Dan Cross

About

I entered the world of Web Analytics via "non-traditional" means. My formal education and early career in the early 1990s revolved around music performance. By marrying my love for music with an interest in the web, I discovered About.com (then The Mining Co.), which recruited me as an independent contractor to create online content about guitars (a position I maintain to this day).

In the early 2000s, my work with About.com led me to SEO contract work for other music publications, which in turn led to a formal position with Primedia Business (now Penton Media) - a B2B Media company. My early work for Penton involved SEO and usability for specific brands. Over time, my professional interests evolved, and in 2009 I took over the digital analytics team at Penton.

My current position at Penton involves leading a team focused on benchmarking performance, conceptualizing/building/disseminating highly-tailored reports for over 400 clients, and essentially leading a charge to illuminate others within the organization what they should care about, why they should care about it, and how they can affect results.