MeasureCamp – The best conference in the world
Simo Ahava reflects on what attending and speaking at MeasureCamp has meant to him over the years and why he keeps doing it. Would you like to share your own experience with the analytics community? Then, get in touch!
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.