I'll Be At Search Engine Strategies New York

The report from Forrester on the Five Year US Interactive Marketing Forecast that I just wrote about really stressed the fact that Search Marketing is extremely important today and will just continue to grow in its significance. So, on that note, I'm off to attend the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in New York next week. It's being held at the New York Hilton starting on Mon., March 17th till Thurs, March 19th. SES is part of Incisive Interactive Marketing, the marketing services division of Incisive Media that also includes Search Engine Watch and the ClickZ Network .

I'm planning on spending two days there, Tues. & Wed., to learn as much as I can from the experts. So, I'm sorry to say that I'll be missing the SES/St. Patty's Day PUB CRAWL on Monday evening that will take folks on a bar hoping event to visit seven different pubs. It's been a long time since I've been in New York on St. Patty's day, but I still remember how crazy it gets.

The conference welcome and opening keynote on Tues. morning is from Nick Carr, author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google. I guess it's natural that Google's name be in the opening keynote for a conference focused on SEM.

Nick is a former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review and writes and speaks on technology, business, and culture. His bio states that his book examines the future of computing and its implications for business and society. Since 2005, he has published the popular blog Rough Type. He recently wrote in it that he was pleasantly surprised to see The Big Switch listed in the Wall Street Journal business bestseller list, at Number 5 - just behind Good to Great and just ahead of Who Moved My Cheese? - another book to add to our reading list. In 2005, Optimize magazine named him one of the leading thinkers on information technology, and in 2007 eWeek named him one of the 100 most influential people in IT. So, I'm looking forward to hearing Nick speak. I hope my plane is on time since I'm coming in that morning from JFK.

After Nick's talk the Expo Hall officially opens which has over 135 sponsors and exhibitors to chat with. Then starting at 11 am they offer the first of five different sessions that each follow a different track that you can follow for the day. They are: Fundamentals; Conversion; Local; Advertising; and Contextual Ads. I'm not sure yet where I'll start.

After lunch there's a panel session on universal search that will discuss how search, marketing and information seeking is changing the industry that follows the search and will include research data available only at SES. Panelists gurus for this include:

• John Battelle, Founder/Chairman/CEO, Federated Media
• James Lamberti, Senior Vice President, Search and Media, comScore
• Lyndsay Menzies, Managing Director, Big Mouth Media
• Jack Menzel, PM for Universal Search, Google

Day 2 ends with a networking reception back in the Expo Hall.

Day 3 on Wednesday morning gets underway with the keynote: Search Has Changed Everything... And So Can You by Gordon McLeod, President of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Gordon will discuss how the WSJ changed how they do business in a search driven world and the session promises us a better understanding of how making the right moves can help make the most of this dynamic universe. Basically it will hopefully explain how we all need to combine the best of the old with the new marketing of today.

The names of the session tracks on Day 3 include Fundamentals, Stats & Research, Social Search, Vertical & Retail and The Click Z Track. I'm very interested in the Social Search Track which includes a session titled Social Media Marketing - What is it and What is it Good For? that features Jory Des Jardins, Cofounder & President of Strategic Alliances of BlogHer - which happens to be the next event that I'm planning on attending in a couple of weeks.  

The afternoon keynote that day is from Jason Calacanis, founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine focused on the top English-language search terms which include verticals such as travel, products, news, entertainment, sports, food, and health. Prior to this Jason cofounded and was the CEO of Weblogs, Inc., a network of popular weblogs that was sold to AOL in November 2005. Upon joining AOL, he was appointed SVP. In addition, he was named general manager of AOL's Netscape and was responsible for the July 2006 relaunch of the browser as a social bookmarking news site.

I'm going to head back home on Wednesday night, so I'll miss Thursday's keynote speaker which is Andrew Tomkins, Chief Scientist at Yahoo! Research. Andrew's research over the last eight years has focused on measurement, modeling, and analysis of content, communities, and users on the World Wide Web. I'm sure it will be very informative, but my head would probably have enough information to absorb by that time anyhow. Anyone sitting in on this feel free to send me some comments.

So, I'll be reporting back next week when I return on how the conference was and some of the highlights and take-aways. I'll also be writing an article for Adotas to feature since I'll be covering the conference for them as well. If you're planning on being there on Tues. & Wed. please drop me a note so that we could perhaps meet or just look for me there and say hello. I'm really looking forward to this conference and I'm sure I'll walk away with a ton of new knowledge.