Search Engine Tigers

It’s been a while since I’ve written here, so what have I been up to?  Well, if you follow my Twitter account you’ll have a little bit more of an idea, but if you haven’t, the basic reason is that I’ve been busy.  Outside of regular work, I was heavily involved in putting together a conference in Las Vegas for SIPA (Specialized Information Publishers Association), which ran from Dec 8th to the 10th.  I thought it went great, with a few minor hiccups, as you’d expect from such an event.  I’d like to especially thank Frank Gruber, Li Evans, Stoney DeGuyter and Dana Todd for coming along and speaking to the publishing community.  For those that weren’t there, I believe that Frank became the first ever keynote outside of an educators conference to attempt to get the crowd to join in on a verse of “The wheels on the bus”. 

After Vegas I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at Search Engine Strategies Chicago on the topic of Reputation Management.   Despite being the last session of the last day, and up against the popular ‘Black Hat tips and tactics” session, we still managed to pull in a decently sized, attentive crowd.

I’ll be speaking on the topic of Buzz Monitoring during the “Search and Reputation Management” session at SMX-East. This event is taking place October 6-8 in New York City, with my session being held on the Monday from 3.45 to 5pm. If you’re going to be there please feel free to pop over and say hello to me, or just even attend the session (there are going to be 3 other great speakers, with some really interesting topics, including one that sounds to me like it’ll be a new approach to presenting on this topic – the future of reputation).

If you’ve not booked your ticket for SMX-East yet, then how about a $150 saving on the all access pass? Just enter the discount code smxspeak when registering and smile at the savings.

See you there.

Tomorrow I’ll be jumping on the Amtrak train from DC to Philadelphia in advance of SearchCamp Philly, a low cost conference, with a high grade of presenter. For the price of $21 you can attend 2 days of presentations on topics from Blogging to SEO to PPC to Usability and beyond, given by such luminaries as Kim Krause Berg, Debbei Weil, Geoff Livingston, Li Evans of Key Relevance, and well… me. I’ll be on 4 sessions over the weekend, 2 being site clinics (which still have open slots if you’d like to have us look your site over), and the others being a presentation on Local Search, and one on Social Bookmarking sites.

Next month I’ll once again be taking the train over the Mason-Dixon line, but this time I’ll be heading further up the track to New York City for the inaugural Search Marketing Expo East (SMX-E) show from October 6th – 8th. At this show I’ll be presenting on a panel on the topic of Search and Reputation Management (Monday the 6th from 3.45 – 5pm). There’s still plenty of time to register for this conference too.

I hope to see you at either or maybe even both.

…or why my scenes were cut from The Dark Knight

Anyway, if you’re going to be in the area, head over to SearchCamp Philly, September 6-7 2008 at Temple University, it’s only $21 so what do you have to lose?

I’m on the planning committee for the Specialized Information Publisher’s Association annual mid-year marketing conference in Las Vegas, Nevada from December 8th – 10th, and we’re getting close to finalizing the speaking schedule, but I thought I’d throw out the opportunity for people to make a pitch to see if there’s someone out there that we really should make room for on the schedule.

The focus of this conference is on online marketing, with Social Media, SEM, and Email marketing being particular focuses, so if you have something to say that you think would benefit the attending decision makers, drop me a line to simon at searchenginetigers.com.

What would you get out of it? Well, you have a legitimate excuse to go to Vegas, you’ll get a free pass to the rest of the show ($500-ish value), and more importantly, you’ll get a change to talk to companies that don’t necessarily attend the ‘regular’ search marketing shows (250- 300 attendees based on last year).

As for the other speakers, at this point that’s not my place to announce or even hint at who we have confirmed so far, although you should be able to figure out who one of them will be.

This was my first SES in the country of my birth, but my 6th SES altogether (I did also attend SMX London last year). I would have to say that this was a very enjoyable conference. The sesions seemed to be well put together, with the moderators being encouraged to meet with their presenters in advance of the show, which I think really helped. The moderator for my session was Jon Myers, and given that he works in Manchester, and I was staying at my parents house, 20 minutes outside town… we met at his work the week before, as well as meeting for breakfast the day of the presentation.

Unfortunately I came down sick with a rather nasty cold, so I didn’t get to attend as many sessions as I would have liked, but those that I did attend were great, there were a great batch of presenters at this show, and like Li, I didn’t see any blatant plugging going on in presentations…

The only ‘official’ after party was the London SEO party on the last evening, when everyone that didn’t have a raging cold (that would be me) really did their best to try to drink the Camden Head pub dry, but every night there were opportunities to head out to dinner with presenters, organizers, and other attendees, which really went to show what a friendly conference this was (so friendly in fact, that I’ve been receiving emails all weekend thanking me for sharing my cold with everyone).

It was great to see old friends, and meet new ones, so here’s the shout out to one and all: The Incisive / SEW / SES / ClickZ crew (Rebecca, Marilyn, Stewart, Jackie, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin (I think that’s enough Kevin’s)), Conference co-chair Mike, the Ayima crew (Rob, Melissa, Dean, et al), Matt, Nick, Patricia, Jon, Dave, Kristjan, the SEO-Chicks (Lisa & Judith), Lee, Dave, Greg, Adam, Matt, Dixon, Christine & Li from Key Relevance, Scottie, Frank, Andrew, Amanda, Anne, and many others who I either can’t remember right now, or I put their business card in the back pocket of the jeans I washed last night… whoops.

Thanks for a great conference, and a great time, and for those of you headed to NYC in a few week… see you there.

If you’re interested in going to SES-London in 3 weeks, but haven’t bought the tickets yet, here’s a little deal sweetener for you:- Use the code 20spgst to get 20% of the price of the conference pass. Go on, you know you want to.

Just when you thought you’d seen everything, Search Engine Strategies announces that the last session of the first day of their upcoming SES-NYC show will be a ‘Super Session’ on ‘How to Train your Pets to Search’. This session is not restricted to just canine and feline owners, it’s also open to those who own birds, presumably to cover that whole Data Myna demographic. According to my source, the session is not open to fish owners, as evidence suggests that every 30 seconds they perform the same search over and over again (Note: there’s no proof to the rumors that MSN has seized on this knowledge to hire schools of fish to boost their share of the search market). My source informs me that the presentations currently being considered for this presentation are as follows:

• Search: Going beyond scents
• Finding the freshest catnip
• Pecking your way to the top of the rankings
• Using puppy dog eyes on Matt Cutts to avoid the spam filters
• ACME online, a case study in searching for roadrunner extermination devices

What should we expect to get out of this session? Well, we should find out whether there is any truth to the rumor that search is so easy that a trained monkey can do it.

Due to the unique nature of this session, it actually requires separate registration from regular SES-NYC, although there are benefits to registering for it before registering for the rest of the conference. So, if you’re thinking of going to SES-NYC, then go ahead and take a look at the “Search for Pets” session.

If this session is successful, I fully expect to see a session at SES-San Jose on Pet Blogging, most likely led by whom I expect to be the next star blogger on the Bruce Clay website – Jack Jack Barone (pictured up top)…

Yes, next month I’ll be attending SES London (February 19th – 21st), and I’ll be speaking on the 21st on the topic of Local Search. The week before I’ll be spending time in both the Manchester area (Glossop area really), and Swansea, with a mini trip to Swindon following the conference (what a glamorous life eh?). If you’re going to be around those areas at that time, feel free to drop me a note and we can see about grabbing a drink.

Which do you think I was at?

Yep, Chicago it was, and what a fun and informative time was had by all.   I only managed to make it for the last 2 days, but I did write up 3 sessions on RBDRodeo, so feel free to pop over there and read about:

• Selling your Integrated Marketing Plan to the C-Suite
• Selling your Search Marketing Campaigns to the C-Suite
• Dealing with Difficult Clients

So that’s the end of Search conference season for this year, but it won’t be long before it starts up again…