Cameron Olthuis

I just got home from being up in Northern California for the week. We started off last weekend in San Francisco where we attended WordCamp and some of the parties that took place around that. Neil and I were asked to give a Q&A on SEO for blogging. I think it went pretty good and we got some great feedback from it. Bill Slawski from SEO by the Sea was in the audience and helped us by providing additional answers for the audience when needed.

Complete trip summary and pictures after the break.

Neil and I on stage at WordCamp.

After WordCamp was over we headed over to San Jose for the Search Engine Strategies conference. Sunday night we attended a private party that was put on by Bodog.com, these guys know how to throw a party. The food and drink they served was awesome. This was probably the funnest event of the whole week.

Bodog party food

Monday was the official start to SES. My partner Neil gave a presentation on Wikipedia and how it can be used to benefit SEO. He did a fantastic job in my opinion and from what I could tell the crowd really enjoyed it too.

Neil giving his presentation.

Monday night we went to a party that was put on by Ask.com. The party was decent but nothing special. We ended up leaving pretty early because we had an early meeting the next morning with Guy Kawasaki.

Ask party entrance.

This next morning we met up with Guy and then went back to SES so we could cruise all the exhibitor booth’s. Then we went to the Google Dance which was pretty crazy. Google bussed everyone from SES over to the Googleplex, there was a line up around the block for several hours. I think there was about 10,000 people in total that attended the Google party. Not only was it open to all the SES attendees but Google employees as well. I have to say I was pretty impressed with the party, Google really goes all out these things. I was cool to visit the plex too.

Google Dance

Wednesday was D-day for me, the day for my presentation. I spent most of the morning re-working my slides and practicing. My session was on Link Bait & Viral Search Success, my presentation was focused on how to track your buzz, participate and manage it, and measure it. Rand Fishkin, Chris Boggs, and Jennifer Laycock. All of them did a fantastic job and I picked up a lot from each of the presentations. Both Neil’s and my slides are available here.

We went to Stirr on Wednesday night and then there was a party put on by Webmaster Radio. It was pretty cool, more or less just a chance to meet a few more folks and party with other friends we made through out the week.

Thursday marked the last day of the conference and also the day for us to travel home. Even though the whole week was super busy I had a ton of fun and met some very cool people. I’m exhausted now as you can imagine.

I’d like to say what’s up to all the cool people I met during the week, I made a lot of new friends including…. Chris Boggs, Bill Slawski, Todd Malicoat, Jennifer Laycock, Loren Baker, Gabe Rivera, Rand Fishkin, Matt Inman, Kat Ortland, Rebecca Kelley, Matt Mullenwag, Danny Sullivan, CK Chung, Greg Hartnett, Greg Narain, Bill Atchison, Jeremy Schoemaker, Niall Kennedy, Dustin Woodard, and many many more.