Wow! We’re finally here. I’ve been extremely excited to attend SES since I found out we’d be covering the show around two weeks ago, and it’s great to finally be here. We’ll be going into more in-depth coverage in future posts, but I’d like to give a brief overview of my thoughts on the show in general so far after the first session…
The first thing that struck me after checking out the floorspace and session rooms is that it’s a LOT smaller than I thought it would be. It’s not tiny, but it’s certainly not massive - the exhibition area is much smaller than I thought it would be, but I guess there are only so many companies that would want space at the premium I’m sure SES requires.
Unfortunately, we mixed up the starting times and arrived too late for the first session, but Jay and I met briefly after the first session to compare notes. I was fairly happy with the content of my first session (Site Clinic) but Jay was largely disappointed with the content of the (SEM session) he attended. We’ll explore those sessions further in another post, but I one thing I would like to mention are the promising networking opportunities.
After the Site Clinic session, I was approached by someone actually from Google who wanted to inquire about the site the panel had just reviewed. This gave me the opportunity to bring up the de-indexing issue we’ve been experiencing with our classified sites, and he seemed genuinely concerned. He wrote down our information and told me he’d be happy to get back to us after looking into the issue. Now obviously not much can be said until he actually emails us back, but he seemed genuinely concerned about the problem and promised he would look into it for us as soon as he got back home. So here’s hoping….
If networking opportunities like these continue to present themselves, then that would make attending worth it alone, though it’s too early to know if that was just a lucky coincidence or a normal occurrence.
As you may or may not know, we received full press passes for the event. So we are basically getting in free to cover the event on the blog. However, we’re trying to keep our posts objective and are doing our best to think about how we’d feel if we had spent over a grand to attend.
Good Profits.
June 13th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Hi Dave,
I was one of the panelists in the Site Clinic session so I’m glad to hear you were fairly happy about it - looking forward to the specific feedback in your deeper post!
Cheers,
Tamera
June 13th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Hi Tamera,
Wow, you’re quick on the ball here. I’m planning on writing a _lot_ of content about Toronto SES 2007…mainly what I thought of it and deeper feedback, so if you’d like I can drop you a note when I discuss panels I”m writing about that you had a hand in.
Jay is probably going to be writing a good chunk of stuff too, but he only attended the first day, and was not overly impressed with it… I wish he had come to day number two, it was much better.
Just drop me an email.
I was the www.AncientStandard.com guy in case you were wondering.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Hi Dave,
I’m flattered that you would consider including my thoughts in your coverage; if there is anything you’d like me to clarify or expand on, let me know. I’m primarily interested in hearing your impressions!
I certainly do remember your site - I hope my suggestions re: adding a blog roll/ sites of interest, the use of CC photos with attribution, and adding comments was helpful! I have an interest in ancient history, so I’ll be stopping by for a read on occassion.
I enjoyed Day 2 as well, unfortunately I wasn’t able to get to many sessions, so I’m relying on the post conference coverage to fill in the blanks.
Best,
Tamera