I’m finally getting around to blog about my experience at PubCon – catching up after nearly a week out of the office is rough! But now that I have a moment to reflect (and I’ve had some time to recover from several days in Vegas!) I’m ready to share my experience.

In a nutshell- I’m glad I went. How’s that for starters? I’ve now been to SES a few times and SMX Advanced in Seattle so I have basis for comparison and PubCon was every bit as good in some of the same and some different ways. Sure the Google party as part of SES San Jose is hard to beat, but then again, so is Vegas if parties are what you’re interested in. Back to the conference…

The longer I’m in the search marketing industry, the less I take away from the actual conference sessions – even though that is where I learned so much to get where I am today (newbies read: conferences are a must!). Not saying I know it all but I know enough that much of the content is familiar. That said, I always take away a few “A-HA’s” or ideas that kick-start my energy when I get back.

And even though the sessions aren’t the part of the conferences where I get the most value any longer, I find a lot of value in the networking and conversations surrounding the sessions. That’s a big reason why I still attend them – so I can take away conversation pieces and ideas but also find those birds of a feather who have a similar challenge or interest. Being able to talk to other enterprise SEOs is key for success in managing SEO for a global, enterprise site and what better place to do it than a search geek gathering like PubCon?

PubCon didn’t fall short of my expectations at all. I was pleased to find a lot of seasoned experts on the panels as well as in the audience. There were reps from the engines in some of the SEO sessions which is always a benefit of attending search conferences. I had a chance to corner Google’s Maile Ohye (who was on the SEO and Big Search panel) to make the case for better geographic targeting capabilities for enterprise companies. Unfortunately, until bulk verification is available it’s just not feasible for global companies with complex web infrastructures and hundreds of subdomains to use the tool to set geographic targets (or frankly many of the other features in Webmaster Tools). (Sidenote: I’d love to hear if anyone has found a work-around for this as there is a lot we can share with the search engines to help them more efficiently index our site so they serve more relevant content to their customers.) Again, back to the conference…

A few things I like about PubCon:

• Session rooms were plenty big enough. I was able to walk in right when the session started and get a seat that wasn’t on the floor or in the doorway. It was nice not to have to show up ten minutes early to find standing room only.
• The people in attendance seemed to be a little more advanced – at least in the sessions I attended. As a result the questions were more advanced and provided more value.
• PubCon mails you a DVD of the presentations after the conference. For some reason I really like having a DVD with all of the presentations. I think because the only time I really would take time to look at them would be on the plane when accessing them via the web isn’t an option (and apparently neither is my planning ahead to download them!).

Ok, back to the parties… I really didn’t go to many of the parties. I stopped by the cocktail reception on the first night to do some networking and talked to quite a few people but I wouldn’t call it a party. On Thursday though, I did make it to the Microsoft adCenter and Live Search “Party Like a Rock Star” party at the Ghost Bar – which was very nicely done. I even got a photo with Billy Idol and Gwen Stephani – What? They were impersonators? Who knew!?
Did you go to SES or PubCon? Would love to hear your comments!