Elaine’s Space

This post is a bit presumptious ‘cos I’m up early Sunday morning to get ready for the second one - SEOmoz London Event, and I’ve not yet recovered from the legendary A4UExpo.

Looking at the bare bones of both confereneces, there’s not much to choose between them - both deal with making the best use of your time to get the most out of your chosen business.

SEOmoz promises to concentrates on the search engines and rankings, whereas A4U covered the whole spectrum of affiliate marketing.  They’ve both arranged ‘networking’ parties for each night of the conference, where, I’m pretty certain, there’ll be more drinking, socialising and catching up with old buddies than cold networking.

The A4UExpo was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I sorely missed some of the old gang - Jules, Paul, Shane and Frostie - and what’s happened to KBudden! I found the actual seminars more interesting than informative this year - although I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Judith’s Pie Chart, and I have scribbled a few notes down, but nowhere near as many as in previous years.

There were so many interesting talks and great presentations, that I just didn’t have time to visit more than 2 stands - Existem’s (obviously) and Shopzilla, with a view to partnering with them with our merchant site - Children’s Rooms.

Where the Expo scores with me is the sheer friendliness of the place. I’m lucky that I do know many, many great affiliates - too many to mention here incase I upset someone by missing them out - but everytime I turned round I could see another friendly face to say Hi to, who introduced me to a new ‘friendly’ face and vice versa - me introducing great folk who all have something in common - I think that’s what has driven this industry - most people are hell bent on driving it forward and creating a professional industry we can all be proud of- and yet retain our ‘roots’.

SEOmoz promises much more informative presentations which I am SOOOOOO looking forward to - 2 days of intensive Search Engine shannanigans, I’ll be in SEO heaven - the downside is - the networking and after hours parties !!

I don’t think I’ll know many folk at all and I am attending this one on my own - Children’s Rooms is far too busy for Dave to get away again, so I think I might struggle and find them more arduous than enjoyable.

My inclination is to ‘hide’ in my hotel room, but that’s copping out, especially as I’ve always urged newbie affiliates to come along to the Affiliate G2Gers and join in, as we’re such a friendly bunch - will hardened SEOers by as friendly!!

Will I be singing Leeds United ‘Marching On Together’  with a new found BF, be serenaded by someone who’s wearing reverse beer goggles and mistakes me for his granny, officially adopt another child - ‘ourdom’, get a couple of mentions by industry giants in different presentations - I don’t think so.

But, in a few years time and several more of these ‘do’s’, I might - so I’ll bite the bullet, slap on the ‘glamour’ and the smile and try to approach complete strangers with the standard ‘and what do you do?’…….

I’ll let you all know how I got on.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 10:22 am and is filed under My Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.