What a week. Not only am I no longer a Pubcon virgin, but I have also been embraced by beautiful Las Vegas with all her bright lights, slot-machine jingles and raw, unbridled energy.
I see now how Hunter S. Thompson was so easily and effortlessly swept into a melting world of wonder and fancy when he wrote Fear and Loathing. In the spirit of Hunter, I too was on a job, researching everything, keeping my ear to the road, eye to the sky moving forward, never straight.
Danny Sullivan, (Godfather of Search, Search Engine Land) and me (Matt Joswick)
The Pubcon Webmaster Conference Sessions.
The show was four days long. Each day started with a keynote speaker followed by four different tracks of 1.5 hour long sessions. Each session was lead by a moderator and had a panel of 3 to 5 industry experts. Session topics included Search, Web 2.0, Net Marketing, SEO/SEM, Affiliates, Domainers, Video, Multimedia : aka: Webmastery.All the sessions where very informative. However, as informative as they were, the juicy tid bits I came to find were only passed on through confidence in face-to-face chats after sessions or at the nightly parties held most days. Sessions I attended covered Organic SEO, Link Building, Brand Management, Hosting Industry, E-Commerce, Writing for Engines, and much more.
Google booth on showroom floor.
It’s all about the People
A good conference but a great networking event. I went into the conference with the intention of meeting all the great search engine optimizers and marketers of whom I have learned from for the last several years. In any industry there are always people that are known for who they are, or the great work they have done. I thought they would be the ones to drop the best advice. And they did, but I realized quickly so many of the people I met during the conference were very clever, had great ideas, success stories and very cool. I am so excited to network with everyone I met.
Search Engine Guru Detlev Johnson (of Search Return) and me.
Special thanks to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land and Detlev Johnson of Search Return who were so great to stand in for a photo. Big props to my new link building guru bud Jim Boykin, I have some vintage Bob Marley recordings for you. A Salute Todd Malicoat for being so cool, and looking exactly like my grade school buddy Brian Dimmer. Rand Fishkin and Gillian for putting on the Werewolf Party, and Matt Cutts for not letting anyone believe me when I said I was Matt Cutts. And to Stephan Spencer for representing Wisconsin and nice WP plugins.
And everyone else I had the pleasure of getting to know, here is some link love, Paul Bradish, Nick Wilson, Amad Ebrahimi, Glen Reeves, Manfred Trienbacher, Jan Gehrke, Wesley Cox, Derrick Wheeler, Christopher Kata, Adam Green, Keith Goode, Bruce Clay, Sarah Bird, Jan Becker-Fochler, Michele Smith, Jason Glaspey, Tony Aly, Monte Baumgartner, Paul Bruemmer, Amanda Stewart, Mike Blarowski, Ian Cowley, Vanessa Fox and everyone else.
More Webmaster Session Details.
I plan to cover more session topics in more detail once I get my notes together. Each session covered enough information to write for days about. Stay tuned for more post of this sort.
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It was a pleasure to meet you as well. Thanks for the link love! Next time PubCon rolls around I will be much more prepared so we’ll have to hit the town and do some damage.
Wow! This page is alread indexed.
Thanks for the mention Matt. Great meeting you. Can’t wait til next year.
Take care
-Amad
Matt! Are you coming back to Vegas this year? Chris, Glen and myself will be there… it would be great to grab a drink with you again!