My Rear is Burning
Posted on: January 15, 2009 by Syzlak Comments
Bam! Welcome to 2009 reader! Your man Syzlak attended the SEMpdx PPC Hot Seat on Tuesday the 13th and blew it up.
On my first panel for SEMpdx, I was tasked with critiquing the PPC campaigns/offering PPC guidance. It was an interesting experience, unlike many of the other Hot Seat nights (that should totally be a viral infomercial for SEMpdx “Hot Seat Nites,” make it all 11pm 80s style, a little sex, a lot of dumb humor, like Viva Variety. Now, THAT was a good show. Remember Johnny Blue Jeans and all the stupid products? Baby is the Bagpipes? Baby Tastes Like Soup? Fishy Bar – the candy bar that tastes like fish??? Loved that show. Especially the episode where they played the game Plant or Animal. Contestants were given a 2 second sound bite and had to guess if the sound came from Robert Plant or a wild animal. It was unbelievably difficult, and made for a great game show.
Man, there really was nothing like the early days of Comedy Central. Shows like Exit 57, Stand-up Stand-up, Short Attention Span Theater, MST3K , Dr. Katz – all great. Then South Park came and ruined it. Now all we have (aside from Daily Show & Colbert) are MADtv reruns and Dane Cook specials. Seriously, when are people going to realize that not only is Dane Cook a theif, but he’s also about as funny as Andy Dick), this time the audience didn’t seem to be as familiar with the topic at hand. I think it’s fair to say that SEMpdx audience members are a bit more in tune with the ideas of usability and SEO, than they are with PPC; and for that, I am thankful that SEMpdx put on a PPC specific event.
Hopefully, the audience members got as much out of the sessions as the businesses on display did. I know that after the session the businesses were quite appreciative of all the help from Mr. Tom Hale, Mr. Todd Mintz and Ms. Leisa Hall and myself. I just hope that those in the audience didn’t feel like all the information was going over their heads.
All in all, a fantastic time and a great idea. I really hope SEMpdx makes a PPC Hot Seat a part of the regular rotation. If not, put a PPC specialist on the panel once in awhile to add some diversity, it’s about time we knocked some of those SEO big whigs down a notch 
Oh, I almost forgot – I won a T-shirt!!! See what you can do if you set your mind to it?
