It is Wed. night and I am posting to the site using the television web service here at the hotel. It is actually better than I imagined it would be. I just need to make sure that I have the keyboard pointed at the television.
First PubCon
This is my first time at the Webmaster World, PubCon convention. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the conference itself, but I knew that I would get a chance to meet up with some people that I have met over the years online. Always nice to put a face to the name so to speak. I was excited about that and the possibility to meet and interact with some people that I have read about over the years.
PubCon Day1
The first day at PubCon for me, started at 3:45am in San Francisco, where I left to fly out to Vegas. After arriving, I met up with two friends from DigitalPoint at the hotel and we immediately left for the conventoin. Jeremy (aka Shoemoney and Stuart (aka smindsrt) were my partners in crime and we all showed up at the convention center ready to meet and network with some of the SE industry’s best. Unfortunately, the first day’s offerings from the speakers was really not something that I learned much, if anything, from. This was really not due to the speakers’ lack of knowledge, rather I think it was due to the scope of the guidelines that they were tasked to speak about from Brett Tabke.
The Webmaster World conference started off with a keynote address by Robert Cringely who seemed to really enjoy talking about himself. Robert has clearly led an interesting life and has worked for some of the technology world’s best and brightest. Unfortunately, it seemed to me that he was a bit disappointed about some of the decisions he has made in the past with regards to stock options and potential missed opportunities. The old cliche, “hindsight is 20-20″ seemed to be a popular backdrop to his keynote address.
Second on the agenda for myself and Stuart was a PPC “clinic” moderated by a few people in the PPC management community and that SEO guy that was on the Martha Stewart Apprentice show. He actually seems like a very itellgent guy. Unfortunately, the session did not offer a description of what the session would cover and it really did not deliver mcch of value. That was unfortunate, as the people on the panel clearly knew a lot about PPC, I think the lack of structure to the session really prevented it from offering much. The funny part about the session was that people were writing their Adwords logins pieces of paper for the moderators to log in to their accounts with and place on a giant screen for al of the session participants to see. I doubt there will really be anything malicious to happen to these people by doing so, it was just something that i simply could not imagine doing in public like that. Jeremy went to the “Domain Name Technical and Legal Issues Panel” where it seemed like he enjoyed what the panel of domain experts and attorneys gave out some good information.
My third session was “Microsites and Niche Marketing”. I guess I was really expecting a little more information and discussion for advanced web types like myself. While there are some rookies in the audience and at PubCon, the vast majority of people in attendance have been around the block many times. The panel was clearly capable, experienced and successful, but as with the first session, it seemed the items they were tasked with talking about and covering were weak.
Day 1 Lunch
Day 1′s lu nch was sponsored by the Yahoo! Publisher Network. YPN is Yahoo’s answer to Google Adsense. YPN is still in beta and it seems that they are making some significant progress and changes to the system. What is really nice to see is that Yahoo, and the YPN team, are very accessable, knowledgable and willing to listen to their publishers. VP & GM, Will Johnson, spoke along with other high level YPN team members about many issues regarding YPN beta and publisher concerns. The hot topic was ad relevance and the steps that are being taken to make sure the contextual ads displayed on publisher websites and RSS feeds are relevant to the site and the site’s content. I think Will and his team did a good job answering questions from YPN publishers as well as making everyone in the room feel that YPN is looking to make customer service and interaction with publishers a priority at the Yahoo! Publisher Network.
Stuart, Jeremy and I decided to go and check out the Expo during the after lunch session and talk to some of the exhibitors. What was interesting is the number of online casinos promoting their high paying affilate programs. As most webmaster types know, linking to casino sites has long been seen as a no-no. Either Brett Tabke is looking to make money wherever he can, or there is ssomething that I am missing. Shouts go out to the guys from the Best of the Web directory and the ladies of Link Connector, who remind you to keep your links naked.
Next up was the “Super Session: Blogging for fun and Profit.” This was of special interest to me as I have been pretty active with blogging and WordPress over the past year and it is something that I really belive is going to be a huge growth area on the web. Needless to say, I was excited to attend this session as the speakers included Barry Schwartz – Rusty Brick, Jeremy Zawodny (of Yahoo!), and Andy Beal. However, this was one session where it was clear that the items the speakers were asked to cover were just plain silly. They covered things like why they blog/started blogging, why they continue to blog and how they monetize their blogs. I don’t want to sound like I am simply bashing everything, but again, there was really little offered by attending this session. I am not looking for trade secrets, but it would be interesting and engaging to have a more forward looking discussion from all of the speakers. Kind of a bummer for me. It is all about me.
The day at PubCon wrapped up with a Yahoo! Search sponsored party at the Pure nightclub at Caesar’s Palace. Free drinks and apps were on hand as well as a boatload of dudes. It was a pretty funny sight to see so many computer geeks in a swanky Vegas nightclub. I am sure I will not see that again any time soon.
I ended my “night” by gambling until 4:30am and then having a “breakfast club sandwich” until 5am.
I am going to talk more about the sessions and Day 2 at PubCon tomorrow morning and when I get back to San Francisco in the afternoon.
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