Recalling My Experience at SMX West

March 3, 2008 · Filed Under Search Related 

I didn’t attend SMX West last week in Santa Clara California — I experienced it.

I end my vacation tomorrow and head back into the day job for a while longer. In the spirit of remembering the good times, here’s a quick recap of the trip, my experience, and all that was SMX West.

Monday…
Left snow covered Rhode Island and headed to the left coast via Chicago (Midway) and Vegas before landing in San Jose and hailing a cab to the Hyatt in Santa Clara. Monday got started off great with a smooth check in. After a quick shower, I went on downstairs to register — which conveniently came along with some drink tickets for every networking event.

Ah the joys of comp’d speaker passes…

Monday night I hit up the SMX West Pre-Show Networking Event where I immediately met Lisa and Susan from Bruce Clay, Inc. for the first time. Note to mental expectations, “thee” Susan is not 45 years old.

I also got to chat it up a bit with Sean Moriarty (Partner & Vice President of Sales for Third Door Media) who I met back in October.

Following the networking event, we headed off to the bar to join Gary Price from Ask for the Ask.com Invite-Only event. While there I got to hang out with my BFF of SMX, Matt McGee. Somewhere amidst and endless supply of Sam Adams, the following was taken… Quite certainly my favorite pic of the week.

Recalling My Experience at SMX West
Susan, Matt, Lisa & Myself at the Ask.com Party Monday Night (Photo courtesy of The Lisa)

Tuesday…
Woke up surprisingly refreshed and nerve free. That all changes of course when you realize that your session is pretty well packed and you haven’t done this in years. All things considered though, I think I did well while sharing the stage with Chris Smith, Gab Goldenberg, Brian Gil (Yahoo Local) and Kevin from LiveSearch Maps.

(Barry Schwartz was in on my session and live blogged it here.)

Tuesday night brought the “Search Bowl” to SMX’s main theater hall — where Google absolutely pwnd every other engine and the SEM All Stars. It was so lopsided, we created the “boo crew” to help Matt Cutts and everyone else know exactly how we felt about them.

Afterwards, Matt was a good sport about it and allowed Matt McGee to snap the following pic:

Matt Cutts and the Boo Crew
Matt McGee, Darrell, Michael, Matt Cutts, Myself, Jeff, Ross (Photo courtesy of Matt McGee)

There was a lot more drinking to be done, so of course we didn’t disappoint. Somewhere along the lines, Lisa and I became competitive. This was the end result after one of too many heats:

Lisa Vs. Eric… Round 13?
(Photo courtesy of The Lisa)

I’m sure there was more to Tuesday night… But with my panel and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States behind me, I only recall Wednesday morning…

And, my smiling beer:
Happy Beer!
(Photo courtesy of The Lisa… again)

Wednesday…
Wednesday was a day packed with taking notes and doing the real attendee and press work. Lots of angles exposed and a lot of great discussions took place during the day. Not surprisingly, it was all about the nightlife with the “Google Groove” taking place. The Groove was great, short of their having a weak selection of beer. I got to see a number of great things there — including Rebecca and Tamar rock out to Rock Band. I shit you not, Rebecca doesn’t blink while playing the drums. It’s quite impressive.

Before the Google Groove began, Matt McGee insisted that I head with he and the boys to In-N-Out Burger. While there, he managed to grab the following pic of the crew I hung with most of the day…

Boo Crew at In N Out Burger
Myself, Ross, Darrell, John & Jeff (Photo courtesy of Matt McGee)

And, somehow — we ended up back at the hotel bar again where more drinking took place. Amazing.

While the night should have ended there, we somehow ended up at IHOP at 4AM with a bunch of well known folks in SEO. While Chris and Neil fought over the bill, we had many, many unique things take place. And, we’ll simply leave it at that. :)

Thursday…
Thursday wrapped up the SMX West conference, but not all of the fun. I had to jump out of the Hyatt and get over to downtown San Jose to my other airport, but not before I was able to get a lot of other great notes taken down relative to SEM and our industry.

Thursday night - was simply a great time. I got to spend some quality time with Matt McGee, Lisa and many others to have some fun and forget about work for a while. It was a great night, and we got to cap it off with a ride home from a good friend who — appropriately enough — was geeked out in his Audi listening to the Daily Search cast. Now that’s one committed dude. :)

Friday…
I woke up from 3 hours sleep, sliced my hand on a cabbie’s trunk, and came home… slept in my own bed and spent some quality time with family… :) all while catching up with the time difference.

No Notes About Search? No Golden Tips?
Hell no! Listen, SMX West was nothing but an experience. It was something you had to be in on if you wanted to extract any worth from. Did I learn a lot? Of course! Did I find some great things out? Of course! Will I share them here? NO! Get off your ass and get yourself to the next SMX event if you want to find out what’s up in the world of SEM.

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Comments

7 Responses to “Recalling My Experience at SMX West”

  1. Eddy DeMelo on March 3rd, 2008 9:52 am

    I = Jealous.

  2. purposeinc on March 3rd, 2008 10:29 am

    Also Jealous!
    Wandered over here from Matt’s blog.
    Loved the boo crew comment!
    dk

  3. Gab Goldenberg on March 3rd, 2008 2:13 pm

    Dude, it was kickass meeting you - I only wish we’d spent more time chatting so i could learn more about enterprise level local search!

  4. Pics of My SMX West Panel on Flickr | Eric Lander's Blog on March 3rd, 2008 7:47 pm

    [...] these will dissuade folks from thinking that all I did while in Cali was drink and hang with my SEM and blogging [...]

  5. Nancy on March 5th, 2008 12:59 pm

    what you’re diong Li ,you drink and hang, So people was right

  6. SMX Advanced is Just One Week Away… | Eric Lander's Blog on May 27th, 2008 12:12 am

    [...] my experience at SMX West, I’ll be going for work as well as for Search Engine Journal to cover the event as a member [...]

  7. David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors, Vol. 1 on June 24th, 2008 1:39 pm

    [...] I spoke on a panel with Gab Goldenberg and Chris Silver Smith on Local Search and Blended Results. SMX West was a fantastic show - and while I know a lot about local search marketing - I realized that there’s always [...]

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