SES San Francisco 2010: Quick-Summary
Search Engine Optimisation

SES San Francisco 2010: Quick-Summary

20th August 2010

The conference went by quickly, way faster than I thought. Arriving on Saturday evening and leaving on Thursday morning is not really that long especially when you fly in from Germany. Unfortunately I do miss SES day 3 because of a speaking engagement on Saturday back in Germany but since I now do have to spend approx. 10 hours in the plane heading over from San Francisco to Frankfurt I think it’s a good time to wrap some things up and just write down some general thoughts on SES SF that I still have in mind.

Organization & Location
As usual the organizational parts worked like a charm: Accreditation went smoothly and just took a couple of minutes. The location – the Moscone convention center – really had enough space for the event. On the ground level there was registration, information, surf stationd as well as some snacks. Also the Expo hall was located there (and even there, speakers presented on various topics – unfortunately I didn’t make it over), which basically used half of the space the other half has been filled with chairs and tables for dinner. By the way – for a conference – the food was really solid, especially day 2. Good work guys!

The agenda
As you might have seen the agenda was really packed – SES SF 2010 had over 200 different sessions and more than 80 speakers, quite some line-up! Depending on the level of knowledge, attendees had the choice to visit more basic sessions but also advanced stuff. Mainly split in SEO and PPC related topics.

SEW Labs
Since I had to cover various sessions I did not get the chance to spent too much time in the newly introduced SEW Labs session (see Evert’s post for a more in-depth look) but the SEO Clinique with Christoph, Rand and Maile was really fun and I think it really helped people who had their sites checked by the panelists to actually make them better. Would love to see more like this!

Good vs. bad presentations
I know how hard it is to make good presentations, I really do – and I do appreciate the huge amount of time and effort the creators of those presentations invested to actually create them. But something really bored me (probably you saw my tweet on that) – and actually I didn’t notice that at previous SES events: Completely overdone advertisement for the company you’re with. I mean seriously, it’s nice to introduce yourself and also the company you’re with / working for / own but it’s just freaking boring to hear a 5-10 minutes “we do this and that and a, b and c are our clients” sales pitch, that just sucks. Seriously I want to see and hear content, good content and let’s say you as the speaker are doing a good job; I’ll probably be even more interested in finding out who you are, what you do, etc. Sorry but that’s just not cool. On the other hand it’s always amazing to follow well-done presentations. Some really stood out, especially for example those from Rand and Topher – great work guys!

To wrap-things up
So was it worth the trip? Yes, absolutely. Probably even more if I had been able to attend day three because – from a content perspective – especially day 1 was pretty basic but also for networking, etc. the conference has been great. It’s always nice to meet friends from the industry and also new people which you don’t already know. That being said I hope you liked our SES coverage on StateOfSearch and also get maybe some new ideas and others values out of it. I’m over and out – Bastian.

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Bastian Grimm is founder and CEO of Grimm Digital. He mainly works as online marketing consultant with a strong focus on organic search engine optimization (SEO). Grimm specializes in SEO strategy consulting, website assessments as well as large scale link building campaigns.
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