Thoughts on PubCon So Far

• Posted by B Jones on December 7th, 2007 - Comment on this Post »

Well, PubCon is just about over. Tomorrow is going to be the last day, and it’s going to basically be a networking event (the original pubcon)

I must say that I was a little worried about having to go to this conference alone, but it turned out to not be an issue at all. I was able to meet up with Reuben Yau (a friend from seorefugee) on the first day. This was great for lots of reasons, including having someone to swap notes when we attended different sessions.

Speaking of the sessions, for the most part they have been excellent, with a nice variety of topics to choose from for each time slot.

I must admit that other than lurking, I’ve never been active at webmasterworld forums, and other than being impressed with his cutting edge robots.txt blog, I was never really familiar with Brett Tabke.

After hearing Brett’s story and the history of WMW and PubCon during one of the sessions this week, and also getting an opportunity to meet Brett today, I now understand a little bit more why PubCon is so cool. It wasn’t just an “oh hey, nice to meet you.. bye”. He was extremely approachable, and seemed to be genuinely interested in who I was.

That was true of many other attendees and speakers, and I had lots of chances to pass out my homemade inkjet business cards. (didn’t have a chance to get cards made)

A couple of months ago, Rand Fishkin posted that he would have “some really cool SWAG to give away” at PubCon.

Well, last night, he definitely delivered. Rand and SEOmoz hosted an event (actually a game) called Werewolf (Search Spam). It started at 8PM, and I really had no idea what to expect, but when I walked in the door and saw Rand standing up on a chair, shouting at a group of about 12 participants of the game, I knew that I was in for a good time.

I played for a couple of hours, and then helped to moderate for another hour, which was just a ton of fun.

The whole conference has just been a really fun, and I’ve met so many great people.

You can check out my PubCon Photos if you haven’t had a chance to yet. I’ve been updating them daily, as I take them.

I was hoping to have more time to blog while here, but unfortunately, the only place I have a secure internet connection in my hotel room, and I haven’t had much downtime here (that’s a good thing), but I’ll definitely post more as I get time. Especially about the sessions.

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