Last week I brought my wife with me to SES in San Jose. It’s the first time she’s accompanied me to a conference and it definitely won’t be the last. She’s already trying to plan it out where she can pretty much come to all of them from now on. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad one. I’m kidding, I enjoyed having her with me and look forward to bringing her again.
She really liked all the people in the industry and had a great time seeing what really takes place at these things. I guess she realized it’s not all the frat partying that she’s thought in the past. I do actually accomplish some ‘work’ stuff here and there.
It was also our 5 year anniversary the week before and since we didn’t do anything exciting we decided to drive up the coast to San Jose. Neither of us had done that drive before and I think we were both blown away at how beautiful it was. If it wasn’t for the cold water I seriously think that would be one of the best places to live on the planet.
We stayed a little north of Santa Barbara on Sun night then woke up early Monday and drove the coast. It took us a full 12 hours and by time we arrived in San Jose we were both wiped so I did a little work and we pretty much crashed. Next time I won’t stop so many times along the way as I missed some valuable SES networking time.
The next day we hung out around the conference and then went to the Google party at night. She was blown away by ‘the plex’, she kept commenting how it’s like a big college campus. After the Goog party we spent a couple hours visiting with David & Irma Wallace, who happen to be some of my favorite people in the industry and I look up to them a lot. Irma kept telling me I need to bring my wife to a conference and I finally listened to her advice, which I’m glad I did.
Wednesday was my presentation day. I spoke on the Linkbait & Viral Search panel and I think this was by far one of my better presentations. I decided to scrap most of the stuff I’d talked about in the past and just walk people through a real world case study that I was involved in. I can tell this format was appreciated by the audience with all the positive feedback I received and I’ll be sticking to it from now on. One of my goals this year was to improve my public speaking and I think I’m doing pretty good with, still a long ways to go though.
It’s funny because I used Jason Calacanis as an example for controversial linkbait and I didn’t realize it at the time but I guess Robert Scoble must have been in the audience. Not a few days later and it seems like he’s a little deprived of attention and now he’s following Jason’s example of calling SEOs scumbags. Unfortunately for him, I’m not going to fall for the bait and instead I’ll link to Rand and Danny’s rebuttals, they’re much better reads anyways and you won’t waste your time. Danny had a one-liner that’s seriously classic.
Want to be like Robert — and Jason Calacanis — and keep equating SEO with spam? Then fuck off.
Danny’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet so this was obviously well deserved. Good for you Danny.
Wednesday night was the infamous Search Bash put on by Webmaster radio and let me say that it didn’t disappoint, as usual. Darron, Eddie and the crew really know how to do it proper. My wife and I really enjoyed hanging out with Chris and Danielle Winfield from 10e20 for most of the party. They’re great friends and it’s a shame they don’t live closer because I know we’d have a blast hanging out with them.
That’s about it. Thursday we pretty much woke up and drove home. SES was great as usual and I had a blast hanging out with all the regulars, as well as meeting and hanging out with all the people I didn’t know. Can’t wait ’til PubCon.
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of