Grantastic Designs’ Blog

At the SMX Local-Mobile keynote session on Oct 1st, I sat right in the front row, with co-hosts Greg Sterling and Chris Sherman alongside of me at the same table. Greg had turned his head my way and said, “I’m really looking forward to what you’ll have to say!”

I replied, confused, “what I have to say?”

To which Greg responded, “Oh no, I mean him.”

I looked to my immediately left, and that “him” he was referring to was Michael Jones, Chief Technologist for Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Local, and the keynote speaker for the event. I had been talking with Michael minutes beforehand and he was oogling my super-small digital camcorder (a Sony Xacti VPC-CG65) I brought just for the purpose of testing out in the session. Kind of amusing that I wasn’t more aware of who the speaker was, but hey, he was a fill-in for the originally scheduled speaker. (According to Greg, IAC’s Peter Horan was slated to be the keynote but he had a family issue and had to withdraw.) It would be unfair to characterize Michael as a “replacement” because he was an excellent top draw, and seemed perfectly suited for the conference them. He even pulled double-daty and sat in on one of the other panels of the conference.

And I think Greg was still interested in what I had to say, anway.

Sorry to any of the blog readers here for the delay in posts. I’ve returned from the Search Engine Expo Local Mobile Expo in at the Denver Tech Center Oct 1-2nd, and gathered some exclusive coverage of the events. I’ll be posting news, interviews and commentary on the local search marketing sessions and panelists, and hopefully some podcast clips for a nice audio touch. Hopefully that can be forgiven for me not being a super-speedy blogger, as I sometimes like to take a couple days and clear my head, so I can put just a bit more thought into what I write than a bunch of scribbled notes. (Perhaps that makes me an SMX Slo-Mo blogger.)

It was a bit of an ordeal just arriving to the conference. Had my flight booked on United (you think I’d know better after having delays the past 4 flights), and had to wait nearly 3 hours past the scheduled departure time. It was evident that the collective waiting people have had to endure have put them more on edge every time they have a flight delay or cancellation with United. What I found slightly amusing was a man swearing out loud and walking off after the attendant at the gate couldn’t help him, and she announced over the microphone that “We have the right to arrest anyone who uses profanity at an employee.” To which, one ticket holder said sarcastically, “How about we just praise you loudly?!” And another ticket holder feigned, “Yeah, you’re doing a GREAT job!” This was followed by several more people clapping in mock approval.

Arriving to my first SMX conference was a treat. After being at several search marketing conference of thousands of attendants for 4-5 sessions going on at the same time, this had a more refined and seasoned group of left-and-right brain individuals both as panelists and audience members, much to my satisfaction and enjoyment. Smart move to have two “verticals” (or whatever the categorical term used that means anything about search categories these days), where there would be some overlap between sessions with the local and mobile space, but also making some clear distinctions in what track would best suit your needs. I was definite for the local track, since that has been more refined as a business model for most search marketers, and especially the common business (small-to-medium size enterprises, or SMEs).

My next post will include comments on Keynote speaker Michael Jones, Chief Technologist for Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local Search. The guy was sitting next to me at the keynote event and I didn’t even recognize him until he was announced by the event hosts!)

Michael T. Jones, Chief Technologist, Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Local Search,