Matthew and his team at Existem have done it again. If people ask me, anywhere in the coming 12 months, which show they should attend on online marketing, I can only say one thing: A4UExpo. They're really giving all the other search and online marketing shows a run for their money.
The last few days have been an absolute blast, speaking wise, I enjoyed both my WordPress session and the Extreme SEO panel on tuesday, and the Affiliate doctors panel on wednesday.
I actually wasn't supposed to be on that last panel, but had to fill in because Bob Rains went (and still is) missing. That last panel could have used someone like Ciaran to moderate too btw, that would have made it a whole lot better.
The new presentation Karl & Ben from Conversion Rate Experts did was one of the other highlights, content wise, as were the SEO howlers session and "Practical PPC Strategies for Better ROI" session.
In that last session Dixon gave a new presentation I'd never seen before, which was good, and both Mel and Tor from Microsoft showed why at some point in time Microsoft will own this market too. The fact that both Yahoo! and Google didn't even bother to show up for sessions like that only shows me that they're not at all interested in the people who are using their products.
Then, next to all the great content and the very well organized expo hall, there were the parties. The opening party was fun, the Thames cruise on the second night was great even though we could have used a bit more food, and the party yesterday was great as well. Before we joined that party though, we first had dinner with a couple of friends.
Dave had blogged asking who wanted to come for dinner, and picked Anthony Shapley, who turned out to be a nice guy! We had a load of fun and some good discussions with next to Anthony, Dave and his lovely wife Becky, these other great guys: Mel Carson, Todd Crawford, Marcus "Mediadonis" Tandler, Patrick Altoft, Al Carlton and myself.
So, the 28th and 29th of April next year A4UExpo will be coming to Amsterdam, and I can only say one thing: be there.
If you want to read some other reviews, check these out:
- Dixon Jones
- Roy Huiskes
- One Little Duck
- Affiliate Marketing Blog
- Codswallop
- Keith Bond
- Lammo
- Affiliate Stuff
- Befuddled Me?
- MediaWeek
- Peter Wanderson
- Peter Coles
- Blogstorm
- Self Made Minds
- Chris Bishop
PS the guys from Sunshine.co.uk released a pretty cool WordPress plugin to easily make vacation sites. I'll look at that a bit more and write about as I think it's a fantastic idea.
Great to see you again mate!
Can't believe it's been 6 months! Thanks for your support during our session. I hope we did demonstrate that we value ALL advertisers. We'd have liked more questions but maybe Tor just blew them away!
A write up of a similar presentation on keyword research can be found here: http://adcentercommunity.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2008/05/23/keyword-research-tips-with-an-international-flavour.aspx
See you soon Joost!
You rock Mel, thx! (go get a gravatar btw)
Thanks for the kind words Joost. We're glad that you (an everyone I've spoken too) seemed to have had a great time, all of us at existem put in loads of time and love to make this year's a4uexpo even better than last year and we hope we succeeded.
It was great to catch you at the bar yesterday too, even if I was probably babbling at you after a few too many beers.
See you in Amsterdam
Hi Joost,
Thanks for the kind words - the cheque's in the post!
Hope to see you again soon.
a4uexpo was really fun this year (and last year) and I felt honored to get to hang out with the SEO rockstars - but best of all I got some back links out of it. FTW!
Enjoyed your talks - shame I didn't manage to collar you to chat - but stay on the white(ish) side Joost. You gave me some new perspectives to think about. Maybe get to have a word in your ear in Amsterdam. Thanks.
Thanks for taking the time to come have a look at our plug-in, looking forward to getting your comments.
I also wore your t-shirt on Thursday all the way home!
@Chris: I want a picture of you in my shirt ;)
Was great meeting you and translating for you Joost, still waiting for my tshirt :)
I'm looking forward to when A4UExpo comes to Amsterdam ;-)
As always Joost a great bevy of amazing content. I live in Australia and am finding your posts both informative and useful, so much so that I am using your RSS Feed to add content to my site. Thanks again mate!
Keep Shining
Oops.... Made a typo on my website link. This one is correct. Cheers...
Do you reckon there will be another one in Bristol?