Blogging For Money

On Thursday, I attended the Google Analytics Master Class (GAMC) at Hilton Hotel which was held for the first time in Kuala Lumpur. According to the organisers, it was previously held in Singapore in 2009 and when they saw that many Malaysians flew in to Singapore to attend the seminar, they thought that it would be a good idea to have the GAMC in both Kuala Lumpur and Singapore this year. Apparently they didn’t expect the seminar to have such a huge turnout. I, too, along with my friend Malcolm had to wait in a very long queue to enter the hall.

Took a photo of myself, since I was bored waiting for the event to start.

Somehow we managed to find some seats. Due to the huge crowd, we had to wait awhile for the registration process to be completed. The event was supposed to start at 2.00pm but it was delayed by at least fifteen minutes.

Umm….not really that short, but I suppose it cannot be helped.

After waiting quite awhile, the show finally got back on the road, so to speak. First up was Beth Liebert, the Product Manager for Google Analytics, presenting the Keynote Address. She showed us some slides, it really gave me a good idea on how powerful Google Analytics can be if you do it right and have conceived “goals” for your site. “Goals” can be applicable to any type of site, even if its not-for-profit.

Next speaker on the stage was Stephanie Hsu, Google Analytics Specialist. She came all the way from Mountain View, CA to give us an insight on how Google Analytics was conceived and how it can be used. The title of her topic was “Google Analytics. Powerful. Flexible. Intelligent”. I managed to take a photo of one of her more interesting slides.

After Beth Liebert (again) went on stage with her presentation on “The Power of Segmentation” and Adrian Tan from clickTRUE with “Taming the HiPPO” (that stands for “Highly Paid Person), Vinoj Vijeyakumaar, the Customer Solutions Engineer for Southeast Asia presented his segment.

Title of his topic was “Shaping The Funnel”, where he demonstrates how Google Analytics can help you analyse the data from funnelling the traffic to certain pages. Interesting stuff there.

After that, there was a break for tea, some food and drinks were served. Unfortunately at this point of time, I had to leave early due to some personal issues. I am actually still very super-pissed (even today, long after the event had ended) that I had to go on that particular personal errand for no real reason at all. Still, it was a very insightful event, and although I was not around for the second leg of the event, I do realise the potential of Google Analytics better than I do before entering that hall.

I hope they will have the event next year in KL, because this time I will be sure to sit through the whole thing until the end…even if there is a tsunami or an earthquake outside.

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