I just read a good (and therefore cynical) article on next week’s Search Engine Strategies show in San Jose from SearchQuant (a/k/a Chris from Omniture). Don’t get me wrong, SES serves a purpose, and that purpose is that it’s a good place to meet clients and old friends. But as Chris aptly notes on his blog:
Panelists, vendors, consultants and engine folk, let’s admit it – in our haste to secure our piece of this rapidly expanding pie, we have turned this conference and others like it into a glorified feeding frenzy where insiders position tactics as unique insight, features as solutions and experience as vision.
Amen to that (I plan to do my best to get some of the pie while I’m there!).
Here’s my idea for a fun way to spend an hour on the floor of the SES exhibit hall: SES Bingo! Here’s how it works. Get a group of people together and walk the floor of SES with bingo cards. Create your list of buzz words you expect to hear as you walk the rows and get ready to shout BINGO!
If you need help generating your initial list, here are some sample phrases I expect to hear next week:
- “Proprietary algorithm”
- “Adwords certified company”
- “It’ll be in the next release”
- “Wanna a free koosh ball?”
- “What’s your monthly spend?”
- “I’m good friends with Matt Cutts.”
- “Hey, is that David Rodnitzky of Blogation.net? Where’s my camera?”
- “Percentage of spend.”
- “ROI or ROAS?”
- “We’re not black box technology.”
- “What happened to the Google Dance?”
- “I’m good friends with Danny Sullivan.” (oops, wrong conference)
- “Microhoo.”
- “Follow me on Twitter.”
- “One second, I’m tweeting.”
- “I’m good friends with David Rodnitzky” (put this one in the middle square).
