What I Liked

Birds of a Feather Topic Lunch Tables – The opportunities to network and meet fascinating people in the industry were vast and well organised. In particular, I liked the Birds of a Feather Topic Lunch Tables that were topic based lunch tables for which you had to sign up, that were held in a separate dining area. You had to be quick on the uptake to register for these tables but topics ranged from influencing the C-suite on PPC advertising to meeting a Bing engineer, to name just two. On a side note, C-suite is not a programming language it’s used in the business world to describe the top honchos at the executive level.

Diversified Sessions – There were a wide number of topics from which to choose within each subject matter, with the usual suspects such as ‘Quality Score Optimization for the Pros’ but also some more focused sessions such as Microsoft’s adCenter Desktop Lab and Efficient Frontier’s Demystifying Search Data. Certainly the list was extensive and beyond learnings from the sessions themselves, the questions posed by the audience were often interesting and challenging.

More Presenting, Less Selling – It was refreshing to see most presenters shying away from selling their own product or tool, with only a few sales pitches being thrown out to the audience. Perhaps selling has become more subliminal or presenters have realised, by being told countless times, that attendees are not interested in who you are or what you do unless that information in some way benefits their business in the 1.25 hours they have dedicated to listening to you. If not, there’s always two more concurrent sessions to attend…

The Food – It must be stated that the diversity, quality of and frequency at which refreshments were provided was impressive. With some type of refreshment pitstop after each session it is a marvel we did not roll over and sleep after the delicious lunches.

What I Disliked

Temperamental WiFi Access – It must be said that the Internet connection fell out more frequently than would be desired at a search engine marketing conference. One would expect that the Internet connection would be able to accommodate 1,500 tweeting, blogging, sharing, search engine marketing junkies. Power outlets were also sparse which made things difficult for people like myself with a battery deficient laptop, which bodes the question, either more power outlets should be added or I should investigate upgrading to the iPad? Tough decision…

Encyclopaedic Sessions – Most sessions were of high enough quality to warrant being featured at SMX Advanced but there were some that had an encyclopaedic nature to them in that they skimmed over the topic at surface level rather than diving deep, sharing lessons learnt, case studies or experiment results. Don’t give me the basics of attribution, I know what it is, tell me what your business is doing to tackle the problem, share ideas, brainstorm.

Would Have Liked

Certainly, we cannot all get what we want all the time, but I would have liked to see some REAL answers provided by Bing/Yahoo about the paid search transition planned for the end of Q3 this year. It would have been great to see either search engine equipped with both some answers and a willingness to share. It was the right platform to do it – with some of North America’s leading search marketers in the room, this would have assisted in streamlining the process somewhat, disseminating information effectively and perhaps alleviating the stress search marketers are feeling.

The issue of privacy, though recently a hot topic in the media, particularly with Facebook not playing nice with its privacy settings was not really touched upon. Granted, session topics are proposed months in advance but Europe appears to be more concerned with this issue. Given the number of lawsuits underway relating to privacy, perhaps this is being discussed at conferences held there?

This last point is a prickly one but it would have been fantastic to see an industry leader touch on the point of industry maturity and evolution. The search industry continues to change at an unprecedented rate but maybe it’s time to pick up on that topic of standards, accreditation and training. It would be interesting to see how the industry is divided on the issue today.


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