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Conference in London
07-11-14
Me and Tryggve recently attended the search engine marketing conference in London. We got to meet with people from the biggest players in the game; Google, Omniture, SEOmoz.org and many more.
Apart from learning a lot of cool, new stuff regarding Internet marketing, we also managed to hit a great party, hosted by PartyPoker and nowadays I have my own matching Omniture scarf and cap…
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2007 Future of Web Design, New York
07-11-07
At the 2007 Future of Web Design in New York I had the pleasure to attend a 3 h workshop with the world-renowned interaction designer and artist, Joshua Davis. He has not only worked with big-big brands like BMW, Motorola and Nokia, but also bands like Tool.He showed us the process of making his artwork in flash. How he liked using photographs of flowers and extracting it into 16, 32, 64 or 128 colours, because mother nature is so good at complementary colours. This is not what you might expect from a big skateboarder with tattoos all over…
He walked us trough the process of making the artwork for Tool. It was a three piece of artwork, artwork that he photographed in one of the band members house, some Chinese dragons. This he later drew in illustrator and imported into flash. In flash he programs these shapes to randomize them selves in certain ways and to auto colour them selves… it’s simply brilliant. This is the way he always works, then when the clients tell him, they don’t like the colours… he just puts in 16, or 64 new colours… and he gets a totally new look. 
For this Tool artwork he asked the band what colour they liked, they said red, black, gold, velvet… so he got home thinking, red, black, gold, velvet … red, black, gold, velvet… red, black, gold, velvet… and saw his daughters DVD cover of the 7 dwarfs laying on the table… red, black, gold, velvet. So he scanned it, and that’s where he got the colours for the hard core Tool cover… so clever, and so NOT Tool. This was an extremely inspiring workshop. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, Josh told us he has a site where he puts up all his little programmes, for everyone to play around with and create there own artwork!!
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Search Engine Strategies conference, San José - California
07-08-10
We (Karin/German SEO and Matteo/Italian SEO) went to San José (California) to attend the Search Engine Strategies Conference held there in August, expected to be the biggest search engine conference of the year. The main reason for this is that it’s held in San José, main town of the Silicon Valley, where all the big Internet and search engine companies have their headquarters.It was definitely a big conference, with a lot of (smart and funny) people. Most people were from the States, and when we told them we were from Sweden they thought it was amazing that we had traveled all the way there just for this conference. Some of them were rather good at geography too, and went like: “Ohhh, I have been in the Netherlands, isn’t that the country next to you?”.
There were a lot of good sessions we gained new ideas and inspiration from, and also many which made us realize we already knew pretty much about certain topics.. Some of us (Karin) thought it would have been much better if the sessions were held out in the sunshine, while most of the other people (including Matteo because he’s Italian) was happy enjoing AC. Only Swedes know how to enjoy the sun!As already said, despite being marked as ”advanced”, many sessions were a bit too basic for us. Many of the other attendees spent most of the conference breaks bragging about how good they are at what they do, but then during the “site clinic” sessions (in which sites managed by attendees are publicly dissected and analyzed), it clearly showed that these people were not half as good as they thought they were.
Keynote speakers at the conference were Jim Lanzone (CEO of Ask.com) and Merissa Meyer (Vice President for Search at Google), who discussed the latest news is search from the point of view of their companies. Merissa talked a lot about Universal Search and how search results are going to be more personalized in the future.Apart from keynotes, the most entertaining session of the conference was probably the "Are paid links evil?” debate, in which the most known gray hat SEOs faced Google´s engineer Matt Cutts on the most controversial topic of the conferece: link buying. The discussion followed pretty much the line this video, shown just before the debate, had foreseen. It was more a fun session than an informative one, and it was also a good warm up for the massive Google Dance party held at Google’s headquarter in Mountain View.
The Google Dance was surely a dance, and a lot more: 6500 people, (good) food, (good) drinks, (good) candies, (good) games, (good) Google gadgets and many (good) people to mingle with! We had a lot of fun and it was great to get to see the Google HQ, although we didn’t get to see all of it... Matteo enjoyed the party so much that the morning after he woke up with a headache bigger than Google’s archives – and they’re REALLY big.
Jokes apart, to sum up, the hottest topics at the conference were Universal Search, personalized search results, link buying and the Facebook boom. The most interesting part according to me (Karin) was the session about usability; how to build a site which is both user friendly and converting well.
The most interesting part according to me (Matteo) was talking to other (supposedly good) SEOs and finding out we are much better than them – and more modest too ;-) .
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World Series of Poker, Las Vegas
06-10-20
I went to Las Vegas to cover the 2006 World Series of Poker (WSOP) for one of our client sites, PokerListings.com. I was in the gambling capital of the world for the entire series (seven weeks), and worked together with five other reporters to bring the site’s visitors the best possible service. The work consisted of reporting live from the 45 different WSOP tournaments, taking photos, interviewing some of the best poker players in the world, and writing blogs about all the action in the Amazoon Room at the Rio Casino, where the WSOP is held. The world champion of poker is crowned in the WSOP main event, and this year Californian Jamie Gold took the title and $12 million in prize money.
It was hard work and many long days, but also very fun and interesting to get a closer look at the world of poker. High-level gambling attracts a lot of odd characters, and everyone has a story to tell. No day is the other alike at the WSOP.
On my spare time I mostly relaxed; hung out by the pool with my friends, played some bowling or gambled a little at the casino where we stayed, the Gold Coast. But of course I made a few trips to the famous Las Vegas strip, with its exclusive night clubs and casinos, as well. One night, I went to see one of my favorite comedians, Jerry Seinfeld, who performed at the luxurious Caesars Palace.
All in all, Las Vegas is fun and exciting place, and if I get a chance to go back to, I will definitely take it.
