In a word - yes. I finally just completed my post about attending the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle. It was long overdue, having been nearly a week since I returned, but I have lots of other priorities right now including wrapping up my end of month client reporting, and attending games and practices for both of my kids baseball teams.

I’ll be on a panel at Innotech this year, because for the first time, there will be live website reviews taking place at the conference,  here in Portland Oregon.

The entire conference is scheduled for next Wednesday, April 16th and Thursday April 17th,  but the live SEM Hotseat is Thursday April 17 3:30 PM in Room D135

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.

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.

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 are approximately 72 hours remaining for you to obtain a ticket to SearchFest ‘08 at more than half off of the non-member door price.

Here are the steps…

1. Join SEMpdx
2. Register for the conference. (Price goes up slightly March 1st)
3. Before checkout - apply this additional $40 discount code - SEMBD

SEMpdx and SAO IPSIG are teaming up to bring a joint internet marketing event to Portland, next Tuesday,February 5, 2008.

Similar to other SEMpdx hot seat events, there will be up to five websites reviewed, and site owners may address any questions the wish, from search engine optimization, to linking strategy, to pay per click management, or anything else they desire.

Searchfest 2008, Oregon’s annual search marketing conference will be held on Monday, March 10, 2008, at the Oregon Zoo’s Cascade Crest Banquet Center.

We’ve now got the prices posted, the sign-up form live, and I’m sorry, but it’s already too late for you to be the first person to sign up…

Somehow, there are still some slots available for site reviews at next Mondays SEMpdx Search Engine Marketing Hot Seat event.

For those who don’t know, Vanessa is a top speaker on the conference circuit. Formerly head of Google’s Webmaster Central team and more recently Zillow.com, Vanessa has transitioned to features editor at Search Engine Land and to helping startups at Ignition Partners.

My trip to Los Angeles for the Search Engine Strategies local conference was a real eye-opener for me as to how many big (and not so big) corporations view the Internet.

Amazingly (to me) there are huge companies paying no attention whatsoever to organic search engine optimization, while spending tens of thousands of dollars on Internet Yellow Pages, banner advertising, and pay per click. To many of the people I met, organic just wasn’t important, even though it a far larger source of traffic than any paid options.

Spots are filling up fast for the poker tournament this Thursday night in Las Vegas. Dr. David Klein has done a good job getting the word out, and there are some pretty big names in search playing. I’m not a big time poker player or anything, but it should be fun to hang out with them. Imagine the inbound links that winners will get…

At the upcoming SEMpdx sixpack event*, I was supposed to give a 15 minute talk about Blogs and RSS in a generic sort of way that might appeal to the broadest variety of users… Pardon me while I yawn for a minute.