Metamend at SMX Advanced

Arguably the most intense and challenging of the annual search marketing conferences ended late Wednesday and 36-hours later, I am still exhausted from the experience.

SMX Advanced 2008, held in Seattle’s Bell Center conference hall started Monday afternoon with a Microsoft reception and closed late Wednesday night at the SEOmoz sponsored after-party. If the 18-hour day conference schedule didn’t do us in, the journey home did. Yesterday, a small contingent of Victoria based SEOs shared a ferry voyage back to Vancouver Island that was very much a kin to enduring a three-hour long roller coaster ride as the ship pressed through the choppiest seas I’ve seen in years.

Though exhausted, I am also very much pleased with the performance and presentation of one of Metamend’s finest, SEO Analyst Colin Cochrane. Colin spoke at SMX Advanced Developer Day, covering correct server and site architecture for Microsoft Stack.

Colin, who is only 25, had never spoken at a search marketing conference. Come to think of it, SMX Advanced was the first massive search conference Colin had even attended. To debut as a speaker at the highest level technical show (Developer Day was truly intense) is one thing. To knock the ball way out of the park is another. I’ll leave it to Colin to share his presentation and experience as he is one of the brightest technical SEOs in the business. For now, suffice it to say Colin hit a homer and I can’t express how proud we are to have him on our team.

He certainly impressed the team from Microsoft Live and Matt Cutts from Google and we have the photos to prove it. The photo below was taken on the last night of the conference. Colin is receiving THE ALGORITHM from Microsoft Live’s Jeremiah Andrick. We’ve another of Colin “stealing” THE ALGORITHM from Google’s Matt Cutts.

All in all, Metamend put on an excellent performance at SMX Advanced. We came, we saw, we learned, we networked. We can’t wait for next year’s show and especially appreciated Developer Day.

Enormous thanks from Team Metamend to the SMX organizers for a great show and a special thanks to Developer Day organizer Vanessa Fox for taking a chance on Colin as a first-time speaker. We knew he’d do a great job.