Yesterday was the second ever SphinnCon event, a small Search Marketing Expo, ever. The first one took place about two years ago in Israel and the second took place yesterday in Israel. The second event was a bit larger than the first in terms of the number of sessions, speakers and attendees. Overall, the networking and educational event was a huge success and we look forward to hosting one again next year.
The even took place in the Jerusalem College of Technology's new lecture rooms. The rooms hard larger capacity than the first time we held the event there but we were still limited to only about 200 or so attendees. In any event, the university was incredibly welcoming to us, they not only partnered with us for this event by giving us a place at their home, but also had their own speakers at the event.
We had sold out the event a couple months prior to yesterday and had a waiting list of about a hundred people, hoping to get a spot. We also had people show up at the door, waiting to see if they can get in. Ultimately, I believe we began letting people in an hour or so after the show began. I honestly believe we could have had 400 or more people at this event. So for next year, I hope to work that out the accommodations with JCT to make this possible.
We started off the event with Avi Kay from the university, who introduced me to give the welcome address. In my five minute welcome, I thanks the sponsors, which included Compucall Web Marketing, Answers.com and Whired Rhino. We had additional requests for sponsors, but we had to turn additional sponsors away at a certain point.
I also thanked all the volunteers who put tons of hours into the event. They either ran around getting the caterer scheduled or printing the conference banners and handouts. Or they dealt with helping formulate the conference agenda and organizing the 30+ speakers. Acted as the front door bouncer and speaker organizers during the event. Or they helped organize the after hours party or provided Israeli hospitality to our out of town speakers. They include, but are not limited to Olivier Amar (@olivier_amar) of WhiteWeb, Ophir Cohen (@ophirco) of Compucall, Eli Feldblum (@Feldbum) of RankAbove, Roi Hildesheimer of Tens Technology, Charlie Kalech (@charliekalech)of J Town, Itay Paz (ItayPaz)of Affilicon, Mayer Reich (@mayerreich) of RankAbove, Branko Rihtman (@neyne) of WhiteWeb, and Gilad Sasson (@algoholic) of Nekuda. So thank you again, from the bottom of my heart.
There were four speakers, at least that I am aware of, that came from outside of Israel, excluding myself, to make it to this event. Vanessa Fox of Nine By Blue came all the way from SMX West (but native to Seattle), with what appeared to be bronchitis. Dixon Jones from Majestic SEO flew from the UK to speak about one of his favorite topics, links. Ariel Sumeruk from Click2Customers came from SMX West (but native to South Africa) to speak on paid search. Finally, Tomer Honen from Google, came from the Ireland Google office to represent the Google Webmaster team in Israel. Thank you all for coming from so far to make it to this special event - the Israeli SEM industry deeply appreciated it and you all made a huge impact yesterday.
I would also like to thank all the speakers. I heard some great, unique and fun presentations yesterday. This was event definitely lived up to the quality of the SMX name. Here is a list of our speakers for SphinnCon Israel 2010:
- Adir Regev, CEO, GO Internet Marketing
- Ariel Ozick, WiredRhino
- Ariel Sumeruk, Head of Business intelligence & CTO, Clicks2Customers
- Barry Schwartz, RustyBrick, Inc.
- Branko Rihtman, Whiteweb
- Charlie Kalech, Director, J-Town Productions
- Dan Gerstenfeld, Lecturer at JCT & CEO of Interteam
- Dan Perach, Co-Founder, PPCPROZ
- Daniel Waisberg, Head of Analytics, Easynet
- Debra Askanase, Owner, Community Organizer 2.0
- Dixon Jones, of MejesticSEO
- Eli Feldblum, CTO & Founder, RankAbove
- Gab Goldenberg, SEO ROI
- Gil Reich, Answers.com
- Gilad Sasson, Search Marketing Analyst at nekuda.co.il
- Itay Paz, ItayPaz.net
- Menachem Rosenbaum, TENS-Technology
- Michal Neufeld, Account Strategist, Google Israel
- Miriam Schwab, CEO, illuminea
- Naomi Sela, Media Director, Compucall Web Marketing
- Olivier Amar, WhiteWeb
- Ophir Cohen, CEO Compucall Web Marketing
- Oren Shatz, Chairman, SEO Israel Technologies Ltd.
- Pavel Israelsky, blogger & SEO expert, AskPavel SEO Blog
- Roi Carthy, Writer, TechCrunch
- Sam Michaelson, Five Blocks
- Shira Abel, Abel Communications
- Shlomi Aizenberg, Director of SEM, Easynet Search Marketing
- Tomer Honen, Search Quality Strategist, Google
- Uri Breitman, TBWA\DIGITAL
- Vanessa Fox, Nine By Blue
- Yuli Dasiatnikov, SEO, Compucall Web Marketing
After the presentations, some of the attendees travelled up to Tel Aviv to hit the party at the Dancing Camel. The party was sponsored by 888.com and Gammon Empire. Here is one of my favorite pictures from that event:
Thank you all so much for making this such a successful event! If some of you were unable to make it, there were tons of tweets and pictures of the event. We have some greatest hit recaps and live blogging of the event. Here are some of the pictures from people mentioned above, including a Flash embed from TENS Web Marketing.
Update: The Jerusalem Post did a write up on the event, which you can read over here and here is a picture:
