Hello from Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto!

[This article was also posted on Global Nerdy.]

Fredrick Marckini.

I’m sitting in the press room of the Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto conference as I write this. I’m here on a press pass arranged for me by Byron Gordon of SEO-PR and in exchange, I’ll be publishing blog entries from the conference over the next couple of days.

Fredrick Marckini’s Opening Keynote

The opening keynote by Fredrick Marckini, Chief Global Search Officer of Isobar, was quite good. For a guy like me — I’ve been more concerned about application development and technical evangelism than search engine marketing — it was a pretty good introduction to the search engine marketing and trends to watch for. Not only did Marckini present a lot of useful information (especially to an SEM newbie like me), but he presented with style and humor and kept the audience engaged — not an easy thing first thing in the morning.

I took copious notes and once I’ve formatted them, I’ll post them here.

The Best Thing in the Goodie Bag

It’s not a tech conference unless there’s a goodie bag, and this one is no exception. I always find uses for them, and the ones for this conference are pretty decent:

The goodie bag at SES Toronto.

They’re trying to make this conference a little more green, so they’ve kept the paper contents of the goodie bag quite lean, limited to the conference agenda magazine, a few sheets of administrivial paper and the best thing, the book Meatball Sundae, written by my favourite marketing guru, Seth Godin:

The best thing in the goodie bag: Meatball Sundae, by Seth Godin.

I’m looking forward to reading it.