In aid of the Muenchner Tafel , I have gathered a few interesting things that I found over the course of the day at Munich SMX. Auction ends in 7 days on April 30th, and I will ship it to anywhere in the world . Technically the items fell in my possession, and I have no clear guideline as to how it actually happened. But I am sure it was a good story.
Auction ends in 1 week, April 30th. 
So fi you want to win some great memoribilia then please chewck out the ebay auction.
Paul
More for myself , I wanted to put together a list of European Search conferences taking place this year. These generally come under title Affiliate Marketing, Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation conferences. I still on the fence whether to attend some of these or not. Most of these require travel and I would need to take the best part a week off to attend. And I wonder about the level of content at these events.
I’m guessing that for most of these events that my level of expertise would leave me not learning that much. Sometimes I get the feeling that (especially the SEO conferences they) are aimed at companies who don’t know very much about the area. The main attraction to such events for me would be the networking possibility. Working on my own means that I don’t really see too many people face to face. Although there are a few prominent German SEO’s in Munich whom I have met from time to time.
| Date | Location | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 28-30 January | Madrid, Spain | SMX Travel @ Fitur (Spanish) |
| 17-20 February | London, England | Search Engine Strategies |
| 1st April | Dublin, Ireland | Search Marketing World 2009 | 22-23 April | Munich, Germany | SMX (Search Marketing Expo) München |
| 28-29 April | Amsterdam, Holland | a4uexpo Affiliate Marketing |
| 18-19 May | London, England | SMX (Search Marketing Expo) London |
| 3-4 June | Madrid, Spain | SMX Spain |
| 4 July | London, England | Pubcon Networking Day |
| 12-13 October | Stockholm, Sweden | SMX Stockholm |
| 13-14 October | London, England | a4uexpo Affiliate Marketing |
If you have any event you want me to add, just let me know.
Have you attended any of these conferences in the past ? Are they worth going to ?
Edit 12/1/2009 : added Search Marketing World in Dublin
I must say I had an absolutely fantastic time at BarCampCork (barcampcork.com). Kudos goes to all the people (Conor and the rest of the gang) who helped to organise this and to all those who presented and shared what they knew. Thinking back on it, I was really surprised how open and friendly people were. It was really refreshing and the atmosphere around the WebWorks in Cork last Saturday. To summarise in one 2 words it was “simply great“. For an idea on how BIG BarCampCork was, there are currently over 1,400 blog posts about it (134 this week) and Google returns over 1,800 mentions of the event. There was also over 100 people there from all different parts of the country and from different sectors of the industry present there.
I had tried my hand at live blogging at the start, but in the after a bit my camera failed, and I got more and more interested in the talks, so this idea was swiftly canned. I feel like the (un-)conference has left me charged and revitialised for some of the challenges I will be coming up again next year. It was reassuring to know that I’m not the first person to have these issues (starting off on my own), and the people who have succeed have inspired me to achieve. And the words of Pat Phelan, “just get it out there” !
It was my first time meeting and talking to these people, but it was great to meet all of you. Cheers for your tips and advice, and in no particular order Cormac, Pat, Dave, Alexia , Geansai, Eoghan, Keith, Joe, Jason, Donncha, Alan, James, John, Sabrina, Ant and Robert (and possibly a few more). I now have a few more people to follow on twitter and my feed reader.
And sorry to those people who I’ve been meaning to talk to and say “hi” like Damien , Des, Jennifer I will try to catch ye next time.
This mornig I’m at barcamp.
Donncha http://ocaoimh.ie/ is talking about wordpress and ajax.
lovely 800×600 screen resolution.
Presented in Vi
Early next month (1st November 2008), BarCampCork (www.barcampcork.com) will be taking place. As I’ve never been to one of these events, it’s probably best to take the description straight from the website::
It’s about people getting together, sharing ideas, learning from each other and finding like-minds.
So if you are into the web, either as a professional : web designer, programmer, SEO, etc. or you are interested it bringing your business into the online world then this event could be for you. I’m really looking forward to putting some faces to names I’ve encountered over the least year on forums , blogs & email, as well as bouncing some ideas off people (if they will listen to me). These types of face to face events are a great way of networking and keeping your finger on the pulse. This in fact is my first event in Ireland, I’ve been to a few (more SEO, affiliate marketing related) here in Munich.
People will be travelling from across Ireland to the event, but probably not as far as me. I’m flying from Munich to Cork with scare-lingus , fly in on Friday mid-day and out again on early Monday morning and back to the office for midday on Monday.
It was last held in 2006, hopefully it won’t take as long get another one. So what are you waiting for sign up !
P.S. to see how is attending have a look list of people here.
One of the latest tools from Yahoo!’s Developer Network (YDN) is SearchMonkey. Basically it’s a way where you can write some code that will ‘optimise‘ how the SERPS are displayed. Things that can be done for example is say you are searching and a Wikipedia result comes out, you link directly to the citings at the end of the page (which are normally better than the article in the first place). Monkeys can work with RDF, microformats and XLST, to extrapolate extra info from the page.
Currently the process runs something like this::
Currently there are monkeys to enhance when you search IMDB, StumbleUpon, Facebook, etc in the gallery. So these extra features will only be shown once a result is returned for the domain you have targeted your monkey to (and the user has installed you App). From the SEO perspective this could be something where you can bump up a clients CTR by catching the attention of the user that little bit better.
SearchMonkey seems to offer many great ways to improve how search results are displayed. One good application could be for larger corporations who know their staff sometimes need to search their public internet webpage differently to a normal visitor.
Right now each new application is checked by the Yahoo! team, so things like affiliate links will probably not make it into the gallery, but of course you are free to do some yourself and share from there. Yahoo probably won’t install your monkey as a default monkey, but in the future you will be able to use the SearchMonkeys with BOSS. BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) basically is an API where you can create your own ‘version’ of search results. So it will be possible to make your own version of Yahoo search, and then enhance it to look nicer and possibly pulling in 3rd party data and adding that to the result. (fingers crossed for a BOSS event in Munich soon)
Last night in Munich there was a presentation about SearchMonkey given by Neil Crosby from Yahoo!. Which brought us through some of the steps to creating the Monkeys. In fact I was pleasantly surprised how Neil, backed up by Guy Hepworth & Chris Heilmann, were really open about answering my many questions about what a Monkey can and can’t do.
Also it was great to meet some of the nice German wed devs / SEOs like : Thomas / Uwe (thanks for finding me when I was lost) / Christian .
