Yes, it is that time of year again. While most are stuffing turkey and braving the malls for holiday gifts, we in the online marketing community prepare for back-to-back-to-back… to back conferences. Admittedly, with the whirlwind of activity, I’ve even neglected to mention one most important, underway as we speak.
This week at SES, Zvents CEO Ethan Stock joined Zorik Gordon (President of local search ad vendor ReachLocal), Gib Olander (Director of Biz Dev at ad agency Localeze), Eric Stein (Director of Local Marketing at Google), and Chris Tolles (CEO of Topix) for a panel on Local Search: Why Your Business Needs to Be There and How. As the most significant online local marketing and search conference of the year, The Kelsey Group and Search Engine Strategies ILM:07 & SES Local starts the season right. My being too late to the game to encourage you to go, if you were there and want to talk local, let me know.
Next week leaves us torn between SES Chicago and Pubcon and I am not alone in debating this scheduling travesty.
Search Engine Strategies is billed as the premier event for search engine marketing and optimization and I can validate it remains the leading search conference with tremendous insights and diverse topics. My only criticism is that they cycle through the same list of speakers on the conference circuit as though they are the only people in the industry… year after year…. after year… after year. Also consider, SES Chicago is practically mirrored in New York, San Jose, and Toronto bringing to mind the adage, if you’ve seen one…
Without question, if you have the means, you should get to Las Vegas for PubCon. WebmasterWorld’s Search & Internet Marketing Conference brings the best and brightest together once a year for the largest meetup of search engine marketers, optimizers, marketing executives, webmasters, affiliate managers, program and channel managers, purchasing agents and affiliates. I’ll be there and look forward to catching up with Bill Slawski, Misty Locke, Li Evens, Bill Hartzer, Rand Fishkin, Jim Boykin, Aaron Wall, Kevin Lee, Tanya Vaughan, Stephan Spencer, Tony Wright, Lee Odden, Andy Beal, Michael McDonald, Greg Hartnett, Joe Morin, and Jeff Quipp; and please, I know gratuitous name dropping and outbound linking when I see it so no need to cry foul (Sorry Misty, the Range site seems to be down!). Really, having all those brilliant search minds in one place where I can draw out their greatest secrets with free drinks at the blackjack tables is alone worth the trip. And who knows, Malcolm Gladwell might want a few minutes of my time to pick my brain for his next book. If you’ll be there, drop me a line (paul_l_obrien at yahoo dot com), I’d love to catch up.
And if that wasn’t enough… MediaPost’s 2007 Search Insider Summit is December 12-13 in Park City, UT and there is a week long Online Marketing Strategies seminar in Pewaukee, WI! (okay, so you probably aren’t planning on going to Pewaukee). I’ll tell you you what though, I don’t envy Lee who appears to be going to all of them.
“Brilliant search minds” indeed! 😉 Coming from a search guru himself. You can name drop all you want! It’s great to hear who respectable industry players think are worth the listen. Great catching up yesterday!
wait wait wait….
you can’t forget the most important name of the all…but of course I wasn’t there!
: )
wait wait wait wait… You are suggesting that I left you off my list of search people I can’t wait to catch up with at ILM?! Clearly you need to be a part of this Sphinn comment thread (ahem. ego. cough!)
The comment “you’ve seen one and you’ve seen em all” really captures the SES experience to a T. Nice post.