eMetrics Summit 2008 Impressions and Reflections (Day 0)

After eight hours of driving, flying and waiting, I finally touched down in the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) at about 4:30PM eastern time.

Coming here is not an easy thing. For one, the company is going through challenging times and many travels have been canceled. For another, it is difficult to leave my two little ones and my wife at home. Believe it or not, I haven’t traveled much in the last four years since I came to Austin.

Austin is a nice city and there is no doubt about it. If there is one thing I can complain (I’m learning not to complain anything), that’s the airport and lack of direct flight to anywhere. I don’t understand why I have to fly to Chicago, stop there for one hour and continue to DC. A funny thing happened when most passenger were on board in Austin. The flight pilot asked if there is anybody volunteering to give up his seat for next flight and he can have $200! Wow, if I am not interested in attending the WAA networking event in the afternoon, I would like to offer my seat for somebody absolutely desperate and exchange for $200!

Chicago is likely always, a little bit chilly and rainy, even in the middle of Oct. DC is much better, a mild weather at about 65C. I took the hotel shuttle to the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center where the eMetrics summit will be hosting. First time to the summit, I am a little nervous than exciting and lingering on many questions in my mind: what type of experience I am going to have? Who I am going to meet? What I am going to learn? Even, where I find a good restaurant?

After check-in, reading emails and taking a quick shower, I headed dowstairs for the networking event. There are about 40-50 people hanging on there, drinking, chatting and smiling. Typical social event in America. I am not a social animal at all, even when I was in the business school. I got a glass of wine and wandering around the lobby. After chatting with few people, I met with Mr. Jerry Tarasofsky, the founder and CEO of iPerceptions. A nice guy with grey hairs, he has founded seven companies in past but this one is the most successful. Since Dell is a big client of his, naturally we have a lot of things to talk about.  I think conceptually, many companies start to get the importance of customer surveys. But practically, there is a big opportunity out there for companies learn to use voice of customer data to drive real actions. Since I came to my role at Dell, I have been trying hard to integrate iperceptions with clickstream data and finding a good solution to read/analyze customer verbatim from the open-ended survey questions. I am glad that Mr. Tarasofsky told me they just announced New Tools to Transform Open-Ended Feedback Into Actionable Intelligence today. Sounds interesting and I am going to give it a try.

eMetrics Summit 2008 Washington DC

I look forward to day one of the summit and I will bring with you more of my learnings tomorrow.