topics. Richard Foley (@richardfoley)

• Growing Basil or: How I Learned to stop worrying about A/B Testing and Love Design of Experiment. - Not only will you get to see my wonderful, lol, garden, but we will discuss the Pro’s and Con’s of A/B Testing and Design of Experiment, by studying my Basil dilemma. This will be a fun look what Design of Experiment can tell you over an A/B Test, and the advantages and disadvantages of both. Richard Foley (@richardfoley)

• Text Analytics Applications Beyond Brand Management: e-Discovery, Fraud Prevention, Employee Profiling. Peter Dolina, Business Solutions Principal, (Mindent Solutions)

• Fitting Social Media Analytics into Existing BI Framework: Unstructured social media data has not matured into a set of acceptable standards. Companies are challenged with making sense of all the chatter and integrating it into their customer experience analysis process. How do you store and integrate this data into a traditional BI or Analytics framework? What is the value of integrating this data? Is establishing ROI in social media appropriate or is it just a “job protection” metric? Ben Zenick, VP Consulting Services, Zencos (@bzenick)

• Visual Analytics. Use visual tools to analyze your data. Depending on what people are interested in, I can show Tableau, Parallel Sets, some other tools, or talk about a variety of visualization techniques. Robert Kosara, UNC Charlotte, EagerEyes.org (@EagerEyes)

• Roundtable Discussion: Mobile Business Analytics. It seems like every company out there has created an app for something. Many analytics vendors are jumping on the bandwagon as well, with the goal to give customers access to critical business information on-the-go. What are the most pressing needs that you have seen out there in terms of mobile usage? Doctors and nurses can certainly benefit from being able to view patient information on their mobile devices, but what type of information is the right amount and the right kind for each type of business? I am looking for ideas and feedback and will share some anonymous customer examples as well. This will most likely be a small, intimate group discussion. Looking forward to your inputs. Varsha Chawla (@VarshaChawla)

• Career in Analytics - There are quite a few MBAs including myself are curious to learn how we can transition to web/marketing analytics career path. It would be great if we can hear some experts give us some guidance.

• Ideas from the Numbers: Content Inspiration from Analytics Data While most people are familiar with using Google Analytics data to understand the traffic on their blog or website, we will take the data as a starting point and explore possible content ideas inspired by what that data tells us. It is not just about writing more of what works, but looking at the data with a creative eye to generate relevant site content. Jeff Cohen, Contributing Editor - SocialMediaB2B.com (@jeffreylcohen)