While I was on the Daily Search Cast with Danny Sullivan, we got an email from Brett Tabke, owner of WebmasterWorld, who notified us about speaker pitches. Then Danny informed me that Search Engine Strategies Chicago this year, is the same week as WebmasterWorld's PubCon.

These are the two largest search conference out there today. So this is a huge deal.

SES Chicago starts on December 3rd and runs through the 6th. PubCon starts on December 4th and runs through the 7th.

Why is this such a big deal?

• Speaker Overlap is huge, I would estimate over 50% of those who speak at PubCon also speak at SES.
• Sponsor Overlap is also pretty big, many of the sponsors would have to double or divide their resources to be present at both conferences and monetarily.
• Exhibitor Overlap is very significant as well, especially for small companies that don't have a lot of people on staff.
• Press Overlap is not as big of an issue. For us, we can send people to cover SES and PubCon at the same time. But for smaller, one person bloggers, it won't be fun.
• Audience Overlap is also an issue, although the percentage is probably not as big as the ones above.

Who will win the head to head battle here? Tough call.

• Weather: PubCon Wins. Chicago in the winter is cold!
• Venue: PubCon Wins. Vegas is a lot more fun than Chicago, but Chicago is a cool city.
• Business Opportunities: SES Wins. I am pretty sure there is a more money to be made at SES.
• Networking Fun: PubCon Wins by a bit. While Danny Sullivan has to be at SES, the SEM community is a bit more loyal to PubCon. But since the business opportunities are the advantage of SES, I suspect this will shake things up.
• Educational Experience: About Even. Hard to say.

I would love to see which speakers are going where. Should be very very interesting.

I would like to conduct a small, anonymous poll, to see where most of you are leaning towards. So here it is:

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums

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