This past Saturday, the first MeasureCamp conference in Croatia was held at the Mediterranean Institute for Life Research (MedILS) in Split.

The conference brought together digital marketing analysts and experts from all over the world, and the concept allowed each participant to hold a lecture, which is why there was great interest in participation.

The MeasureCamp conference was founded in 2012 to share knowledge and connect the community in the field of digital analytics and marketing.

The special feature of this unusual conference (the so-called unconference) lies in the fact that each participant can give a lecture, present an idea, hold a discussion, or comment on a problem that is difficult to solve.

Great interest in participation

Due to the concept that anyone can register as a lecturer, 28 lectures were scheduled during the day, divided into four halls. But when applications for lectures were opened, teaching positions disappeared in less than two minutes, leaving potential lecturers without available appointments.

For this reason, two additional discussion halls were opened, which resulted in a total of 37 lectures in one day.

“It often happens that at MeasureCamp participants come to listen to a lecture and look for a solution to a problem, and later during the day they add their own lecture. Here the situation was completely reversed.

We expected a lot of lectures, but we were not prepared for the need to open two more lecture halls,” said Ivan Frančešević, one of the organizers of MeasureCamp and Chief Data Officer at the technology and marketing company SeekandHit.

The importance of community

The conference is held on a Saturday so that participants come out of genuine interest and not because of a day off. This first edition of MeasureCamp in Croatia was visited by around 140 participants, almost half of whom (45%) came from abroad.

They talked about current topics such as artificial intelligence in digital marketing and data analysis, data privacy (consent mode, direct collection of data and cookies), MMM models, marketing automation, and tracking, and the lectures showed how the Croatian analytics scene keeps pace with world trends.

“This is a great indicator of the potential and knowledge that Croatian companies have in the field of digital marketing and analysis.

The presentation of innovative solutions for data processing and monitoring greatly interested foreign participants. And when Peter O’Neill, the founder of MeasureCamp, or a representative of Google say that, you know you’re doing something right,” commented Zorin Radovančević, conference organizer and founder of the digital marketing agency Escape.

Cooperation of companies for the benefit of the community

The idea for the Croatian edition of MeasureCamp was ideated in 2019, when it was planned to be held in Split, precisely at MedILS. However, the global pandemic postponed the plans until 2024.

Hrvoje Pilić, director of the performance marketing department at the Degordian agency, took us through the organization of such an event:

“MeasureCamp is a non-profit event, really focused on community and knowledge sharing.

The organizers have to be from different companies, so at one of the Google conferences we got together from Degordian, SeekandHit, and the Escape agency, and later Casumo joined us in the preparation.”

Hrvoje also mentioned the sponsors who financially support the event, among which Google and Hrvatski Telekom stand out as the main sponsors.

A look into the future

With the extremely successful first MeasureCamp in Croatia, the organizers are already thinking about the future. They plan to expand the event and include even more participants and lecturers from various parts of the world.

“This success gives us the motivation to organize an even bigger and better MeasureCamp next year.

We want to continue encouraging innovation and knowledge sharing in our community,” concluded Ivan Frančešević.

We are looking forward to future editions of this unique conference, which showed that Croatia has something to offer the global digital marketing and analytics community!

Photos and text: SeekandHit