Sheara Wilensky . com

So I am sitting in the San Jose Convention Center killing time until I head to the airport to fly back to New York. The conference hall is empty, as SES ended hours ago and the convention center staff is cleaning up. I finished earlier live-blogging my sessions for the Roundtable. It’s been a great and productive week. I picked up some great tips from the sessions that I can’t wait to try out, such as optimizing my contextual ad campaigns and tactics to incorporate into my e-commerce campaigns. I got a new Best of the Web t-shirt (as if I don’t have enough already - thanks BOTW guys for keeping them coming, and this time on American Apparel) and of course a couple of glow-in-the-dark Google Dance t-shirts. Oh, I got a great neon green Frisbee from Double Click. But I especially made some new friends this week that I look forward to keeping in touch with and seeing at the next industry conference.

A few things I did not like about downtown San Jose and the convention:

1. The boxed lunches at the convention center. Just because I am a vegetarian does not mean I will enjoy eating a few pieces of vegetables on bread. But I suppose the meat-eaters did not enjoy their boxed lunches much better. By Day 2 everyone was already heading out for lunch.

2. The lack of food options near the convention center. Being from New York - and not having been on the West Coast in a while - I am spoiled by the 5 pizza places and delis and sushi restaurants on every block. We wandered around quite a bit to find some breakfast. Only last night did I realize that walking about 4 blocks would yield me a variety of food options (Good Karma was delicious).

3. The lack of electrical outlets in the meeting rooms. Oh, the perpetual search for laptop power. But Topix saved the day - they gave away splitters at their booth - and I was happy to share my outlet with my peers.

Some things I did love about San Jose:

1. The cleanliness of the town - again, being from New York - I am not used to this at all. And the lack of smokers.

2. The IM Charity Party at Agenda Lounge. The open bar enabled me to meet a lot of new people - and give me a slight hangover the next day.

3. The Google Dance. Read all it about it in the next post.

4. The weather. Of course.

Can’t wait til next year!