Archive: June, 2007

Conventions are ALL work. When one attends a convention, they are representatives of their companies 24/7. Though it really is all work, often work on search marketing tour is a lot of fun.

Here are some shots of Metamenders and Enquisitites having fun while working hard. For context’s sake, these images come from a dinner party thrown by Epiar.com, an Edmonton based firm specializing in the deepest of deep-blue keyword determination. These guys are recognized super-specialists when it comes to keyword research. They are also renown for their superior sensibilities when it comes to throwing a great party.
The dinner party was attended by many of the top search marketing minds in Canada along with a number of speakers and writers from the States.

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I am finally back in Victoria from SES Toronto. I’ve had a few days to contemplate the experience, (which was wonderful) and to think about the state of Canadian search marketing, (which isn’t). It feels odd writing the word “the state of” in relation to the search marketing sector in Canada. For the most part, the word up here is “provincial”.

That’s an awful thing to say about such brilliant, passionate and intelligent people, especially so since I am not really talking about SEO/SEM service providers themselves. I’m just trying to catch and describe the vibe. Like Mary Walsh, “I’m just foolin’ around is all. ”

Besides which, it’s not our fault that the corporate and small to medium sized business sector doesn’t get it? Is it? It’s not like we haven’t used the strength of American and international media to inform our home-grown business sector. We have a disproportionate number of world-renown search marketing talent in the country, many of which have appeared on CNN, BBC, FOX, NBC and msnbc. We’ve been there and done that eh? I’ve seen articles written by Canadian search marketers appear in Wired, the New York Times, DM News, and even in publications I couldn’t read because they were written in Cyrillic script, which is totally Greek to me. I also know for a fact that virtually every large online search marketing publication has published thousands of articles from Canadian writers that have served to define the search marketing industry.