WebmasterWorld PubCon Vegas 2006 Recap

I am back from the PubCon Vegas conference. It was the best PubCon ever, in my opinion, Brett totally did an awesome job, even without his wife not being able to come (we noticed). This conference is much more laid back than the SES conferences, but that is what makes it special. The speakers are informal, joking around, the search reps are trashing on SEOs, it is just fun all around.

I loved how Tim Converse of Yahoo! started his speech by saying he is imagining everyone in the room are white hat SEOs. It is like when normal speakers imagine people in the room are naked, to relax them. He needed to think white hat, to relax him. I loved how Matt Cutts totally ripped on sites during the site review panel, oh and he totally won the battle against Time Mayer (sorry Tim). Danny also dissed Yahoo!, kinda, in his keynote, saying, all of search is going up, except for Yahoo!'s revenues. I met all sorts of cool, smart, nice, and fun people at the conference. I won't shout out any names, but you guys know who you are. I met MSN adCenter reps, including the PR person (not sure if I can mention names), adCenter411 and adCenterEU were there (sorry about the Microsoft comment EU). The Yahoo! folks, well, they seriously know how to have a good time (thanks guys, you seriously rock!). I didn't see any Ask.com people, but they were a huge sponsor of the conference, thanks for the wifi. Google, well, Google also rocks. Such nice people, they honestly care. Matt Cutts, Vanessa Fox, Brian White (I didn't see Adam Lasnik) but I had long conversations, one on one with those three. I can honestly say, that they care.

Of course, Chris Boggs and Donna (DD) totally rocked with the coverage. I cannot thank them enough. Both honest, down to earth, giving people - the type of people I like to be associate with. Ben, we missed you.

Ok, here is the summary of our coverage: WebmasterWorld PubCon 2006 Coverage Schedule

November 14th:

1. WebmasterWorld Pubcon Kickoff Keynote Address - Guy Kawasaki
2. Feeds, Blogs, News, and Social Search (FeedBurner, Digg, Topix)
3. SEO and Big Search
4. Feeds and Other Alternative Optimization Opportunities
5. Link Development and Linking Optimization
6. Affiliate Strategies and Content Strategies
7. Feeding the Engines - Writing Copy
8. Corporate Mega Site SEO Management
9. Special Afternoon Keynote by Jon S Von Tetzchner of Opera

November 15th:

1. New Age of Web Advertising Keynote by John Battelle
2. Local and Mobile Local Search
3. What Every Webmaster Should Know: PHP, PERL, ASP.net
4. International and European Optimization
5. Search Blogger and Reporter Forum
6. Purchasing Links
7. Duplicate Content Issues (Yahoo & Google)
8. Super Session : Search and Research on a Rail

Cool Party: Yahoo! Rents Out Hugh Hefner's Sky Villa in Palms Hotel

November 16th:

1. Special Guest Keynote - Danny Sullivan - Search Engine Land
2. Press and Public Relation Campaigns
3. Forums and Communities : Building and Optimization
4. Spider and DOS Defense - Rebels, Renegades, and Rogues
5. Interactive Site Reviews and SERP Quality Control Forum

Great job Brett, hope the Pub part of the PubCon is going well now! :)