Omniture Summit Report: March 5, 2008

"This," arms spread wide, gesturing to indicate the expanse of our meeting hall, "must be the largest gathering of web analysts I've ever seen in one room."

If there's a theme to the conversational buzz at the Omniture Summit, it is the formidable size of our crowd. Omniture CEO Josh James, in his welcome address this morning, said that there are over 2000 people here at the show.

My favorite part of the morning session was a live demo of newly-released SiteCatalyst 14.  New features drew hoots and hollers of genuine approval from the audience.  Of note:  Sparklines!  Ajax calendar!  Tighter link between SiteCatalyst and Discover!  Also a nice demo of Search Center highlighting useful data integration at the upstream (keyword buying) and downstream (ie Salesforce or other Genesis Partner) endpoints.

In the afternoon I went to a well-attended session entitled, "Think Big: Using Analytics to Win in Today's Economy." The thesis was, those who continue to spend money on marketing during a recession will become more competitive.  I wasn't entirely convinced by the argument, but so be it.  As an industry I think we'll be talking about this subject a lot more in the year to come.

A few other general trends in talks:

• Data integration
• Social media
• Marketing/IT conflict
• Campaign attribution

And now, pictures.

Josh James on the jumbotron.  Am I the only one who thinks he looks like a young David Letterman?

David Yoakum from the Gap, speaking in the Retail Industry Track.

Lance Armstrong, who told an incredible story about his fight with cancer.

One Omniture-green beverage.

I neglected to bring my camera to the Flight of the Conchords show, but it was great.  Nametag-wearing conference-goers gave an exceptionally enthusiastic round of applause for the binary solo in the robot song.