In July 2008, I had the opportunity to share my skills and knowledge with small businesses and internet marketers in Austin, Texas for the SEM for SMB event, hosted by SparkSight. Both Reza Sarmadi boarded a plan and flew from LA, not knowing what to expect, but of course we had no expectations, rather extreme optimism coupled with a strong manifestation for success.

My speech was title “Online Marketing Reporting and Analytics“. After this first speech I gave I felt my speech could of been better polished and refined. I asked the universe to grant me one more opportunity after this speech to try it again and give me one more shot even though my speech was booked for day 1 only.

I manifested that thought for about 4 hours. Sure enough, after I let it go I got a text from Chris Justice, the promoter of the event. The text went something like this. “Your speech was awesome, everyone loved it and it is in high demand. Can you do it again tomorrow”. I looked at ReZ with the biggest smile and said, the universe listens.

That night I spent hours practicing the speech, determined to do my part of the manifestation and “do what I said I would do”, which was prepare, practice and refine it. That next day, I gave the speech with the utmost confidence and I was praised my the many people who attend the speech that what my speech gave some great ideas and insight to reporting and analytics that really helped people better understand how to make the most out of stats.

The truth of the matter is and lesson learned is: never give up what you want and when you want something. You know what you need to do to achieve it. So you better do what you know you need to do, otherwise you will fall short of your manifest.

It took a while to get it online, but without further wait, here is the seminar.  If you would like to download the slides to the event, click this link.

My business partner Reza Sarmadi and I, took a quick flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas this past weekend for the Invent Bay conference at the Sands Convention Center.

After staying up late night on Wednesday night working on a few projects (www.onesunlight.com and www.liveinternetmarketing.com) I was ready to take a few days off, and soke in the vegas sun at the Palms hotel pool.

Reza and I boarded our flight for LAS airport at 8am on Friday, arrived in Vegas at 10am. I usually have very bad luck when I go out of town because a server goes down, a website stops working or the Internet service goes out in my office leaving my staff stranded on the internet superhighway with no gas. I guess the Internet likes to punish us when we want to get away.

Fast forward to Saturday, we hopped in cab and headed toward the convention center. Arriving, it seemed like we arrived at a ghost town, only thing missing a few tumbleweeds. We walked upstairs and entered the expo. We took a big gasp of the fresh vegas air and were prepared for what was ahead of us.

At the expo, we met and interacted with many inventors from around the country. Saturday seemed to be a light day with very few attendees. I could feel the restlessness of the exhibitors as some were attentive to our questions and others seemed to be discouraged at the lack of walk through traffic.

We met some great people and saw some interesting inventions which looked to be weekend garage projects that people were trying to showcase and possibly land an investor.

All in all, i felt the expo lacked substance as many of the booths had name badges but no people to fill them. It needed more people to give it life. It could be that the convention size was too big for the number of exhibitors. The people were great, and I hope invent bay did well so they can host the event again.

If you attended, send a reply and let me know your thoughts

I recently attended this year’s coveted Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, which is praised as the whole grail of internet marketing events for search engine marketers. My business partner Reza Sarmadi and I drove from sunny Los Angeles on a journey through the desert, hills and scenic routes of California from So Cal to No Cal to our very first SES event.

We reached the epicenter of tech, San Jose, in the early morning, checked into our hotel (10 miles away from the event) and headed to SES. Before entering the expo and conferences, we picked up our badges and we became official. As a black hat, it can feel good to be official sometimes.

Expo Summary:
The expo were filled with up and comers and the big boys, Google, Yahoo, Omniture. Of course everyone was trying to sell something, or scan your badge so they can send you a quick email. The most promising company I met was Blogvertise.com. We met some great people with some great search engine products. I am still scratching my head at the web design companies at the event. I mean they were practically laughed at and passed by most of the attendees, because who needs to find a web designer at an event expo these days?

It’s quite interesting when you are in a room of internet marketers. Everyone is on the basis of getting information without telling anyone who they are or what they do. I mean the last thing you want to do is talk about your latest and greatest idea in front of people who do exactly what you do. So you can imagine a crowd of people all trying to be modest.

Seminar Summary:
The conferences and seminars in a nutshell were quite bland and dull. Mostly young, mid level employees of the big companies who were speaking about technologies that I was already familiar with. I really felt a lack of seminars that were catered to search marketers by search marketers. I mean, being around before these guys jobs even existed puts me at a disposition, but many others shared the same opinions, so I’m not the only one.

The one discussion board that I found quite intriguing was Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO. A new friend, and colleague Tom Friesen a.k.a Oilman, who was a speaker at an SEMforSMB, in which I was speaking about Online Reporting and Analytics, was on the panel. The panel also consisted of Bruce Clay, Jill Whalen and one other SEO expert from the UK led. The energy was intense. A room packed full of SEO guys, all open eyed and ears waiting to hear what the gurus of search marketing were going to say. Everyone wanted to know who was black hat and who was white hat. Interesting enough, Bruce Clay and Jill Whalen both were wearing all black.
No one gave up the juice and admitted to be black hat. They had the audacity to ask the audience to raise their hands to see who was black hat or white hat. I’m sure you can guess what everyone did.

They must of saw Matt Cutts in the audience and maybe it spooked the speakers and the audience. The panel talked about various efforts in the black hat arena, and the summary was that black hat will always be king, but its all about evolved black hat and smart black. And of course; stay away from Indian link farms.

Partying it up, Search Marketing Style:
With every good conference comes interesting after parties. The first night Google threw a party at their headquarters. I think they had a very smart concept. They invited the whole conference to “Google Dance” and like the title; we danced the night away with free drinks, good music and a bunch of young engineers running muck on the Google campus. Felt like senior year at high school all over again.

Intermixed between the fun were the marketing leads for each of Google’s services showcasing the new advancements and features of each service they offer on laptops. This was very interesting, because it is the search marketing community that really can give constructive criticism on Google’s new products and they get it for free from drunken and, most of the time, blunt internet marketers. We left early, took our free t-shirts and headed to the hotel.

The second night, WebmasterRadio.fm threw a party. It was sponsored by Bruce Clay. The party consisted of semi quality food, a good crowd of internet marketers, contortionists and a few hot chicks who were obviously after the rich internet entrepreneurs. The look on Bruce Clay’s face when the contortionists were bouncing around summed the whole night up. The look on his face said something like “I can’t believe I paid for this”.

Domain Auction (Moniker Style):
While at the event, I had the privilege of attending a domain auction led by Moniker. This was interesting. They had some great domains for sale. I put a bid on a few domains, felt the adrenaline rush, but a guy with a turbans sitting at the very front of the room all by himself kept beating me out. To the guy with the turban: I’m going to outbid you next year. ReZ won the prize giveaway a Bose noise reducing headset and I left with the thought “What would I have done with yet another domain name in my portfolio?”

All in all the event was great. My two critiques were 1) they needed more seminars / panels targeted toward advanced SEO and link building and 2) they needed something more to liven up the otherwise dull atmosphere at the event.