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04.17.07
Looking Back at SES NYC 2007
 By Kimberly Krause Berg
My favorite part of working at a Search Engine Strategies Conference is writing about the sights and sounds later. My experience is different from many of the stories told because I don’t attend private parties or stay out all night drinking (the proper term for both is “professional networking”, of course.)
I feel I’m there to give something back to an industry where I started out as a single mom with two small children, sacrificing my dignity during the daytime for a company whose CEO felt that webmasters were “worth $5 an hour”, and freelancing in SEO or teaching myself new skills at night while my children slept.
Twelve years later, I get the biggest thrill from reporting on sessions for those who can’t get to the conferences; because for years and years, neither could I.
Tuesday
Though the conference began Monday, I arrived Tuesday evening, around 8:30pm with my husband Eric, who fills many roles. I have trouble seeing distances, even with correction, and he is my “guide person”. He is also very smart and appropriately “geeky”, works in a field related to mine and is becoming more involved in my work because he is very experienced with automation, recording tools and software testing. He also knows many SEO’s and they like to see him.
We live less than a 2 hour drive from New York city but ran into massive traffic tie-ups a few blocks to the hotel (some movie premiere I later heard). We were supposed to meet a group of friends for dinner, including my good friend, Bill Slawksi. Though we missed the dinner gathering, we caught up with him later at the bar, where we were catching up with all kinds of folks, including these three top Women in SEO - Deb, Christine and Jill.
Bill left for home later that night, taking a late train.
That night, I finally met:
Michael Gray (aka “Graywolf”). The picture includes Chris Sherman, who took the time to explain to me why my blog is not on SearchEngineLand’s blogroll. It wasn’t easy for me to inquire and I appreciated his information.
I recognized Todd Malicoat sitting at a table with Mike Gray, so I went over to say hello to Todd, and then goofily made my way to Mike, completely ignoring the woman sitting next to him, because I really wanted to meet Mike (and I was totally focused on that.) The woman tapped my arm and asked if I knew who SHE was, and thank gawd, I realized it was Rae Hoffman, a legend in her own right. I thought she was a blond. Anyway, meeting Rae was funny and a long time in coming. She took several SEO women out to dinner on Thursday night, so you may hear about that event at some point. I saw them when they returned from their road trip, and all ladies were feeling very well, suffice it to say.
Liana Evans wowed everybody with her “new” hair. (I’m looking for a good picture of it when it was down, rather than pulled up.) Christine Churchill told me Li looked like Drew Barrymore. Li and her co-worker, Greg Meyers work for a company located not far from where I live. Li lives about 30 minutes from me, which means both of us get to joke about living near a big nuclear power plant, which may or may not explain a few things about us…I digress.
I was sitting next to Tamar (photo of her and Jeremy “Shoemoney” Shoemaker, whose body was taken over by demons - note the eyes) in the press room, when she says to me, “Do you think I should take a picture of Danny?”
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com, Cre8pc.com, and Cre8asiteForums. Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development.
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