MeasureCamp – Why you should attend the best unconference in the world
Some people need a push, some feedback from others to make a decision. We always tell people how great this event is. The best in his kind. But sometimes you need to hear it from others. So here are a couple of great people from the industry that wants to tell you a story and some personal thoughts.
Simo Ahava reflects on what attending and speaking at MeasureCamp has meant to him over the years and why he keeps doing it. He went to several MeasureCamps in London. He shared his story on london.measurecamp.org
“What gets me up at 4:30 AM on a Saturday, puts me on a plane, lands me in Gatwick just to run through the airport (never wise) to reach the Gatwick Express, hiking through the streets of London near Victoria Station, trying to reach Pimlico just in time to get the last egg & bacon roll that Peter O’Neill has so kindly put aside for me?
What gets me through an intensive day of some of the best talks I’ve heard in my career, networking with dozens and dozens of folks I only see twice a year (at MeasureCamp), only to say a hasty goodbye at around 4 PM, when I have to make my way back to the airport for my flight home?
What gets me through the following night, when I’m dead tired but amped up on adrenaline from all the things I heard and saw the day before in London, inspiring me to write blog posts in my head and create new tools with my mind’s computer, when I should be getting some precious sleep?
MeasureCamp is the best conference in the world, and it doesn’t even classify as a conference. It’s not even an unconference, even if it’s labelled as such. It’s not even a networking event. It’s not even a delicious breakfast buffet. It’s a way of life, my friends. It’s an ecosystem of knowledge transfer, unparalleled in today’s world of ego and intellectual property. Never have I seen people so eager to share what they have been doing, without the slightest inclination of recruitment or lead-gathering.
MeasureCamp is precious. It’s the one event in the year I’d loath to miss, and I wish more conferences would take a leaf out of its book in terms of how to inspire people to feel like they belong in a community of knowledge sharing and camaraderie.”
Gerben van Ouwendorp: “This is my first MeasureCamp. I heard some great stories about it so I wanted to see for myself.”
“I would definitely advice people to go here because my playfield is more marketing/UX and I wanted to deepdive more into data and this is the place where I really get some interesting insights.”
Peter O’Neill: “It’s my second MeasureCamp in Amsterdam and it’s great to see such a big crowd. 130+ people. A lot of locals. People coming from Belgium and all around Europe as well. They all having a great time.”
Annemarie Klaassen: “The reason for visiting MeasureCamp is mostly to get in touch with committed people to transfer knowledge. I’ts not so much about listening to just the speakers but to get more interaction and learn from all the attendees.”
Martijn Scheijbeler: “One of the reasons I come to MeasureCamp is to get to know more people. Networking is very important. It’s easy to build a bigger network with people from the industry here. And also to get more advanced help and information from like specific topics on GTM, reporting or how to work with bigger organisations on how they work with their analytics stats.”
Rick Dronkers wrote a personal blog about his first MeasureCamp Amsterdam experience.
“I’m almost ashamed to say that yesterday I finally attended my first MeasureCamp. I’m always torn about going to events. Sure, I always learn something and you get to meet some new people. But it usually has a huge impact on your workload and you need to get stuff done. For most events, it’s not really worth my time if I’m looking at it from a learning / growing perspective.
Especially the “big & shiny” events always feel to high-level for me without any actionable insights. Maybe it’s because I read/scan all relevant news outlets in my sector daily.
MeasureCamp was different though. First of all, because it’s on a Saturday, everybody who was there actually wanted to be there. No “I need a day off from work” people. Besides that, the average knowledge level was really high compared to other events. More geek talk = better.
The “Unconference” concept is also something I really enjoy. I’ve never been to an unconference before but I’m planning on attending more of them! Basically, the venue is arranged and there is an opening talk by the organization. After that, attendees can fill out a “session-sheet” and stick it on the planning board. You can do an actual presentation, host a discussion or ask help on a problem you are facing and see if people can help you out.
Yesterday I’ve attended a session on the struggles we’re having as an industry to complete the cross-device-multi-channel-customer-journey, a session on predictive attribution modeling and a great problem discussion on how Schiphol is trying to solve some real-time recommendation / personalisation issues.
Besides that, I’ve hosted my own talk “Customize or Die” about 3 cases where we are using Custom Dimensions, Custom Metrics and Calculated Metrics in Google Analytics. Because the board was still a bit empty, Martijn and I decided to host another session. We figured we could fill 30 minutes with random Google Tag Manager tips and quickly put together a deck from scraps. We used some persuasion tactics and named our talk “500 GTM Tips”. This escalated into 5.000.000 tips in the presentation. I Think we got stuck at ±25 though… All in good fun.
I’m definitely going to try to attend this event again next year and I might be doing another MeasureCamp if possible. Thanks to the organization and the sponsors for making this possible.
Reminder to self for next year: don’t come by car. I think I missed out on some great after-conference-drinks.”
And ofcourse… watch this video.
