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DAA 2018 State of the Association Address

By Marilee Yorchak posted 01-02-2018 07:14 PM

  

My annual “State of the Association” address to you as a member of DAA is what I hope I am to you – honest, transparent, and encouraging.

 

First of all – THANK YOU for your membership and participation in DAA. As a collective group we can do so much more together to fulfill our mission of advancing the use of data to understand and improve the digital world through professional development and community. Because you volunteer, you contribute, and you engage – you elevate not just yourself, but our industry as a whole.

 

Some highlights for the year:

  • DAA is strong and growing. We have 4,250 members – the highest number we have ever had. We added many new corporate members, and we added a new chapter in Vancouver.
  • A more robust and member-friendly DAA Career Center was launched in October.
  • Significant changes were made to the Certified Web Analyst program for re-certification, making it easier than ever to renew with a longer renewal period and more opportunities to earn continuing education hours.
  • After nearly a year of volunteer input and help, an enhanced DAA website was unveiled in April.
  • Our chapters – with the support of national DAA – had nearly 40 events beyond Symposia, with the goal of having one event per quarter. We also had seven Symposiums across the country in chapter cities with enthusiastic member engagement.
  • DAA has partnered on more analytics events and has been able to offer more member discounts and in-person meetings, such as at DA Hub, Adobe Summit, and MeasureBowling in 2017. There is also now an active DAA channel on Measure Slack.
  • The DAA Digital Analytics Cookbook continues to grow – we had a 35% increase in member-contributed recipes and now have a total of 122 recipes.
  • The Women in Analytics community continues to grow, and a pilot WiA mentoring program was a huge success.
  • The Compensation Study was released in January and a benchmark study on data priorities and challenges with DAA corporate member TMM Data was released in the fall.
  • The webinars and Thought Leader Conversations drew thousands of views during the year. There are currently 19 webinars, 12 Cookbook recipe webinars, and 21 Thought Leader Conversations available on-demand.

 

Plans for 2018:

  • Starting in January, DAA is expanding our global footprint by opening a DAA affiliate in Germany, serving Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. We look forward to helping our members in Europe with the full complement of membership benefits.
  • You told us you would like shorter course content in the form of certificates, so DAA has mapped out plans for ten short-course certificates. These will be inexpensive and a small time commitment. The first one (A/B Testing & Optimization) will launch in January.
  • With the success of the Women in Analytics pilot mentoring program, DAA has invested in a platform to make the WiA mentor program open to more of our members!
  • The overhaul of the DAA Awards (now known as The Quanties) is complete and accepting nominations.
  • We have partnered with DA Hub to offer the DAA Essential Series and other workshops at their event in September; we will continue to offer the Series at Marketing Evolution Experience (formerly eMetrics Summit) in Vegas in June, and we are investigating being able to offer workshops online in the late fall.
  • DAA will continue to strongly support and grow chapters, chapter leadership, and opportunities for our members to engage. A Chapter Leader Day is being planned in conjunction with the week in Las Vegas for the Marketing Evolution Experience and the DAA Quanties. Nine symposiums are planned including two in newer locations (Toronto in April; Atlanta in October).

 

Because I believe in transparency – I will tell you that DAA has some challenges, too. We are at the mercy of the economy and the nature of mergers and acquisitions in our rapidly changing industry. Our Education Manager, Sarah Clopton, is leaving us in January to take a job as a Chief Learning Officer, so we will be actively seeking a competent and passionate Education Manager to help guide our professional development efforts.

 

But even with the challenges we inevitably will face, we will remain member-focused; member driven; and committed to enhancing the member experience. With these goals in mind, we will strive in 2018 to be the best we can be as THE nonprofit association for digital analytics.

 

Thank you for the opportunity to serve you.


#CommunityUpdate

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Comments

01-08-2018 02:33 PM

Thank you Mary!  Together, we will keep on keepin' on!

01-05-2018 02:19 PM

@Marilee Yorchak Thanks for this update. We the members appreciate what you and the board do for this organization. Many things are out of your control - but the things that are, you do very well. Keep on keepin' on.

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