SMX Advanced: Thoughts After Day One At The “Sausage Fest”

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by andrewsho
  1. There was a good supply of coffee.
  2. The food at lunch was a little too salty, but that may be because I have been drinking too much coffee – apparently caffeine can cause your mouth to have a salty taste.
  3. The wifi was good. It usually blows at these conferences.
  4. Good gathering of SEM pros.  Sort of like walking into a 3D version of Sphinn.  Great networking.
  5. Most people I talked with thought the linkbuilding panel was the best and I agree.
  6. The bot-herding panel should have been a 5-15 minute discussion.  The topic did not merit an hour+ session, certainly didn’t strike me or anyone else I talked with as “advanced”.  Although it did provide the best moment of the conference – when the MSN guy announced that they no longer supported “NoFollow” and then five minutes later said they did.
  7. The buying domains for SEO panel had some interesting info
  8. While it’s cool to be able to ask Matt Cutts questions and it is definitely valuable to have him here and offer the ability for you to meet him, I don’t think the hour and a half Q&A session with him was worthwhile.  For obvious reasons Matt’s answer to most questions is “build a good website”.  It felt sort of like a Scott McClellan press conference.  Maybe one day Matt will write a tell-all book, but probably not until he’s fully vested.  Matt’s Q&A session did produce the best stat of the conference however – search volume for 13 year old hookers is low.  Note to all of you entrepreneurs, the time to get into the market is now.
  9. The SEM industry has a huge diversity issue.  This is an industry of white Americans, hard working white Americans (Special nod to @martinbowling who flew in all the way from the backwoods of Appalachia despite a Deliverance-like experience with the airlines).  Based on a visual scan of attendees this industry is about 95% male.  As the wife of one attendee said “I don’t have to worry about you tonight honey.  This is a sausage fest”.

Ok time for more coffee and on to day 2.

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