The keynote speaker this morning at Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York this morning was Gordon McLeod discussed the evolution of the online Wall Street Journal. Interesting to note has been the bounce-back of mainstream online media. Like the WSJ many outlets have come of age in their online environment catching-up with the blogosphere. It’s quite impressive the gains made by the slower moving giants.
The best session of the day that I attended was the Business-to-Business Tactics session. This was one of the sessions that had the most practical input for the job that I do. One thing I appreciate about these type of events is the balance of breadth and depth. Probably the best info is related to segmenting the audience with respect to ads and landing pages.
While staying in New York I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to stop-by the John Lennon Memorial. It was a moving experience to think of that fateful day when John was taken at a young age. I knew that Scott Blitstein from mythermos.com would appreciate this in particular. The memorial is right across the street from the Dakota where he lived and was tragically shot on that cold December day in 1980.
The second day of the SES Conference in New York City was excellent. The day started out with a key note from Nick Car, author of "The Big Switch: Rewiring the world, from Editon to Google." Nick gave an interesting talk about the fundamental changes in the way computing and ultimately how business is and will be done. One interesting concept is what he called the worker-less companies. Consider the following companies and their work force:
Skype: 200 employees. They service the same number of customers as the British telecom who employs in the tens of thousands.
YouTube: 60 employees. Let’s hear it for user-contribution.
Craigslist: 20 employees. This site always amazes me as one of the ugliest and amazingly successful sites. Raise your hand if you don’t actively use craigslist on a regular basis.
Plentyoffish: a whopping 1 employee. He’s apparently done pretty well for himself.
What are the implications for the information technology work force? In this day-and-age it sure pays to be well cross-trained. How will computing continue to change the employment landscape in the near and distant future?
The Exhibit Hall was hosted on three floors with over a hundred vendors. All total the show continues again to hold-up to its reputation.
This is my first trip to the Big Apple. As a history major in college, I have a deep appreciation for the architecture and history of this amazing city. Attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York is an amazing experience of witnessing a city rich in history while learning from cutting-edge marketing and technologists teaching about current and future trends.
Once again Search Engine Strategies holds-up to its reputation as a valuable resource worth the time and money. So far today I’ve focused two sessions on regional search and a basic session on web analytics. I’m rounding-out the day with a panel discussion called "Getting Vertical Search Right" and a final session on "How to Train Your Pets to Search".
Attending these types of conferences, more than answering my questions, lead me to know the right questions and information I need to research. For instance, I heard some interesting statistics on some specific countries in Asia and Europe regarding user search patterns and how to reach audiences in those markets. There were some common themes in most countries such as the prominence of Google as the primary search (aside from China where Baidu is king). But other stats such as the prominence of mobile search varies greatly from Japan being a huge market in contrast to France on the other end of the spectrum. These individual country statistics lead me down the path of compiling a matrix for user stats and patterns for each country. The end result then provides a metric for resource allocation in regards to issues such as mobile site development, language translation, localization and local search.
The Search Engine Strategies in New York is a much larger show than the Chicago show I attended in December 2006. It also, perhaps due to its location seems to draw a more international crowd. That may be due however to the maturation of the SES conference as a whole, I’m not sure.
The conference venue is at the Hilton New York which is conveniently located half-way between Times Square and Central Park in Mid-town Manhattan. It is a top-flight hotel with excellent facilities. I am fortunate to have a room on the 33rd floor with a partial view of Central Park.
Beyond the speakers and sessions, the event provides a wonderful opportunity to talk with the major search engines, consultants and pier professionals. I teased out some interesting online marketing budget from other manufacturing companies similar to ETS-Lindgren that they spend around 10% of their budget in online advertising. This by-the-way jives with the overall national average for online advertising. Networking returns some very valuable information to leverage with corporate leadership for substantiating the potential ROI on a larger budget for instance.