Kelsey Marketplaces 2009: Los Angeles

Just wanted to let my loyal readers know I will be hanging out at the Kelsey Group’s Marketplaces 2009 conference next week in Los Angeles at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza.

I am guessing the unofficial theme of the conference is going to be “and what’s your company’s exposure to derivatives?”

Some of the people I think will be interesting to hear from:

Scott Dunlap, CEO of NearbyNow: After trying to find a bunkbed for my daughters this weekend I am eager to learn more about the future of local product search.

Walt Doyle, CEO of ULocate: The Where iPhone app was one of the first I downloaded and it’s pretty good, but with all of the competition for the screen space on my phone and competing apps (Yelp, Google, SayWhere, etc.) I am curious how it plans to become the local search app of choice.

Lee Gientke, Orange Soda: These guys appear to be making a go at scalable SEO for the great unwashed masses.  I’d like to check in and see how it’s panning out.

Here’s the full speaker list.

According to some of the Kelsey crew attendance is surprisingly strong given the economy.  While I would never say that local search is De/Recession-proof, it does seem that it is not suffering nearly as much as other sectors.  I am hoping that that my conversations at the show confirm this.

I am going to try and do some more interview-type stuff at the show instead of live blogging a lot of panels.  Any of you hot shot start-ups or other interesting companies who want to talk please have your people call my people.

Hope to see you there.