With Danny Sullivan's departure from Search Engine Watch and the Search Engine Strategies conference series, the future of the Search Engine Strategies conference is something that many people wonder about. Kevin Newcomb, news editor at Search Engine Watch, has posted in the Search Engine Watch Forums with an update to past and future participants. Kevin Ryan has been brought in to oversee the conference series, and Incisive Media is in the process of creating an advisory board for the conferences that will be comprised of search industry professionals. Kevin also solicits feedback from the community to guide the future of the Search Engine Strategies conferences.
Forum members are looking for smaller conferences, for one:
One of the great things about SMX, in addition to it being geared towards advanced SEMs, was its small size attendee-wise. While there are many good things about a bigger conference (a great expo floor, for one), one of the things that's hard to do at SES is break into the "groups," so to speak. It's hard to chat with speakers, because they're mobbed after every session, at lunch, in the bar, etc.
Printed notes, albeit old fashioned, could be extremely useful to some (and I agree!)
Bring back the printed presentations and hold speakers accountable for providing something for the book, even if it's not the final version. I have all my books w/notes dating back to Boston 2002. The notes from NYC just don't provide the same value without the data and charts found in the presentaitons.
Of course, looking for more advanced tracks -- like addressing the new Google Universal Search -- is also something that people are seeking out.
Maybe a "Universal Search" track would be a good idea! Helping folks understand more about how widgets, maps, xml/rss, images, audio and video aid with SEM/SEO.
That's the feedback so far. Does anyone have anything else? Join the discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
