Dr. Andreas Weigend to keynote Canalys Channels Forum 2009

Dr. Andreas Weigend – one of the world’s leading experts on online marketing strategies and a lecturer on e-commerce at Stanford University – agreed today to keynote the Canalys Channels Forum on 5 February 2009. His speech, entitled “The four myths of e-commerce”, will share real-life examples of how to exploit web tools to better serve customers, lower operating costs and deliver sustainable differentiation.

Andreas, a German national now living between California and Shanghai, said “During this troubled holiday season, e-commerce has proven itself to be one of the few remaining high-growth opportunities. Successful companies have moved beyond using low pricing as their only differentiator. User participation in the web continues to grow exponentially and so more opportunities are emerging to deliver self-service tools, peer-to-peer recommendations, cross and deep selling. Customer knowledge is increasingly being translated into better targeted marketing activities.”

Steve Brazier, Canalys president and CEO, added “This session will share essential knowledge for resellers that sell through the web today, bringing them up-to-date on the latest techniques and trends, but it will deliver equally important expertise to those that do not offer e-commerce. Competition from the web is no longer just about sales – it is increasingly becoming essential for state-of-the art customer service and support too. Resellers must differentiate themselves from their competition and to do this they must understand the latest techniques being used by their web-based rivals.”

Andreas will begin his keynote by presenting the four myths of e-commerce, and move on to discuss:

• Delighting the user! Learn how to recommend new products and services based on rich user data, including intention, attention, situation, location, and relationships.
• Basing decisions on data, not gut beliefs. How can a business define the equations that it should measure? Crucial tips will be given on how to design customer-centric metrics, perform informative experiments and take appropriate action.
• Applying cutting-edge research in psychology to drive viral marketing. How can a business encourage users to interact with each other, create content and build communities?

Throughout the talk, he will give relevant examples both from large, traditional companies and potentially game-changing startups to illustrate the risks and opportunities for channel executives. Andreas will be joining the entire two-day conference. Delegates will be able to pre-reserve* private “fitness checks” with Andreas where they can sit down one-to-one with him to gain expert advice on the web-based challenges for their particular business.

Attendees have been rushing to sign-up for the Canalys Channels Forum, and the delegate list already reads like a who’s who of the EMEA channel. For high-tech vendors selling through channels, as well as resellers across EMEA, this has already become the must attend event of 2009. For full information about the event, including registration details, please visit www.canalyschannelsforum.com.

About Dr. Andreas Weigend

Andreas Weigend is the former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com and an expert in data mining and computational marketing.   He currently teaches the graduate course Data Mining and Electronic Business at Stanford University and a course on Marketing in Web 2.0 at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.  His applied research is in fields including behavioural economics, time series analysis, and computational finance.  As an independent consultant, he helps data-intensive organizations make strategic decisions based on analytics and metrics.  His career as a scientist, data strategist and quantitative methods innovator gives him a unique ability to bridge the gap between industry and academia.  

Andreas served as Amazon.com's Chief Scientist until January 2004, where he developed data mining techniques including session-based marketing, and designed applications ranging from heuristic cross-selling to customer network and lifecycle analysis.  Previously, in 1999, he co-founded MoodLogic, voted "best music organizer" by C|NET. He was also the Chief Scientist of ShockMarket, creating information products and trading models based on real-time data from online brokerages, leveraging principles of behavioural finance.  

Andreas has published more than one hundred scientific papers and co-authored six books. He has  also served as a full-time faculty member at New York University's Stern School of Business, and at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  He received an IBM Partnership Award and a National Science Foundation Career Award.  Andreas studied electrical engineering, physics, and philosophy at Karlsruhe, Cambridge (Trinity College), and Bonn University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in physics in 1991, and was a researcher at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) and at the Santa Fe Institute.

About the Canalys Channels Forum

The second Canalys Channels Forum will take place on 4–5 February 2009 at the five-star Hesperia Tower Hotel in Barcelona, Spain. Supported by some of the world’s largest technology brands, including HP, Acer, AMD, Fujitsu Siemens Computers and APC, it is the largest and most prestigious meeting place for channel executives within EMEA. Attendees can witness hard-hitting presentations covering topical issues, including: how to manage through a recession; the impact of cloud computing and virtualisation; the rise of mobility; and the future of e-commerce. Full information can be found at www.canalyschannelsforum.com.

* The number of fitness checks available by Andreas, and the other expert attendees, is obviously limited by time constraints. Slots will be awarded via a fair policy. To have the best chance of success, delegates are advised to request a slot as early as possible via the event site’s delegate zone, which will go live in early January.

About Canalys

Founded in 1998, Canalys is one of the fastest-growing technology market analyst firms in the world. It specialises in delivering high-quality market data, analysis and advice to the world’s leading technology vendors. It is recognised as a key provider of continuous advisory services and confidential custom projects for marketing managers and strategists in blue-chip IT, telecoms, navigation and consumer electronics companies. It has unrivalled expertise in routes to market for all kinds of high-technology products and services in the consumer, SMB and large enterprise segments, and provides worldwide market data and trends analysis.

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