Here are some highlights of what you missed, WITHOUT giving away the details...
SEOmoz knows how to throw a party.
You may already know this... :-)
The party at the Burke Museum of Natural History featured some incredible Greek appetizers, weird dead animals in glass cases, and, as @seoinseattle Tom put it, it's home to the largest collection of bird carcasses in the world (in the basement, of course). That's something to be proud of, and was really a propos for a bunch of SEO's. (???)
The kayaking got rained out, but the under-the-tarp party at Agua Verde had a lot of mexican food that I ate way too much of. I got to talk to Danny Sullivan for the first time, found out his Dad is from the state I work in (South Carolina), and meet Will Critchlow (who I defamed earlier on twitter) and Duncan Morris.
Check out pictures on Flickr from Dana Lookadoo and Brian Carter.
The Networking was Awesome
One of the mozzers mentioned that the networking was the primary thing at the seminars... the seminars were great, too! In a fairly young and always changing industry, the comprehensive and detailed look we got at many aspects of SEO really helps you see what you know and what you don't know... I mainly went because I wasn't sure if there was anything important I DIDN'T know. That goal was fulfilled, I learned enough to make it worth the trip, and the networking/hanging out was superb.
I could write more about how weird it is to talk to or try to meet people you only know from Twitter and Sphinn and SEOmoz... (I feel so intimate with Jane on Twitter, LOL j/k, but in person a weird hi was all there was- I blame myself) but I made some good connections, may have gotten some very big business for my company, and with Dr Pete, Dana Lookadoo, Josh Sciarrino, Martin Bowling, John Santangelo and others I concocted some crazy viral ideas. Martin Bowling, by the way, is a complete nut. And Rusty Felty talks to his girlfriend on the phone WAY TOO MUCH.
There was a big meme going on about Martin Bowling loving Zima, and we got several people including Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, and Curtis R. Curtis (shown left) to demonstrate their love for Zima too... the pic of Danny and Rand fighting over the Zima is coming soon...
Got to hang out with Scott Willoughby and Carlos del Rio at the Blue Moon Tavern on 45th, which features "Ray the Dog" who howls along with his owner's harmonica playing. Here I discovered that this guy Dr Pete I'd been hanging out is a really big deal on SEOmoz... I had no idea. I'm not a good mozzer, as you can tell from my 1 moz point. Oh, and David Mihm is a really funky dancer. You'll have to ask him to show you his mad dancing skillz at the next conference.
And I met SEO's in the "adult industry" as well as comedy... neato keen.
Exceptional Speakers!
- Rand is so likeable that it doesn't seem to matter what he's talking about- but he gave away some cool secrets.
- Stephan Spencer is an ubergeek. The level of detail and expertise in his presentations was amazing.
- Will Critchlow and Duncan Morris are smart, and, as British guys with cool accents, are of course charming, even if Will does have a secret love child.
- Nick Gerner is an endearing non-SEO geek who gave a fascinating look at the concepts of web spam detection, PageRank, TrustRank, and more- awesome.
- Jane Copland also has a cool accent, gave a great presentation on social media, and handled epic microphone failure with epic poise.
- Rebecca Kelley is clearly a bad*** and went through the SEOmoz site review process in incredible detail.
- Sarah Bird, super-lawyer, spoke on legal matters of great import to all SEO's. I'm waiting for her to write up and sell some sample contracts for clients... ;-)
- Jeff Pollard looks like Rusty Felty and geeked out on crawlability.
- Seth Besmertnik went into the gory details about good and bad link buying and how to evaluate potential links for purchase. What was funny during that presentation was that the camera guys continued to film audience members asking questions, but I'm not sure the audience members realized their admission of link buying was getting recorded and that Matt Cutts might see that film some day...
- Danny Sullivan is more ADHD and tangential than I am speaking- he's a great combo of educational and entertaining. I call him Master of the Tangential. He speaks like he's doing LSI. ;-)
And they all did an enlightening all-star Q&A session at the end before we all went and stuffed our faces with guacamole.
Summary
All in all they were great presentations, it was really good info, and I'm looking forward to watching the DVD's. And SEO's are lots of fun to hang out with... you should try it some time.
