This post is written by our co-worker at IIH Nordic, Caroline Vidal, and the views presented are based on Caroline’s own experience at the latest WAW event 2022.
Ever since I got introduced to the digital analytics world over a year ago, I have heard of this amazing event called Web Analytics Wednesday, organized by IIH Nordic throughout the year until covid made its entrance. So when the first in-person WAW since 2019 was finally happening I felt that I had to attend.
And it did not disappoint.
The WAW event
It was awesome to see how many showed up, around 140 people were checked in at the event!
The speakers and their presentations during the evening were a good mix, which made it very interesting and inspiring. The variety of topics made it possible for people with different skill sets and levels of prior knowledge to gain valuable insights into different areas of web analytics during the evening.
The speakers of the evening:
- Mark Edmondson from IIH Nordic was introducing his new book ‘Learning Google Analytics, and showed us three different use cases from the book.
- Morten Busk from Kayak was telling us about how they work with AI and Machine Learning.
- Milán Balazs from IIH Nordic told us about the problems with the dataLayer and the tool he has created to monitor the dataLayer in real time and improve the data quality.
- Yali Sasoon from Snowplow was trying to change the way we look at data and told us why we should deliberately create the data that we need.
- Maiken Torrild from Nordea was teaching us about the importance of tracking what really matters and understanding our user’s pains and motivations.
- Ibrahim Elawadi from Philips was speaking about analytics in the age of the modern data stack.
In the break, we got split up into smaller groups to socialize and discuss issues we might have at work and perhaps find solutions together. It was a really nice way to meet new people and have interesting conversations. A big topic was the guidelines from Datatilsynet which is on everybody’s minds at the moment.
Because of those guidelines, there was an addition to the schedule for the evening, a session for discussions around what it means and what we can do to be compliant.
What I like the most about these kinds of events is that they are really born out of the passion for analytics and sharing knowledge with one another, and you can feel it in everyone who is there.
The complete silence in the auditorium during a presentation, the happy and open faces during the break, the easy conversations. And of course, in the time and energy spent by the amazing people who are putting this together – only for their love for web analytics and this community.
Overall I learned a lot and the evening was awesome, so much so that my friend and I actually missed our train home because we were so deep into our conversation about the evening’s topics that we didn’t notice the train stopping next to us.
The next WAW is on April 26, and I will definitely be there!
Ready to Sign-up for the next WAW?
You can sign-up to WAW 2023 26th of April here
