Search Stars

The format of SES requires you to choose between three concurrent sessions, up to four times each day. This means that I didn't get to see everything I would have liked, or hear everyone I would have liked to hear. A few times I jumped between sessions, and the conference does an excellent service to attendees by putting all the presentations online so I was able to download the powerpoints from many sessions I didn't attend, and get a lot of value from the written wisdom of those I missed.

Speaker quality was a bit inconsistent, but very high by the standard of most panel presentations I've attended. Most impressive to me was the number of really well prepared, insightful, and engaging presentations - primarily from CEO's or primary operators of SEO/SEM firms. Most of these folks have been deep in the trenches for 3 to 5 years (some even more), which means they were SEM'ing before the market had any recognition or even a name. I've done this missionary work in a few markets myself, and it's a tough process. You don't do it unless you're passionate and you can't survive for too long unless you can think and move ahead of a very fast moving curve.

Those who impressed me the most were Frederick Marckini (iProspect), Kevin Lee (Did-it), Dana Todd (SiteLab), Patricia Hursh (SmartSearch), Matt Van Wagner (FindMeFaster), Mike Grehan (iProspect), Greg Boser (WebGuerilla), Eric Ward (EricWard.com), Jessie Stricchiola (Alchemst Media), Greg Jarboe (SEO-PR), Gordon Hotchkiss (Enquiro), Bryan Eisenberg (FutureNow), Micheal Sack (Inceptor). I'm sure there were more at sessions I missed.

Leading the whole show of course was Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Watch). Brains, ambition, and humility don't seem to inhabit the same being too often in the high tech industry, but Danny seems to have that rare combination. This market is lucky to have him carrying the flag.

Posted by Post Master at March 7, 2004 11:28 AM