Fall is annual strategic planning season for many companies, and the DAA is no exception. We’re fresh off our October Board of Directors meetings where the focus was 2019 strategic planning so I thought I’d share some highlights from the day and half session…
· DAA Membership continues to grow as the industry continues to bring new analysts and corporate members to the community. In October we reached an all-time high in membership at…. 5,438 individual members (+20% in 18 mos) and 77 corporate/university members. We also have an industry leading membership retention rate. We’re not satisfied with that of course, and continue to explore new ideas for adding membership value, but we see those figures as evidence that we are ultimately focusing on the right things.
· We’ve been talking an awful lot about the relationship (and lines?) between data science and digital analytics. There’s no question that our field continues to evolve with greater and greater scientific discipline and rigor, and increasingly involves integration with broader data sets… the debate is really focused on how do we best invest in solutions and support analysts develop the necessary experience and skills for success while maintaining critical digital domain expertise. You’ll start to see some of this discussion manifest in our Webinar and short course topics which we’ve reprioritized around this and what we feel are skills most needed for continued evolution of our practice.
· We consistently hear peer-to-peer conversations are one of the most valuable benefits of this community, so we’ve agreed to make peer-to-peer learning an even greater area of focus in 2019. We’ll be looking at solutions to help expand our Mentoring program, evolve our local Symposia and work shop formats, and hosting more corporate member activities to create more opportunities for peer-to-peer learnings.
I’m going to try to keep these updates limited to a few highlights, so we’ll call that a wrap for now.
I was a little late getting my thoughts together; in fact the November Board meeting is already here (Thursday this week!! Yikes!!), so I’ll be sure to follow up with you in a much more timely fashion, as soon as we wrap up!
In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts and opinions!
#CommunityUpdate