First of all, please excuse my late reply as I took the liberty of reflecting upon your anonymous English rant about this post – initially written in French – and your request to remove the text concerning Christelle Oblin.
Please also allow me to explain to you why I will not comply with your requirements as this does not reflect the philosophy of this blog.

More specifically, you ask “who I think I am” and in order to assure full transparency, please allow me to elaborate while noting, again, that your comment (the 3rd one on this blog without real added value) is anonymous, which I find very unfortunate.

As you might have read, I am an almost 35 year old woman (I’ll be celebrating my next birthday in May while attending the Emetrics summit in San Francisco) called Aurelie Pols, I’m Dutch, French speaking (note that I also speak English, understand German and read Hebrew).
My background is in econometrics (economics with statistics) and I also hold a Master in Ebusiness where I fortunately met my Spanish husband, René Dechamps Otamendi (so he speaks English, French, Spanish and understands Italian).
We decided to set-up an Interactive Agency in Belgium over 4 years ago now called OX2.
I pushed for accountability in all actions undertaken for our clients (please review our mission statement) and set-up a dedicated Web Analytics business unit some 3 years ago.
Since then, I’ve been Web Analytics Team Leader for a team of 6 today and like anyone in the sector, I’m recruiting intelligent, forward thinking, knowledge-thirsty individuals to complement my team.

I’ve worked for Swiss Life (set-up a loyalty cell as my first job), a pan European start-up called Planet Medica during the dot.com boom & bust (unfortunately) and then Deutsche Bank as business analyst but mostly in order to set-up their first retail website in Belgium, with the help of our fine German colleagues.
The first time I really got in contact with Web Analytics was back in 2000 where WebTrends’ log analyser first landed on my desk. Also note that I just found out last week in Düsseldorf that I was present in the same room as some other web analytics guys & gals @ a seminar in Amsterdam’s Krasnapolsky hotel more than 7 years ago now, where I first saw Matt Cutler talk about Web Analytics and Netgenesis.
That was an eye opener!
By the way, following last weeks’ German experience, I’m thinking about setting up a support group of Netgenesis attendees of this event.
In any case, I really felt alone back in 2000 and decided to set-up my little Web Analytics business unit also as a support group in order to assure excellence in terms of web analytics and move beyond basic reporting. Today as mentioned, we are a team of 6 dedicated individuals (OX2 has a staff of 21 as of today) and we are the only European member of the WedTrends Insight Network (www.webtrends.com/win), as well as supporting other fine products such as Omniture, WebSideStory, IndexTools, ClickTracks, Unica and Google Analytics.

So, that’s for me.

What about you? Please note that searches on both Cristelle Oblin’s name through Google as well as Laurent Barat have been popping-up lately and that same day, your comment was also posted. I will not comment about this and let intelligent readers of this blog fish it out for themselves.
I would none the less urge you to respect the philosophy of this blog, which is to post about the evolution of web analytics and ideally be the playground for forward thinking discussions about the web analytics field that my team, my company and myself, cherish.
Following your post, I have also decided not to publish anonymous comments anymore as your 3 comments on this blog do not add to the discussion.

Second point I wanted to make is about the presentation of this lady, where I will stand my ground, I’m sorry. I consider it to be my right to express my opinion, in full disclosure, on my own blog and remain open for a constructive debate.
I hope she’ll agree with me that, being a woman, we need to live up to a higher standard and her presentation unfortunately did not. It was scholastic and she did not, in my eyes, radiate the fact that except for reading out slides about what a KPI actually is, her reflection could go beyond that. Now, I might be wrong but through the questions that I asked, I got confirmation about this and invite you to read more about that in my third point.
Add to that the fact that the content put forward by Mr. Barat regarding so-called ergonomics – which was actually persuasive architecture, please see Furture Now and the very fine Eisenbergs for more information about that – reflected a very backward way of thinking about web analytics & design. Today’s mantra is to stop all these expensive “redesign” projects and really start looking hard at what your online communication is all about and what you are trying to accomplish before ditching it all out of the window and start all over again 3 years from now. Add to that that path analysis (that’s where I really couldn’t believe my ears) does not bring any added value, as visitors are not cows!

My last point is about Nedstat, Mrs Olbin’s employer. I’m sorry to be ranting about them – I really am, my nationalist pride would really like to take over, I assure you – but for a vendor who claims to be European Leader to consider that third parties are not an issue and continue to ask payment from their clients once they understand they should move onto first party cookies in order to get somewhat closer to reality is a scandal! Please note that I’m not saying that first party cookies are the solution or the ideal reflection of reality but I wanted to point out that indeed Nedstat sends out by default 3rd party cookies and they hide behind “yes but if clients ask for 1st party cookies, we can also do that”.
They forgot to mention that when you ask for it, you also get an extra bill. Excuse me?
And this is a call to Nedstat, next time you’re having a coffee next to me, whether it’s in the Netherlands, in France, in Germany, in Belgium and in the UK, please come up to me and explain it, in all transparency.
I’m not for one vendor or another but I will not ask my clients to pay me to do analysis on data that is not the best that it could be, it does not help the sector I cherish so much and it’s not fair towards my clients.
Web Analytics is not about the tool you use, it’s about what you do with the data but vendors have a responsibility to assure that the data and reportings they are delivering are in the best format possible. And certainly if they charge these prices…

I’m aware of the fact that the French market is not as mature as the US one for example but does that mean we should accept lower standards?
I think not.
I request excellence from my team, why wouldn’t I request as much from vendors, who are a lot more expensive?
I would be delighted to hear about a case where Mrs Oblin (and possibly Mr. Barat) actually added to the bottom line of their clients, real Return on Investment. I’m all ears and would be happy to discuss it as well as blog about it.

So, liveswordfish@yahoo.fr, would you mind if I bought you a drink, in order to allow you to relieve you of your anonymity, and we can discuss for the sake of evolution of this sector we both seem to care about?

Looking forward to a constructive debate,
Aurelie Pols
Web Analytics Team Leader, OX2 – WebAnalytics.be