Jason Murphy

SMX Seattle Shouts, Vol 1

Jun 8, 2007 Search and SEO

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Seattle, the second greatest city in the US, for the Search Marketing Expo Advanced show. I had a fantastic time!

As much as I could go on and on about how much I really love the town and the community of Seattle (I used the live there in the Kingdome days), I’d have to say that the people I met on this trip were what really made it just a positive experience for me. So, to continue the tradition I started with Affiliate Summit, I’d like to leave a few shouts (and links!) to the people I met that made this show a success for me.

In no particular order, shouts to…

…Francis and Todd from MPS Group. I hung out a lot with Todd during the event, especially the first day as we were waiting for the events to commence. Francis (Frank) joined us later that night at the Microsoft party. Talking with them both was very cool as they are facing similar tech issues with their company as I am with mine.

…Matt D. and Bernard (who happens to be Francis’ brother) from the Microsoft Adcenter team. I met a few other people from the Adcenter team but can’t recall names. It was great talking about everything from Advertising on the Xbox to Brazillian BBQ with these guys.

…Marcel and Nish from the Google Webmaster Central team. I met these guys at lunch and shared a few ideas with them. I didn’t get to ask if they participated in the GWC blog or not, or if they had their own. But it was still nice to meet members of the GWC team, as I’m a huge supporter of that group.

…a good friend and ally Michael Stark from PostYourProperty.com. We always seem to bump into each other at the same conferences and are always able to have a enjoyable conversation about business and home. It’s always a pleasure Mike and may we meet up again at future shows.

…Jay Westerdal from AboutUs and DomainTools. I’ve been a long time user of DomainTools, ever since their whois.sc days even. In my role, DomainTools has been nothing short of a lifesaver. So it was great to meet up with someone from the DomainTools team. Jay was a ton of fun to hang out with and talk with, this guy knows so much about the IP-space that it is enough to make the room spin. I am definitely going to put a pitch into my company to attend the Domain Roundtable in August. It’s in Seattle so of course I HAVE to go!

…Beau Vignes from ghotibait. Not only is this guy a brilliant designer, but he’s also the most chill guy I’ve ever met at one of these things, not to mention man enough to drink pink drinks!

…Aaron Wall and his girlfriend, Honey. I don’t want to get her name wrong, Aaron was calling her Honey so I will to. I’m sure they’ll be ok with it. Aaron and Honey are conference veterans and even though they seem to know everyone, they were happy to meet new people. I bought Aaron’s book years ago, and always enjoy his updates that seem to be dead on accurate with industry trends. It was great to finally meet up, and yeah I’ll get more involved with my ThreadWatch account.

…Jim Boykin from WeBuildPages.com. I hope everything pans out for your Grand Canyon retreat, because I’ve been wanting to become a certified Link Ninja for sometime now.

…Dot A. from Domainer’s Magazine. We only met for a few minutes but what great discussion about the state of the industry! I’ve been working my way to becoming a domainer for sometime now, and the talk that we had was very inspiring, thanks Dot!

…Terry Light who has the coolest title ever: Idiot In Charge. He’s the force behind SearchEngineIdiot.com and from the sounds of it has a few interesting projects in the works.

…Paul B. from Anvil Media. We sat through lunch with table full of genius Google engineers…and survived without our heads exploding. Great to meet you Paul and hopefully we can do some work together.

…Mindy S. and Herman C. from All Star Directories. Both Mindy and Herman were at the same lunch table with the Googlers, and we enjoyed discussing the CPA world (which was refreshing in a PPC heavy environment). Hopefully we’ll be able to do some win-win business together in the near future.

Well, that is all for now. I have many many more shouts to do, but will have to do that in a second post.