The first chunk of the morning focused on Web Analytics — how to best measure the performance of your site, both for purposes of managing/optimizing your business as well as for external relations. A few consistent themes:

• The traffic measurement companies are all pretty lousy, though comScore is the least lousy and is emerging as the coin of the realm;
• Data, data, data — its invaluable for understanding your business, but can be overwhelming
• In particular, knowing where a visitor came to your site from, and targetting ads on this basis, leads to a much higher likelihood the visitor will click on an ad.

Next we focused on various aspects of building an audience.

Much to my delight, an overwhelming consensus emerged that widgets are a big deal and a fundamental shift in the web.

Regarding search optimization/marketing, all agreed it is absolutely mission critical, though views were mixed (at best) whether 3d party search marketing firms really added much value.

A lively conversation around partnering with the portals followed.

The session wrapped up with a discussion around building an advertising business both from a sales and an organizational perspective.

The competition was intense; about six spills, two sets of broken poles and a few bumps and bruises later, the results were in.

U.S. Ski Associtation President Bill Marolt presided at the Awards Cerememony:

Gold Medal:  Brian Levy, Useful Networks

Silver Medal:  Bryce Youngren, Polaris

Bronze Medal: Mike Hirshland, Polaris 

Three other awards were given out:

Yard Sale Award: Claude Ruibal

Drive my Snowmobile into a Tree Award: Gregg Spiridellis (JibJab)

I Drank My Company’s Kool Aid Award: David Eun (Google)

We agreed with everyone that the session was strictly off the record and private, so, obviously, I won’t get into specifics of who said what.

That said, here are a few themes:

• Social networks are an important new communication mode which will be ubiquitous but whose value is threatened by the possibility of the absence of openness and standards;
• Lively debate regarding whether the greatest value and opportunity is in the head, trunk or tail of online content;
•  Enthusiasm for widgets;
• A very spirited (bordering on, but just falling short of contentious) debate whether online advertising ultimately can be fully automated or whether a human touch will remain a necessary ingredient

All in all it was a fun productive session.

Stay tuned for results from the ski race….

Amidst lots of spills and general good humor, major controversy erupted when the winning team was the team that enlisted one of the pros on their behalf.

Libby Allard (wife of Polaris EIR Bill Allard) scored two bullseyes, and got Most Valuable Curler.

Bob Marshall, CEO of Weatherbug, got Least Valuable Curler (he knocked two of my stones out of the box and so earned the judge’s consternation early on).

Carla Morrissey, guest of David Hose, won the first, and most entertaining, spill award.

And the Most Valuable twin curlers went to the Spiridellis twins, of JibJab fame.

Surprisingly early retirement for the crowd after dinner tonight — not sure whether it was the 7 am start time or folks wanting to rest up for tomorrow’s much anticipated ski competition…

Folks are just rolling in.

A handful made it off to the slopes today; WCSN CEO Claude Ruibal is now known as “Yard Sale” Ruibal.

We head off to the curling rink in a few minutes. Sessions start tomorrow.

Stay tuned, lots more fun on the way.

I am now plopped down in front of a roaring fire here at the Stein Eriksen with a tall beer and Mac Powerbook, and am in the process of creating a blog for the event.

My hope is to have an a place for attendees to go for information during the blog, but also to outline the conversation we are having here, and hopefully generate a bunch of comments here both from participants and non-participant viewers, alike.

We’ll see how it goes.