Syzlak’s SEM

SEMpdx, the little organization that could, put together a wonderful event last night. Drawing in Vanessa Fox to be a guest speaker was a brilliant idea and helped give the organization more credibility and character. Here’s a run down of everything else that happened:

The first thing I realized when entering Hotel deLuxe was that I’d stupidly decided on attending a Hot Seat on the same night as the BCS National Championship game. The second thing I realized is that due to this, there would be no way in hell that Sean McMahon would be there.

6:15pm - LSU 3 OSU 10

After meeting with Kent Schnepp of EngineWorks and exchanging pleasantries with Ms. Fox, food had started being served. I don’t wait for food, I attack food. After polishing off the 5 tandoori chicken skewers and a couple of slices of turkey (oddest food offerings ever) I head to the bar for my free drink (3rd drink of the evening (2nd GnT) for those keeping score at home). When I returned to my table of 2 unassuming men in their mid 20s, we were greeted by the one person who forgot that 1988 actually did happen. Wearing a Mickey & Co. hockey sweater and sporting Tina Turner’s hair, she was a sight to be seen.

Vanessa gave a small presentation before the Hot Seat about social browsing. Personally, I’m getting tired of the whole “web 2.0, social marketing, blogocopia” scene.

[<sigh> I'm logging into Twitter to post that I'm writing this review </sigh>]

However, this presentation wasn’t like the ones we all saw last year from Rand Fishkin & Todd Malicoat. Those were great presentations and I learned a ton from them, but after we all went out and became a part of the community and started tweeting everything we did…what was left? Apparently social browsing, at least according to Vanessa. The focus on search, sharing, voyeurism, social shopping and community was slightly skewed from the aforementioned topics and was a logical next step.

So what did I take away from the presentation?

• Apparently Vanessa Fox has spent 10 years on message boards for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who knew?!?!
  • really 10 years? It’s a fine show, but it’s no My 2 Dads!
• Most people do not vertically search. Many don’t even know to go to the image search when looking for pictures
  • personally I have a hard time believing this one, but it would make more sense as to why Google, Ask & Yahoo are all including image teasers (see that MSN, you didn’t make the list…sad)
• When Vanessa Hudgens released her nudity to the web, guess who’s traffic skyrocketed? Foreshadowing to the gentleman whom later asked how important is the text within one’s URL: You should be listening now as we go over the fact that her URL has both Vanessa & nude…
  • favorite part of this story, people would leave comments (remember, kids can’t read) on Ms. Fox’s site saying “I love you so much!!! Did you break up with Zack? lol zomg espn”
  • yes I added the IM acronyms…but shit, kids can’t read
• One woman in the room understood the Wonder Twins reference. I wanted to run over and clank rings proclaiming “Form of any kind of functioning ice structure!” What type of animal would she have chosen?



• Vanessa eluded to Page Rank being a way for Google to prevent people from buying links from a website. She also said that the number on the page is unimportant and usually is a reflection of links rather than Page Rank.

Now it was Hot Seat time. I was going to need a beer, so I waited until the speech about organ donation started and grabbed a Black Butte Porter (side note: never drink at this hotel. BPP-$6, Makers, Bombay Sapphire-$8.50). Here’s the big takeaways from the first site

• META keywords are useful for something! It’s only Adsense, but that’s still something.
• Not as though I know anyone that does this but, when the analytics code is at the top of the page it slows down the load time as opposed to when it’s at the bottom.
• There was a suggestion for the Oregon Donor site to put content on YouTube. I guess that’s a good idea? Maybe I just can’t see it exactly.

7:00pm - LSU 24 OSU 10 (24 unanswered points, good lord.)
I might be drunk

• Everybody needs more badges. Schnepp suggested this for the Donor site, good call. The next site, the vineyard could benefit from a badge too.

Alright, that’s most of the highlights. If you were there, I hope y’all learned and had fun. If you weren’t there I hope that in reading this, you make it to the next one. They really are worth it.