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!

I’ve been in San Jose, California all week for the annual Search Engine Strategies conference at the convention center. All the industry rock stars and regulars are here, with a lot of people new to the industry. Avi and I have been live blogging the sessions since Monday on behalf of the Search Engine Roundtable so look for our posts there. There were a lot of interesting and informative topics this year, such as shopping search engine tactics, duplicate content issues, and the hidden secrets of SEM. So make sure you read through the sessions on the Roundtable.

The highlight of the show, as is every year, is the Google Dance, which actually took place last night at the Google Campus in Mountain View, California. The theme of the dance was “glow in the dark”.  The Google Headquarters were unbelievable. Like a college campus, video arcade, dance club, and bar mitzvah all in one. There was a sand volleyball court on site, a lawn strewn with bean bag chairs and a stage, - complete with spotlights and a fog machine - where groups were lining up to play Rock Band. Buffets of food set up in at least three different places, a decorate-your-own-cupcake-bar, smoothi bar, photo booth, a large glow in the dark dancefloor, and a few bars with kegs. And that was just the outside. On the inside was a nother dance floor with a large overhead screen (think, NYC night club), and video games everywhere. What really impressed me was the charicature booth - not old-fashion artists with charcoal or pencils, but digital artists drawing Avatar charicatures on their computer. Very cool. Thousands of people were there and everyone appeared to be having a great time - how could you not! Can’t wait for next year’s Google Dance already! Will post the pictures as soon as I get my hands on a USB cable, but you can check out Google’s photos of the dance.

Will keep you posted on the remainder of the conference.

So today is the last day of the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo which has been going on since Monday at the New York Hilton. I’m not there today, because, well, I stayed out too late last night and have work to catch up on from this week. But — Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were awesome!

I was live blogging five of the sessions for my new friend Barry Schwartz of SE Roundtable - so check out the site to read my transcripts. I especially liked the Orion Panel on Tuesday because it was a lot of fun watching John Batelle bash Jack Menzel from Google (the attacks were meant for Google, not Jack). John “suggested” that Google is manipulating algorithms so You Tube and Google Finance appear in the number one spots for video and stock searches (remember when Yahoo Finance used to be number one?). That Google has turned into a media company and is shying away from their original focus which was purely on search. That Google is “capturing a second click” according to John, monetizing still after the search result is clicked. Jack defended Google by saying that they are just trying to give the most relevant stuff, if that happens to be You Tube, it will be up there, and there is nothing biasing the algorithms.

Anyway, it was a highly entertaining panel. What are all your thoughts on this?

Another session I enjoyed was called Search Engine Friendly Design. A lot of back-to-the-basic stuff for SEOs, like alt tagging and breadcrumb navigation structures. But it served as a good reminder of best practices that we sometimes tend to forget, and the panelists all held the attention of the audience.

Last night was fun! We went to the SearchBash party at Spotlight in Times Square. It was my first time at Spotlight, though I had been wanting to go since they opened last year. A karaoke bar that provides backup singers! Brilliant. The naked singing cowboy was there! My brother Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp and a few others were great singing Violent Femme’s Blister in the Sun. Equal shout outs to the woman singing Like a Virgin, and the guy singing Journey at the end. Anyone know who they were? They were fabulous. Thanks to the sponsors of the party, Webmaster Radio, Bruce Clay, Cranberry, ABC Search, Lyris and PR Web.

You can check out more SES coverage on some other blogs:

• Top Rank Blog
• Greywolf’s SEO Blog
• Just Searching

To those of you responsible ones who made it today to the sessions, enjoy. Great week, and we’ll see everyone at the next conference.

The Search Engine Strategies conference and expo will be hosted in New York City this week, from March 17th to March 20th, at the Hilton New York. SES will feature presentations and discussions on all aspects of search engine optimization and search marketing. This year’s workshops will be covering the typical topics such as Link Building Campaigns and Social Media Marketing. But look out for the interesting new workshops, such as “How to Build Investment Interest in Your SEO/SEM” and “Igniting Viral Campaigns”.

Speakers include John Batelle, Founder of Federated Media, Andrew Tompkins of Yahoo! Search, Gordon McLeod of the WSJ Digital Network, and several others.

The expo hall on Tuesday and Wednesday is free if you register online. It’s great for networking and for scoring great schwag.

I’ll be busy live blogging the sessions so look for me and say hi!

And of course, don’t forget about all the great after-parties, such as the IMNY/Best of the Web Charity Party which will be taking place at Black Finn on Tuesday night, March 18th. All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.