Dateline: June 9, 2008 Seattle, Washington.
This year I returned, as I said I would in last years review, to the SMX Advanced Conference in Seattle.
Getting to Denver was a nightmare. I missed my flight (not by my tardiness) but South West Air helped me catch the next one.
I got into Seattle about 7:30 pm. Rented a Hummer for $31/day and drove to my hotel. OI missed the MSN reception party by 15 minutes so I went back to room and did some work… till 2 am (stupid me!).
These are the sessions I attended:
Day One SMX Advanced
Bot Herding – This was quite an interesting session. I enjoyed it. Panelists discussed the dumbness of bots and how to avoid pitfalls that are bot related. there are many things that can go bad and usually it is avoidable . It was good. I’ve been doing this for near 10 years now so I knew the info but the specifics were good.
This was a fiery panel too. I did appreciate what each of them had to say, Stephan Spencer, Michael Gray, Hamlett Batista and Adam Audette. Hamletts “White Hat Cloaking” presentation was great. They shulda gave him another 10 minutes as he had the audience mesmerized. Danny could of just taken the time from the Search Engine Reps on the panel. They got way to much time and bumbled their way through the session.
These rookies from the Search Engines were not quite ready for that panel and they certainly were outranked by everyone else on it, and they knew it, and… ok thats enough rant.
But they did provide a highlite, in that, Nathan Buggia, Lead PM, Live Search Webmaster Center, Microsoft had an iBook in front of him.
That’s funny! And a serious business faux paux! It is like a Mercedes dealer who shows up to work in a Lexus each day. That is old school Bill, go ahead and send your guys out into the feeding frenzy armed with only an Apple. My next computer will certainly be a Mac sumthin. I’ve had PC’s for 16 years.
Buying Sites for SEO – This was another session, from the Organic track, that about halfway through it I found myself scratching my head wondering why this years event wasn’t just branded as “SMX Black.” The idea is to grab expired domains, resurrect content to it (mouth to mouth resuscitation) then grab the trust from the seasoned and now not broken links and then use 301’s to send the trust to another domain. Well, this works. It always has. But I bet Google is fast working on closing the loophole and why risk your future reputation with Google forever over a tactic?
I enjoyed all the presentations by Gab Goldenberg, Todd Malicoat, Jeremy Schoemaker, and Jeremy Wright. I know it works, but don’t you think teaching it here crosses the line with Google, as far as their Quality Guidelines and Trust Rank system?
You & A with Matt Cutts – Hey, I had a front row seat for this one. Mostly Matt talking about Google best practices. But I did get to ask Matt an important question directly after the session and before he was pinned against the wall with questioners.
The Networking Bash was great. Not as loud as last years. Google did not sponsor it this year so those people who went to SMX Advanced last year, my be the only marketers to get to go to a Google Dance, not at the Googleplex in California.
I am going to take a break now. I’ll tell you about day 2 later…
Nathan Buggia
To be clear it was a MacBook Pro not an iBook. I love my MBP, especially running WinXP with bootcamp. There is no faux paux in a microsoft employee using apple products. Although we compete in on many fronts, Microsoft has a very large Mac software business and as employees we are free to use what ever we like.
mrwebguru
Nathan, hey that was pretty quick. You must be using alerts with your name, good for you.
No offense intended, I am just blogging about SMX and found your situation humorous and notable.
I wasn’t in the front row at the Bot Herding session, so I could just see it was a Macintosh laptop, which is a rival computer brand to Microsoft . Honestly Nathan, can’t you see how while in public, corporate reps should be conscious of the brand they represent? I mean, the impression I got was, “even the Microsoft staff uses Apple, therefore Mac must be a better hardware product than MS.
BTW, I’ve never had a Mac. All PC since my first one in 1991. But I’ve heard great things about Mac, much more often than about MS. So, like I said, you’ve helped me make an important decision, My next computer will be a MacBook Pro. You recommend running WinXP and Boot Camp is the magic program that allows that to happen right?
Thanks for sharing your clarification Nathan.
Namaste,
Robert