QR code on the side of a building? Geek cool.
Last week the West Coast SES Conference and Expo moved from San Jose back to its roots in San Francisco. It was a well attended show (5,000+ in 2009 vs. 6,000 in 2010 registrations), despite the illusion created by the voluminous Moscone.
As part of Connected Marketing Week, SES included a great mix of sessions. In fact, there were quite a few new sessions and solo presentations such as the one by Andy Beal on Online Reputation Management and the one on Content Marketing Optimization by moi.
Networking events were popular, but of course anything with free booze and thirsty smart search marketers equals popular. Networking opportunities like the black hat / white hat brings an interesting mix of people together. There were specialized training sessions as well and a full exhibit hall. I thought the hall closed a bit early, 3pm, but hey – if the vendors want to go home, let them go home.
White Hat, Black Hat Who? – Mike Grehan & Matt McGowan
I talked to Mike Grehan, VP and Global Content Director for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ and SES Conference and Expo, who said the conference programming mix was well received. On the launch of Connected Marketing Week, Mike says,
“I’ll borrow the motto from the UK special air service: Who dares wins!”.
Mike’s partner in crime, Matt McGowan, who is Vice President and Publisher for Incisive Media’s Interactive Marketing Group, had a few things to say about the event:
“The Connected Marketing Week “test” has now been proven. While all of us @ Incisive Media were pretty sure it would work out (remember, it was past and prospective attendees who asked us to do this) we never really did know how it was going to play out until now… the response from delegates, sponsors and speakers has been resoundingly positive.
Most of the partner events in their own right had strong attendance with @ 200 people registered for 140Conf, 100 for IAB, 100 for the E-mail and Search Marketing workshops, almost 100 for OMS and just about 6,000 for SES SF. We plan to build on this year’s success and we hope to see you at the 2nd addition of Connected Marketing Week in SF in 2011 (with many of the same partners and a few surprises) if not before!”
TopRank Online Marketing had a great experience at SES San Francisco with a mix of liveblogging, speaking and moderating 3 sessions as well as plenty of networking. I gave two new presentations: One for a long running session on Blog and Feed SEO and another for an all new session called Content Marketing Optimization that I gave solo. It was a full room and such great attendance was very much appreciated.
Here are a few of the blog posts published by other search engine marketing bloggers on the presentations given by TopRank plus one post from Yahoo.
- aimclear blog – Think Outside the Blog: Tasty Tips for Feed SEO
- PageTraffic – SEO Through Blogs and Feeds — SES San Francisco 2010
- Bruce Clay blog – Content Marketing Optimization SES San Francisco
- Search Engine Roundtable – SES SFO: Content Marketing Optimization
- Yahoo Advertising Blog – Lessons-from-ses-day-3
One of the great things about attending industry conferences is the opportunity to connect with our current clients and meet new companies to work with. Both PRWeb and Marketo exhibited at SES San Francisco:
TopRank Client Maria Pergolino and co-worker from Marketo
TopRank’s Adam Singer & Client Meg Walker from PRWeb
Quite a few of the software and technology companies that exhibit at shows like SES are the kinds of companies we work with at TopRank Marketing, so spending time at the exhibit hall is very productive for multiple reasons.
TopRank’s Mike Yanke diligently liveblogging SES
Congrats to SES for a great show and to Mike and Adam who did a great job covering the event for Online Marketing Blog.
What’s up next? I’m looking forward to speaking at the next SES, which is in Hong Kong, on “The Business Value of Social Media”.
