The Big Wave Blog

After saying goodbye to SMX Santa Clara, a lot of parting thoughts came to mind. Overall, it was an interesting conference. All the search industry celebs, vendors and commoners showed up to get a feel for the first “SMX Expo.” Danny Sullivan unleashed the Expo-style events for Search Engine Land & Third Door Media.

Building the Brand

Taking on Search Engine Strategies and Incisive Media is going to be quite a task for Danny, as he built that empire to begin with. SES established itself as “the” conference to be at for search, thanks to the tremendous efforts put in by Danny. Building the SMX brand is his new thing, and I sincerely hope it does well.

The quality of speakers will have to be revisited often. The conference will be truly successful if it moves from being a conference for Danny and his “friends” to being something more. SMX definitely packs a punch but ot leaves a lot of people on the “outside.” I will have more to say about this in my future posts.

Insiders Club

This sums up my experience. One of the celebrity speakers begins by saying: “I can identify 75% of faces in the room.”

Wow… imagine how you feel if you don’t know him! More important, it means there are not enough fresh faces. So how would I rate the quality of the sessions: as “fair and balanced” as Fox News!

72 Hourzzzz

Personally, I think two days is just right for a conference.

I am sure it can be a great experience for beginners to have 3 days of search marketing knowledge dished out by experts in the industry. But for the rest of us… think of a really slow day back in school when you were wishing you were somewhere else… anywhere else. Woodstock lasted 3 days, and they had music and drugs to keep people there!

All Play and No Work?

By the third day, I had to move my flight to an earlier time to meet some clients on the east coast. Now that is another factor that makes a 3-day event almost impossible for me to attend. If you are the search marketer at the show, it is going to take you a while to catch up with work when you get back, even if you worked late after all the sessions and the network parties.

Awesome Grub!

There is one thing I must rave about. The food was excellent. Irrespective of the topics covered, or the quality of speakers at the event, I must add that the catering was nicely done by the crew.

I would leave you with some awesome comedy courtesy of Mr. Andy Beal, regarding his experience with airport security.

“TSA has a blog now. The only thing is that they make you take off your shoes if you want to leave a comment.”

Please feel free to comment here! And yes, you can keep your shoes on.