Okay, catchy headline, I’m guilty. It won’t be the last, but may very well be the best you’ll ever see, if you look at it logically…

Regional conferences are showing up all over, dividing the time talent and energy of the conference speakers.

After the original SearchFest in 2005 did not return in 2006, SEMpdx was formed and revived the event for the following year.

In 2007, the volunteer board members of SEMpdx put together SearchFest at the Oregon zoo, and managed to fill a great batch of sessions, by speaking ourselves and leveraging our own Northwest relationships.

By any measure, (except perhaps financially) SearchFest 2007 was a huge success, got lots of national coverage in the search industry, and gained quite a bit of respect for Portland.

For SearchFest 2008, we had people requesting to speak, as well as more individual relationships ourselves, we were able to fill the entire day with world-class experts, and none of our board member was on a single panel other than as moderator.

For SearchFest 2009, we are following in the same tradition only this year is going to be the best ever, and in my opinion, may be better than next years? Why is that?

There are about 46 reasons why, starting with the fact that we have the godfather of search himself, Danny Sullivan, giving the keynote. Danny seldom speaks anywhere but his own SMX conference series, and for all we know he may never again.

Last year I asked Danny (half jokingly) if he would keynote our conference since he was moving back to the United States, and was thrilled when he agreed. This may be your only chance to see him in Portland.

In addition to our previous reputations, having Danny do the keynote made it even easier to accumulate our 45 other reasons - all of the SearchFest speakers, presenters and moderators.

This isn’t just some local conference. These are the BEST IN THE WORLD, and I’m honored, privileged and appreciative of each and flattered to hang in the company of these people

The fact that they are all spending their own time away from work and sharing as volunteers means a lot to the industry, and to the education of business owners, which is really what this is all about.

I personally go to quite a few, and just last week I paid half price – $2500 (as a returning attendee)- to an event where one of our SearchFest panelists was on the 5 person, 2 day panel.

Unless Matt Cutts himself agrees to the keynote next year, and eveyone else in the industry then begs to speak too, I think I can safely say that you’re never going to see a better line up here in Portland.

With two sessions for most of the day, it likely pays to get a second ticket for your webmaster or other key employee, and today is the last day to get advanced pricing

The discounted price ending today is $179 for members, $229 for Non-Members – register here

Finally, no matter when you register you can save a few more bucks with this coupon code
BOARD-SEMPDXSF0920

This year’s Elite Retreat was every bit as good as last years, and again, i’m really glad I chose to attend.  It was great to see some friends from last year, and I also met some really amazing new attendees. Once again, I feel like I learned almost as much from other attendees as I did from the speakers.

I made it to the airport in plenty of time, and just two minutes before boarding, they announced that we were still waiting for the plane from SFO, and we had an estimated one hour delay before boarding. I’m not sure how that wasn’t known sooner, but it wasn’t.

We finally got underway after more delays on our runway in PDX, and then circling in SFO too. It seems the problem is that they just don’t know what to do when it rains in California.

Since my plane was so late, I got found by the limo driver while I was wandering in baggage claim, and he took me to my hotel, where I changed and unpacked, caught up on email for an hour, and headed to the “Meet and Greet” pre-event.

The “Meet and Greet” was in a cordoned off section of the bar at the Vitale hotel. There were about 20 people there when I arrived, but others rolling in over the next three hours, as SFO airport got caught up.

There was a nice spread of food, with some hot pork sandwiches, and some killer cheese & coldcut plates, and of course an open bar. Near the end of the event they added bowls of hot almonds with crispy chopped garlic that were really amazing. I think I actually may have eaten a whole bowl full!

Besides the speakers and attendees, there were a few other invited (by Shoemoney) guests there, and I got to meet and talk with the CEO of Affiliate.com ) Scott Richter who was sponsoring the Meet & Greet. I also had a great conversation with the CEO of Triggitt.com too, Zachary Coelius.

I used to use Triggitt in it’s old form, but it’s a completely different product now – offering a floating toolbar of sorts for site owners. (Don’t ask – I’m not sure either, and we’ll just have to go check it out)

I also ran into Todd Malicoat, who was a presenter in the very first Elite Retreat, but was leaving for SEO Blackhat in Rio, so couldn’t stay this year. I’m sure he’s pretty disappointed…

Each day started with a great breakfast, followed by great presentations and leaning, then an open bar by 11, then a fantastic lunch, then some more presentations, then a networking / cocktail reception at the end of the sessions, and finally by walking nearby to a different gourmet restaurant each night and eating in private dining rooms. totally first class all the way.

Neil Patel –
Neil was the first speaker, and talked about leveraging social media, and gave a well thought out presentation that had some specific suggestions for your Ecommerce, Service sites, social Sites and affiliate sites.

Some of the action items he suggested will immediately benefit nearly half of my client sites, with potential uses for all, assuming I can get them to buy into the idea of participation.

Nearly everything Neil suggested was creative, imaginitive and legitimate, and It wasn’t even until his Q&A that the subject came up of dealing with banned IP addresses, and multiple user accounts.

Kris Jones -
CEO and founder of Pepperjam, gave his presentation about “Affiliate Marketing Search Arbitrage”, and began by saying that “Inspiration is short lived” and went on to say he was planning to give us specific action items, and he didn’t fail to deliver.

He gave a great talk, stressing importance of tracking, and going into some very specific details about identifying the most profitable and best converting keywords.

He also discussed having a strategic PPC account structure, determining your profit / loss down to keyword level, identifying and capitalizing on trends, and then gave some specifics for improving your Adwords quality Score through what he calls, “Quality Score Optimization”.

Stephen Spencer -
I was one of the people that asked Jeremy if he would invite Stephen Spencer to speak at Elite Retreat this year, because I thought he was one of the only other SEO’s in the world that could possibly contribute as much as Aaron Wall did last year.

That’s why I was disapointed when he went next, knowing that lunch was coming up in an hour. Just like with most of Stephens presentations I’ve ever seen, there wasn’t enough time for him to get though it all.

He had specific things to say and show about some advanced SEO techniques both on-page and off. He cited examples, screen shots and action items, and with my copy of his 103 slides I really did learn and get clarification on a few things.

I suspect that the level of detail Stephen put into some of the SEO stuff was excruciatingly dull for some of the PPC guys that don’t really “get” SEO, and who don’t build out sites beyond landing pages.

Also, Stephen REALLY did push the squeaky white hat image a bit too far, as he put on his tin foil hat (his words) about what Google knows and tracks. I know of at least one person who thought it was over the top – I really enjoyed our talk at dinner, Dave – and thanks a lot for your perspective, and I’d really love to work with you someday.

Also, I KNOW that there were people there that just had no interest in the finer details of thinks like site architecture and sculpting page rank, but I could have listened to Stephen all day, and felt a bit shortchanged by him having to blast through his slides in an hour.

Andy Liu -
As a venture capitalist, Andy talked about finding and structuring the deals for buying sites and businesses, which is not a space I’m going to play in any time soon. However, that didn’t take away from the fascinating processes he discussed, and while I didn’t personally get much actionable information, I learned a lot about how the game is played, and it’s pretty damn fascinating.

Chris Winfield -
Until this week, I had no idea the level of press coverage that Chris Winfield has had in the past. The number of times he’s been menioned or quoted in various publications is staggering, and he’s very open about the positive effect that’s had on his business.

Chris gave a totally fantastic presentation on PR, and he talked about how to get the press to notice you, where to get in touch with the press you’re after, attracting their attention the “right” way, and about formulating a detailed game plan to do it right.

Great information combined with some of the snazziest Powerpoint slides I’ve ever seen, I had to give Chris’s presentation a 10

Garry Vee -
This guy is amazing, and I just can’t say enough about what a motivating and inspirational guy he is. If you want to get an idea what his talk was like, go watch his keynote at Affiliate Summit then imagine talking with him in a room of 30 people for two hours, asking any question that comes to mind.

He gave a short “speech” sort of like the AFF Summit one, and then let us have at him for two hours. It was definitely an experience I’ll remember for the rest of my life, although it did sort of suck that he bailed on coming to dinner with us.

Jeremy Shoemaker – Shoeoney
The second day began with Jeremy giving a short talk, then showing us actual campaigns from actual domains, and cutting to the chase about his findings via multivariate testing. It was a rare glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes at a few actual revenue generating projects, and it was really pretty surprising that he shared that level of detail.

He did an amazing job of putting this all together, and I can only hope he does it again next year.

The rest of the day was devoted to one on one talks, and I took advantage by speaking to Stephen spencer, Kris Jones, and Shoemoney about my monetization and distribution plans for SEO automatic.

During the one on one sessions, which lasted all day, there was plenty of networking going on, as well as speaking appearances by Intel’s director of social networking, Michael Brito, and Brian Norgard, the Vice President of Myspace Myads.

Both of their appearances were excellent and informative, and it definitely helped fill the void that was created last year during the one on one sessions, were we had nothing to do but network and get in line for the next one.

On the other hand, last year in just four hours I had time to speak to every panelist, whereas this year, I could only talk to three, and had to miss the other three completely. If I have one “complaint”, that would be it.

Also during the day, DK a famous chiropractor in San Diego took on the role of Julie from The Love Boat, and helped keep us focused on (semi) productive activities that interested everyone. Many thanks also to Tigh, and to Briena for keeping things running smoothly.

I’m sure there are others to thank for helping, and I’m sorry if I’m forgetting anyone. If anyone can remember someone else, please DM me and I’ll slide them in seamlessly to this post.

All in all, attending Elite Retreat has been my highlight of 2009 so far, and I highly recommend that anyone serious about their Internet marketing career plan to attend the 2010 Elite Retreat if they have another one. It’s also the “conference that keeps on giving” through our weekly mastermind group teleconferences, which I’m really looking forward to again this year.

Don’t just take my word for it though… Check out the buzz on Twitter from other attendees and organizers.

I’m leaving this moring for Elite Retreat, and I’m writing this in the airport because my flight is delayed. It occurs to me that I may not be able to productively fill all of my “one on one” time.

Have you looked at who’s speaking at Elite Retreat 2009? Can you imagine not having an agenda of questions ready to ask these guys?

in all fairness, Tigh at Shoemoney sent out a “get ready” email about a week ago, and I saved it, planning to get back to it later, and that’s what I’m going to finish up on the plane.

However, last year at ER, each and every speakers let us “wear out our welcome”, on the last night by hanging around on their own time until EVERY single person had nothing left to ask but “Where’s the bar?”

To be honest, my biggest regret from ER 2008 is that I hadn’t shown up with a mile long list of questions – I had no idea that we would have all that personally devoted time.

This year it’s different, because I know it’s coming, and so do the other 34 attendees. also, my main focus is on furthur expanding services at SEO Automatic as I bring it forward with an affiliate program and brandable agency options.

I KNOW I have a specific agenda. But, like last year, if I were to get the opportunity, what would I do if there was nothing left to ask?

So, PLEASE tell me what questions might you ask of any of these people, and I’ll do my best to get to ‘em.

Believe it or not, the board of SEMpdx has been getting a number of emails asking us where to register for SearchFest 2009, coming up in March.

So, I figured I would take a minute to point out the SearchFest registration, as well as the entire SearchFest 2009 agenda, and a link to our sponsors.

This year’s event promises to be the best ever, with a lineup of speakers including:

• Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land
• Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
• Vanessa Fox, Nine by Blue
• Marshall Simmonds, New York Times
• Neil Patel, ACS SEO
• Riona MacNamara, Google
• Laura Lippay, Yahoo
• Matt McGee, Small Business SEM
• Greg Hartnett, Best of the Web

and many more…

I will be moderating two sessions myself, including SEO For Wordpress, and SEO for Bloggers and copywriters.

The event will take place at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon on March 10, 2009, so what are you waiting for? Go register now!

This year’s lineup at Elite Retreat promises to be another winner, and after Jeremy took my request to heart and invited Stephen Spencer to be a panelist, I couldn’t resist, and just signed up to attend again. Stephan (among other things) is the creator of the original SEO Title Tags plugin for Wordpress.

I’m also looking forward to hearing from Chris Winfield, Kris Jones, and keynote Speaker Gary Vaynerchuk none of whom spoke at ER last year year, and of course to Neil Patel and Gary Liu, who are returning again, along with Shoemoney, the conference organizer.

Attending last year will be something I never forget, and if you’ve not been to an Elite Retreat before, you might be kicking yourself for missing this one, since there’s apparently only one spot left, and attendance is supposed to be capped at 35.

Yes it’s expensive, but besides being incredibly valuable, last years group and some previous years attendees have a conference call every Tuesday afternoon that never ceases to be educational. Unlike most of the others, this is the one conference that keeps on giving all year long.

Here’s my summary of last year, from the night before and Elite Retreat 2008 Day 1 and Elite Retreat 2008 Day 2 and you can be one of the 35, and grab the last spot right here.

(I wonder if dk is coming again to be the event coordinator?)

I showed up late for breakfast, at about 7:40, which was only 20 minutes before the day was supposed to begin. The buffet (again spectactular) was set up in the hall, so with my backpack over my shoulder, I made my plate, and went inside to try and get a seat.

Much to my surprise, I found that there were less than a dozen people there, compared to the 35 from the previous day. That’s when I realized that my decision to go back to the room at about 11:30 the night before had been the right one, instead of back to the bar. These people were going to miss the beginning…

Scarfing down my food, I went into the main presentation room, and found that yes, there were a lot of people missing; including some of the speakers. In the end, the day didn’t get going until 8:35. That’s not a complaint or a criticism, just a fact.

We started with a discussion about something I already knew… an added value to the Elite Retreat. Every Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 Pacific Time, there is a conference call with a mastermind group, made up exclusively of elite retreat veterans. As attendees we were now going to be invited to that call. Sweet – Now I have to push back the time for my sons team little league practice

My decision to come to Elite Retreat was made back in December, after talking for over an hour one night to a previous attendee while I was at Pubcon. He had told me that while the Elite Retreat itself was fantastic, that being on those conference calls and really been what changed his life.

First up to speak was Brian Clark from Copyblogger, who did a really great job. In my opinion, he was as well-prepared and as polished a speaker at Andy from yesterday, but he spoke about something I was passionate about.

He’s a former lawyer, and he gave some personal history, then talked about a couple of of his new business models, including Teaching Sells and a new-yet-unnamed venture that’s going to be sort of a direct marketing channel for celebrities.

He reminded us of many the opportunities we have and how things are changing so dramatically. It was a short inspirational bit, that would’ve been well-suited for a keynote speech, and then he launched into some juicy details and specifics on how to improve what we were doing now.

He talked about conversion, and how things are changing, and how to do well with permission based marketing, which is really the way things are headed.

“Conversion has to be baked into every aspect of your business model, and if you’re not thinking about it, you’re probably wasting your time.” Smart marketers are getting into more relationship marketing, repeat sales.

He used the phrase “hope marketing” to define simple one-off sales, but pounded into our brains that permission based marketing gets us way past these crappy 1% conversion rates we’ve come to accept.

He also mentioned that he thinks “some day the word ‘blog’ is going to go away”, and I agree totally. For a long long time I’ve been trying to point out to clients that a blog post is just a web page, and vice-versa, and explaining the “difference” between them is silly Websites ARE becoming interactive.

He talked about Early to Rise to illustrate a good example of giving people what they want, and how it’s (past) time to start thinking about affiliate marketing as a way of market testing to see what people really want to buy. He gave some specific dollar figures related to their numbers and affiliates that were astounding

He then got much more specific, talking about the three phases of a business, which he called attention, authority, and acceleration, giving us everything from a few book recommendations to specific steps about conversion, establishing authority, and even developing an exit strategy and outsourcing.

That’s as specific as I’m going to get about Brians talk… Come yourself next time

Guy Kawasaki was the keynote speaker, and the first thing he said was “I don’t really have anything prepared” – THAT’s when I knew it was going to be good… He talked a little bit about his history and his current projects, specifically one called Alltop.

Although some people have been critical of Alltop, I ‘m not here to debate whether or not it’s an original idea or not. The point is, that Alltop is a needed service, and with Guy Kawasaki’s reach and influence, I suspect it’s going to be huge success.

As Guy pointed out, if you don’t agree, then go call your Mom or Dad and walk them through setting up an RSS reader, and telling them how to find and add her favorirte subject feeds.

I will say that something amazing happened during his presentation… When he started talking about how Altop top was created, he said that he had discovered Pop URLs, which is a similar service, but much more subject specific.

Guy found the idea fascinating – to aggregate the RSS content of others in one place and make it available for easier public consumption. Guy said he looked up who owned PopUrls, then picked up the phone, and called the owner, Thomas Marban.

Recounting his conversation with Mr. Marban, he claims he said, something like “so basically Thomas, the way I see it, your goal is just to sit around in your underwear and cash checks”, whereupon Thomas Marban and replied something like, “Yep!”.

The guy sitting next to me then popped open his Twitter, and tweeted something like – “Popurls.com creator Thomas Marban has a life goal to sit around in his underwear and cash checks”.

Within a span of less than five minutes, he then got an e-mail from Thomas Marban, whom he did not know, and neither is a follower of each others Twitter, saying something like “Who are you and how did you know what my life’s goal is”?

He wrote him back to explain, and within a half an hour, they were Facebook and linked in connected too. I found this to be a fascinating demonstration of the power of the Internet and the global instant reach of Twitter.

Just like always, Guy’s presentation was educational and entertaining, and although I had seen him speak twice before, it was never in a room with under three dozen people, where he talked was one-on-one with us, and was asking for questions. He basically talked until we were out of questions and had nothing else to ask. He’s a remarkable guy, and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

There was some time to kill before lunch, so Jeremy filled it up with some specific details about pay per click, AdWords, and the content network, and then through the floor open to questions for all the panelists.

Although the nondisclosure did not say anything about locking those questions and answers later, in my opinion, doing so would be nothing but stupid. I’ll just say that it was a great impromptu session before lunch, that included participation from all the panelists, from Jeremy’s programmer Dillsmack, and even from a few in the audience.

After lunch Jeremy introduced Aaron Wall, claiming to have “saved the best for last”, and Aarons presentation certainly did not disappoint anyone.

I’ve always considered my biggest strength to be organic search, so this was the session I was really waiting for, and Aaron was a huge draw for me to attend…

Aaron talked about an algorithm anomaly that’s been going on for about four months, and how to specifically take advantage of it. I’m afraid I won’t be talking about it here, sorry.

He talked about being a thought leader in your industry and being uber-creative for expanding your network and getting links. In the few times I’ve heard Aaron speak I don’t think he ever mentioned being creative and social as much as he did here.

He talked about a great article to read called, “Is Justin Timberlake a result of cumulative advantage” and explained the philosophy and concept of “things spread because they spread”.

On the plane ride home, I was “reading” Seth Godins book “All marketers are Liars,” that basically illustrated Aarons point over and over again.

He recommended several books and blog articles, talked about writing persuasively and creatively with your headlines and content, and gave specific examples of other sites and companies doing it well.

Then he got to his Powerpoints with his specific ideas and tactics about mixing up our processes, being less than perfect with your SEO, how Google is getting smarter, and then he talked about some tools, and how to use them wisely.

I took a full page of notes before anyone even started asking questions, and once he began answering questions, he exhausted everyone’s curiosity to their full satisfaction. It was an absolutely amazing way to end the formal presentations.

With three hours left to kill, and much to my surprise (since it wasn’t on the schedule) all the attendees were THEN offered face-to-face time with any or all the panelists.

This was great because there may be certain things you don’t want to announce, or domains you don’t want to mention in front of 32 of the most ambitious Internet marketers in the world.

We were able to sit down face-to-face while each presenter had a laptop in front of him, and show specific websites, ask specific questions, and solve specific problems. These one-on-one sessions when on past the 5 p.m. closing time, and ultimately, even though the room closed, never really stopped the entire two days.

DK scheduled a post conference dinner for us all at an amazingly good restaurant for anyone who wanted to attend, and I’ll talk more about that in a wrap up post. However, that may take another day or two because I have a lot of catching up to do.

For now I’ll just say that it ranked among one of the top dozen meals I’ve ever eaten in my life, and was a perfect way to wrap up three incredible days with some extraordinary people.

Elite Retreat Day 0
Elite retreat Day 1

The morning started out great with a buffet breakfast of rosemary potatoes, scrambled eggs, chicken apple sausage, thick sliced bacon, and an assortment of bagels and breakfast breads. I’m typically not a breakfast eater but I’ll never turn down something like this, and I piled my plate high and when into our private dining room.

Taking my place at the table between a poker affiliate from Ohio, and a local San Francisco search marketer, I was surprised to find that four of the eight people at my table had been here before at Elite Retreat.

Overall, I would say that the general search knowledge of people at my table was far higher than the average conference lunch table I’d sat at before, and by the end of the meal and was totally impressed with what I learned, and completely stuffed, which for me is always a good combination.

As we made our way into the room, and I headed for the usual front row / aisle spot that I try to snag, I was pretty disappointed to find out that they had laid out our name tags alphabetically, so I walked up and down the rows until I found my tag in the middle of the third or fourth row of seats. With only 32 attendees, it wasn’t a bad seat by any means, but I’m a little bit obsessive about sitting on an aisle whenever I can.

Laid out with our name tags was an impressive array of swag, starting with a leather portfolio (padfolio?). Had I not forgotten to bring digital camera on this trip you’d see a nice picture here.

Inside the portfolio was a really nice fat silver and black pen, also engraved with the elite retreat logo. Very heavy and with a spring action tip, it’s definitely a nice writing instrument, that I’ll be sure to lose quickly. Sitting right on top, and waiting for us to sign with our new pen was the nondisclosure agreement.

I sort of assumed the NDA was coming, and it basically just said “no live blogging” and “respect people’s privacy”, and show some common sense.

The next item sitting there was a video Ipod Nano, engraved on the back with “Elite Retreat 2008 – San Francisco”. Even letter, the Ipod was filled with all kinds of audio files, from Shoemoney’s Webmaster radio episodes, to Donald Trump’s, “How to think like a Billionaire”.

Our master of ceremonies, David Klein, started us off by introducing Jeremy as the first speaker. Shoe talked about his own personal history, and it was a really interesting story. He began after he wrote a guide for how to put pics on cell phone, and that turned into an online application that ended up sorting, storing, and sizing photos for putting on your cell phones, and then that ultimately turned into the NextPimp ring-tone business that helped make him famous.

He discussed the ring tone site and development history, talked a bit about AdSense, and then more about some contextual advertising and affiliate stuff, and then about his current project, fighters.com, in an upcoming one that I shouldn’t mention, that has to do with dating, but I think it’s absolutely brilliant.

Shoe is an entertaining speaker, and a smart guy, and the story he told about someone who should have been his partner was a class act, but there weren’t really a lot of details or specifics. Still, I was riveted, and I thought he gave a good talk.

The biggest takeaways for me were to be creative, incentivize users, and to try to think out of the box and far beyond typical traffic generation methods.

For example, with Auction Ads, he offered people 5 bucks to try it, and he went to websites and offered to replace their Adsense income to show his ads instead, trying to gain visibility for the brand. That high visibility is likely what enabled him to sell off Auction Ads less than four months after launch.

Neil Patel was up next and he didn’t disappoint. Due to the NDA, I can’t disclose a lot of what he said, but let me tell you that I do think this guy is brilliant. I’ve seen him speak before, and his rapid fire style is definitely appealing. If you ever get the opportunity to hear him at a session don’t skip that one.

He reinforced a lot of ideas that I had about social media networks, and he also straightened me out on some misconceptions I had. I have nearly a full page of notes, but he kept coming back to the fact that you have to tailor your content and style to each particular community you might be dealing with.

During the Q&A, he asked if anyone had any particular industries they were having trouble getting social with, so he could offer some link-bait suggestions. For each industry mentioned he came back with a really quick answer, with funny and entertaining ideas that I have no doubt will work well on these communities.

He gave some specific examples of successful campaigns, and gave some very clear steps on how to work some of the individual networks, from Digg to Yahoo Answers, and his talk was well worth the cost of admission…

Lunch was great, with an assortment of sandwiches and salads, and everyone ate quickly in order to get back in and hear the next speaker during our “working lunch break”. I sat next to Brian Clark from Copyblogger, who is speaking today. He told me a little bit about his membership site, Teaching sells, but mostly I tried to eavesdrop on his conversations with Aaron Wall and Matt Mullenweg, which was an easy because it was really loud in there.

Next, Matt Mullenweg the fouder of worlds best SEO machine (WordPress) gave an interesting history about how he started, why he started, and some general philosophy about the open source community. WordPress is even bigger than I thought, with 2.8 million users, 15 to 20,000 downloads daily, and over 600 million page views on WordPress.com blogs last month. Absolutely astounding.

His company has 24 people all of whom work from their own home office, so they are truly a virtual company. He discussed his plans for the future including Word press becoming even more of a content management system and some additional new features coming out any time now, but he specifically asked us to keep them quiet for now.

My favorite quote from his session was related to adding certain features into the back end and how difficult it is to keep clean and easy to use, because “everyone wants their 15 pixels of fame”

Andy Liu from Buddy TV was next, and his discussion had to do with raising venture capital. the detailed information on exactly how to do it was phenomenal, with great tips and lots of bullet points to pay attention to.

I have no doubt that the notes I took could come in very handy someday, but it’s just not applicable to what I’m doing these days, and I probably could’ve done without that session. Still, it was amazing information to have presented so concise and I appreciated his tips.

For the last session of the day they ask for URLs to put websites up on the screen and talk about ways of improving conversions and engaging visitors. I learned a little bit, and as various attendees spoke, it was interesting to hear all of their opinions too, and see all of the different businesses they were involved with.

When one of the attendees brought up their website, the guy next to me said “That sounds familiar, I think I pitched him a couple of years ago”. Within just a few seconds, he brought up an e-mail that he’d sent this same guy in 2006, with some specific details and recommendations about how he would improve their site. The funny thing was many of the changes and recommendations still had not been made, and the panelists touched on nearly every one.

The other thing I learned from this site review session, was that the SEM Hot Seat events that we put on here in Portland are truly world-class.

Immediately following the close of sessions at 5pm, they opened up the hospitality suite where they were offering free snacks and alcohol for the next 3 1/2 hours before the limousines were scheduled to arrive to take us to dinner.

As appealing as the thought of shmoozing and drinking was, I had made a point of not answering any of my e-mails all day and had a few things I needed to attend to. I walked the two short blocks back to my hotel and proceeded to plow through all of my necessary responses while my battery drained away.

When I went to my backpack to get my power cord for my laptop, I discovered that I had apparently forgotten it in the conference room. Panic set in, because my battery was already dead and being in early-morning riser, I find myself with nothing to do and very far behind if I didn’t find some juice, so I walked back to the conference hotel.

Of course when I got up to the room my power adapter was nowhere to be found, even though I knew exactly where I had left it after unplugging it from the power strip. Remembering that there was a computer store across the street, I went over there and was able to buy a $60 universal adapter to get some power.

I went back to my room, changed for dinner, and walked back over to the cocktail party to network with the other attendees.

Two big Hummer limousines arrived to take all 40 of us to a great restaurant, we had our choice of Chilean sea bass, or filet mignon. It was a nice restaurant with impeccable service, and the obligatory tiny portions in the center of the plate. I love gourmet food as much as the next guy, but why do the portions have to be so friggin’ small?

At dinner I sat next to Aaron Wall and his new wife Giovanna, who has an amazing knowledge of the industry. Just like the rest of us here, she has a true passion for what she does, and is incredibly knowledgeable. I’m sure she’s involved in all kinds of projects with Aaron, and besides the romantic aspect, marrying her seems to have been a wise business decision

Aaron’s presentation is this morning, and he said he still had to put a lot of finishing touches on his PowerPoint so he wanted to go work on it after dinner. However, he says he hates working without a mouse and had forgotten to bring one, so the three of us walked to my hotel and I loaned him mine for the night.

So far the Elite Retreat has been great, but as I suspected, the true value in attending has been networking with new people and forging relationships that could go on for years.

Elite Retreat Day 0
Elite retreat Day 2

As I write this we’re circling San Francisco Airport, and I expect to be told to shut down the computer in a moment, but I wanted to give my blog post about the first night at the elite retreat.

There’s a limo that’s supposed to be waiting for me at the airport, and even though I’ve tried that two other times with no success I suspect that this time it will work, and there’s going to be a guy waiting for me with my name on a sign. Sweet.

The anticipation of this trip has been building literally for over a year,since the last time I opted not to come, and have been kicking myself ever since. I’ve got my list of things I want to learn, my list of things I hope to learn, and my list of things I plan to ask about if they aren’t discussed.

Next morning:
Okay, the limo was there, my name was spelled right, and the conversation on the way in with another attendee (Justin from Legalzoom) was fascinating. At just over 30 years old, he’s lived in a dozen different states & countries, and been a computer geek even longer than I have.

I got to my hotel, call the Mosser, and was pleasantly surprised. This place has recently been remodeled, and my room is neat, clean, furnished with trendy modern stuff, and is TOTALLY well worth my two block walk to the conference, compared to spending an additional $210 a night to stay in the conference hotel!

Last nights networking event got off to a slow start because I got there early, but within an hour the place was packed, and the drinks were flowing. I’m glad I stopped at Mel’s Drive-In on the way, (awesome burger) because other than a couple of bowls of snacks, there was nothing to eat.

The first person I met, while waiting downstairs before heading up to the networking event was named Slaven, and he described himself as a PPC affiliate.

For a minute I thought he meant that he gets others to sign up for PPC advertising and gains a percentage, but in talking to him more I realized that what he does is find affiliate programs he likes, joins them and build the site, and then just does PPC advertising, tweaking things to make them work.

I found this fascinating, because that’s always been my weakest area, and something I need to learn more about. I’ve never really had the guts to throw much money at PPC for my affiliate stuff because I don’t have the confidence that I will take the necessary time to tweak the landing pages, improve the conversion rate etc. so I really enjoyed talking with him.

Conversely, his primary goal in coming here was to learn more about the organic side, because he says it makes him very nervous to have all his eggs in Google’s PPC basket, and he’s afraid the bottom could somehow fallout.

Walking into the networking event, the first face I saw was a familiar one, Dr. David Klein, the infamous San Diego chiropractor who seems to have become famous in the search marketing world, because of his genuine interest in the subject, his ability to network with others, and the fact that he’s just a really nice guy. He’s the one who put on the SEO poker tournament in Las Vegas at Pubcon.

For nearly 2 1/2 hours I talked to people in all walks of internet life, from casino affiliates, two independent SEM firm owners like myself, to in-house SEO’s sent here by their company. It was interesting to hear the different motivations in attending this event, and I’m looking forward to meeting them all again today.

I talked to more than one person who had come to Elite Retreat before, and I found that to be a great testimonial. I met a woman here who’s has been has been to Elite Retreat twice, and she decided to attend, after recently leaving her job to go into full-time affiliate marketing.

Oh yeah, got to talk with Shoemoney and Aaron Wall too quite a bit, and met Aarons wife too. also talked very briefly with Neil Patel, but more about all of them later… Time to jump in the shower and head to the show!

Visit the Elite Retreat site

Elite retreat Day 1
Elite Retreat Day 2

As if I needed another reason to be glad I’m attending Elite Retreat this year, Shoemoney has announced that WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg is going to be speaking.

I feel that I owe a lot of my personal and client success to my use of the best blogging platform in the world, and I’m really looking forward to meeting Matt, and thanking him personally.

I passed on going to  SMX West (and likely SES Jan Jose) to be able to attend ER instead, and wow, am I glad I did!

Thanks Shoe!

I’ll be filling out my speaker proposal soon for Webmaster World Pubcon 2008, because the date has just been announced, and it’s being moved back to November. Maybe if I submit early I can get a topic more exciting than web hosting and SEO issues

PubCon Las Vegas 2008, will take place at the Las Vegas Convention Center Tuesday through Friday, November 11th through 14th, and will be in the North Halls of the convention center.

Four fun (and educational) days in Vegas, baby...