The Microsoft Party
SMX kicked off with a party thrown by Microsoft. I had sorta envisioned this party as the place where I was going to meet everyone, pick some brains, and introduce me, me, wonderful, fabulous me to the world of SEO.
Then I realized the drinks were free.
I drank and drank and tried different drinks just cause they were pretty colors. A well dressed couple in front of me ordered martinis. When my turn at the bar came I instructed the bartender that “I wanted something yellow” (I got to have a drink for each color that you can find in a bag of Skittles.)
Some of the worlds foremost experts in the SEO industry now know me as the guy who showed them how to make a fart noise with nothing but your hand and your armpit.
The party was actually very impressive and wins the coveted SEOish Award for least wait time at the bar but it sucks that there wasn’t any t-shirts. Somewhere between free drinks and no wait time at the bars, I fell in love with Microsoft.
It was really great to see everyone drunk. Susan and Lisa (or as Lisa would say, “Lisa and Susan“) of the Bruce Clay blog only wrestled each other twice, which I am told is a new record.
This party is where I learned two important lessons. First thing I learned was that everyone is actually as nice as I have heard.
The second thing I learned is that blackhat/whitehat is not the real distinction of the search industry. There is a far more powerful reality. There exists only two types of SEO people, and depending on which one you are will ultimately define who you will end up networking with most.
The types are “smoking” and “non-smoking”. I would mention the non-smokers, but they suck. The smokers rock, we rule the SEO world.
After the party ended a good crowd of people went to the Fairmont hotel bar and drank more. Good stuff.
YOU and A with Matt Cutts
After a nice breakfast and alot of coffee, everyone went excitedly into the “YOUandA with Matt Cutts” session. Matt then asked Danny to strip, which Danny did. (SEOfangirl, you should have been here…) Really, he took off his suit on stage, he took off his pants on stage, but after that Matt and Danny sat down and started the session. This session was covered in depth at Search Engine roundtable by Tamar, who did an incredible job in her coverage of SMX. This session was covered well by Susan Esparza at Bruce Clay as well but I heart the WebProNews coverage of it where Navneet Kaushal of PageTraffic was kind enough to link to my site in his coverage.
What I liked about this session was that I got to shamelessly promote my Google guideline site ask a question.
I asked about the Google webmaster guidelines and why were they so damn vague. I explained to Mr. Cutts that if the Google guidelines were not improved within 24 hours, he was never going to see his cats again. (Google updated the guidelines the next day and Matts cats were returned safely to their home where they then meowed.) After I asked my question, other people started to ask and discuss things other than me and I lost interest. Especially the real estate stuff… grr…
Duplicate Content Summit
The representatives of four search engines (Ask, Yahoo, Google, and MSN) explained duplicate content in a manner that would be deemed duplicate content by most search engines.
This session was good, but the best part for most people was after they stopped talking when they started answering questions and really spent alot of one and one time with people. (Thanks for that) I honestly can say that everyone who wanted a minute or two or five with each representative got to have it. I was really impressed by this.
The representatives were… Vanessa Fox of Google, Amit Kumar of Yahoo, Peter Linsley of Ask.com, and Eytan Seidman of Microsoft.
More coming soon (I need to get more beer).
You know, you just start out in the search world, you read all these blogs and figure that – while everyone seems super-nice from their writing – if you met these guys face to face, it might be kind of intimidating.
But then a line like, “the guy who showed them how to make a fart noise with nothing but your hand and your armpit.” changes all of that.
I’m sorry we didn’t get a photo together and thanks for the link. In repsonse to you needing more beer, I need more sleep.. I should have the other sessions up by tomorrow, so stay tuned for those. Look forward to seeing what you put together and nice article on the webmaster guidelines!
It’s totally true about the networking groups (smokers and non-smokers) separation at these things. I had more than a couple good chats out at the old smokers section, it was one of the best parts (besides the booze and sessions). You have to know that in Washington it’s illegal to smoke within 25 feet of any business, so we were forced to separate here. Places like Vegas, it’s not as obvious.
Hi Pat!
Ahhhh and I was just about to quit smoking! damn gonna have to wait until after SES Toronto. Hope to see you there.
Pat, it was great meeting you… and yeah, next time, I want a photo with you too!
I’m so glad that I decided that this was the trip to start smoking again as it means Pat thinks I’m cool (and is also pretty much how I got to meet him). Now I just have to try to quit again!
PS – I’m like Rhea – how could I have spent so long smoking with you and chatting, without a single photo of the two of us?!
Grand post about search engine optimization. I’m honestly surprised that it has not been alleged earlier.