A conference wouldn't be a conference without free swag. I always look forward to the exhibitor booths at PubCon — partly for learning about a new services, but mostly for free swag!
This year, there were the usual free pens, ugly t-shirts and the like. Microsoft had some neat dice that glowed. Nobody knew what they were for or how they worked, but they went quickly. Google had some very cheap yo-yos that spit out laser beams when you spun them. Unfortunately, Scott's broke after the first spin.
My favorite swag came from Userplane and Izea. Userplane had four very well designed mouse pads. I got the pirate mouse pad for my friend Tim at Pirate Monkeyness and another one (not shown) for my own mousing pleasure. Izea was giving away cozies. Scott hates cozies, while I love them. You can never have enough good cozies to keep your cold beverages cold.
SEOmoz hosted a Werewolf game last night — with a twist. Instead of having Werewolves, they had Black Hats. They also renamed the game to Search Spam.
The game was played with a special deck of cards. Each card represented either a White Hat or a Black Hat, along with two special cards. Those cards were the Gracious Granter of Re-inclusion (aka Danny Sullivan) and the Revealer of Hats (aka Matt Cutts — who was also there playing the game!). The rules are too tedious to explain here, but if you're interested you can check them out at the Rules for Are You A Werewolf? page.
The entire event was a lot of fun. We had an excellent game moderator from SEOmoz, Sarah Bird, who was incredibly nice and fun to play the game with. As the game went on, our table eventually morphed Search Spam into a drinking game, which was easily the best experience by far. Thanks to SEOmoz for hosting the event. It was definitely a memorable night and Scott and I enjoyed meeting many of the people there.
Update: At Matt's request, he wanted me to make it more clear to people that this entry was posted in the Humorous section. And indeed, this entry was 50% joke and 50% serious. Serious, only in the fact that I think some of the panelists' presentations would have been a little different if Matt hadn't been there. If anything, Rand's presentation probably stuck the closest to what he was going to present, because it basically mimicked his link buying blog entry from earlier in the week. Oh, and lastly, this is just my opinion and impression of that session — which happens to be shared by many of the attendees I talked to.
As most SEO specialists know, Matt Cutts — aka Google Search King — hates paid links. In fact, he has an all out war against link brokers like PayPerPost and Text Link Ads.
Unlike other search marketing conferences, PubCon is known for teaching the darker side of SEO and SEM. It's been called the DEF CON of webmaster conferences, which is exactly why it attracts Matt Cutts. Consider Matt the equivalent of a federal agent, but out in the open, wearing his Google sheriff's badge.
One of the highlights of PubCon Las Vegas 2007 this year was the session on Link Buying — at least it was until Matt showed up. The headlining panel of speakers included experts like Rand Fishkin, Aaron Wall and Jim Boykin. However, once they saw Matt in the back of the room, the panelists were too afraid to talk about anything interesting or important in regards to link buying. The best example of this was when Jim Boykin stood up to give his presentation, and basically told everyone he didn't have anything to say.
In the back of the room — as this picture clearly captured — Matt Cutts took out a candy bar and crushed it in the palm of his hand, obviously signaling to the panelists that they would be next if they said the wrong thing.
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Scott and I soon will be on our way to PubCon Las Vegas 2007. We are simple men with a simple need — to obtain cold beer at little-to-no cost. In return for cold beer, we will give the beer provider six months free access to Raven SEO Tools (when we start charging for it — it's free during the public beta).
Rules of Beer Engagement
- One beer — of the beer recipient's choice — must be purchased for the beer recipient (that's us and it means we can refuse nasty cheap beer)
- If there are two beer recipients (meaning Scott and I are hanging out together), a beer must be purchased for each of us.
- If there is only one participant (Scott is lost again), then you may have to buy the recipient two beers (it all depends on how thirsty Jon is).
- If a beer is currently being consumed, the new beer must come near the end of that round (because nobody likes warm beer, unless you're English, like Lee†).
How to Find Us
If you see anyone looking remotely like the guys below, then you've probably found us. You can email us at pubcon@sitening.com and we'll tell you where we are sitting, so you can bring us beer.
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| Jon | Scott |
† Lee insists that he doesn't like warm beer, but we're unconvinced.
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