SMX Seattle Wasn’t Really Advance at All

By Ian, June 10, 2010

The past 2 days was SMX Advance in Seattle, WA. I honestly only went to the first day and 1 session. I walked into the exhibit hall made a right turn at the end of the corner and that was the end of the expo hall. Not impressive for my first SMX show and will probably be my last.

I literally walked in, registered, took 5 steps, made a right at the Bing booth, and that was it. So first impression, not impressive.

Seems like only Bing and Yahoo were there along with some other booths you see at almost every event. Superpages and Reply were there but they are everywhere anyways.

I figured I would go to a session and see if there would be anything for me. I was playing on my iphone the whole time. Seems the whole aspect at this particular conference was search and social and trying to combine them or gather data from social to better seo.

The crowd were older and it didn’t feel like I gained anything from this show. If there was only 5 booths and just panel questions, it isn’t a show to be at.

Luckily I was able to meetup with Chris Guthrie, James Seligman, John Hasson, and Unique Blog Designs. We chatted in the halls and just talked about business while I tried to get secrets from Chris on how he makes mad money being an amazon associate.

The real online young entrepreneurs I met agreed that the show isn’t all there. It lacked quality people and experienced marketing entrepreneurs. Matt Cutts was there but I was unable to meet him or attend his session. Oh well.

Just because a show has a bunch of executives from bigger companies (Microsoft, Intel, etc) doesn’t make a conference worth attending.

Later we went and visited the HasOffers office which just up a block from the conference. It’s a big wide open space office with lots of room.

They had a nice area for collaboration and an arcade like feel in the other room. After a tour of he office we all had dinner with everyone and enjoyed everyones company.

After, we headed to the Bing party…

At Bing party I met up with Neil Patel and some other marketers. The audience was not what I am use to, I usually see young minded affiliates and entrepreneurs. SMX was more older people, agencies, local marketers, etc.

I just hanged out with James, Chris, and HasOffers for the night. The dj was playing good music but no one was dancing or bustng moves. Ehh.

The next day I toured downtown Seattle, SMX was not worth the second day. Overall SMX really isn’t worth it and isn’t geared towards affiliates or entrepreneurs. If you want to go to a real show, go to Affiliate Summit.

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I can’t blame you that you didn’t stay there longer, judging by the first photo it didn’t look at all that great to me either!
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I can see that you are putting a lot of time and effort into your blog and detailed articles! I read every single piece of information you post here.
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Thanks for the review on SMX Seattle. Looked like the Bing party was pretty cool at least.

One week you’re on the west coast, then the next you’re on the East coast, must be nice.
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Nice to see those guys with you.
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I guess the affiliate marketing scene is still developing in the Northwest. I live just up the coast in Vancouver and I never hear about any good affiliate related conferences down there. In time they will likely get their act together and improve things with better exhibitors. Since you seem to go to all the major conferences I’m sure you were a little more picky than the other people attending. How was your day touring around Seattle?
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no playboy bunnies at the bing party!?!? whats microsoft thinking!? lol
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@Dino, humm while that would be nice… that might be asking for too much, hehe.
http://www.ppcian.com/ PPC Ian

Ian,
It was awesome very briefly meeting you at SMX Advanced! I hope to run into you at future conferences and have some time to chat. I have been following your blog since your interview on JV and have very much been enjoying your posts. Man, I hope I’m not one of those older people at SMX you are referring to. Seriously though… While I’m with you that some of the sessions are not worth it, I actually picked up a few good tips from the conference. I focused exclusively on the PPC track. It sounds like you may have been in some of the general business/social media sessions. I attended one or two of those at SMX West a few months back and would have to agree that they can sometimes be a bit too high level (no real actionable tips to them). I do feel however comparing SMX Advanced to the regular SMX that it was more advanced, at least on some of the PPC sessions I attended. In particular, I think Craig Danuloff from ClickEquations killed it with his quality score presentation and white paper. Moreover, learned a thing or two from Siddharth Shah, PhD from Efficient Frontier. My buddy Wister Walcott from Marin Software also had a really sweet presentation where he presented some advanced math proving 0 correlation between position and conversion rate (an ongoing debate forever). Posted a few of my learnings on my most recent blog post. Great meeting you again and keep up the great work on your blog, I have definitely been learning!
All the best,
Ian
http://www.ianfernando.com Ian

@ian I didnt see any ppc sessions there… maybe because I got the expo hall pass only. awesome that it was beneficial to you, wish I can say the same for me. glad to meetup as well, we will be bumpin into each other soon
http://www.ppcian.com/ PPC Ian

Ian,
Makes sense… Got lucky on my end because my employer paid for my full pass. I love that about my job! Hey, really great meeting you again and catch you at a future event soon!
All the best,
Ian
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So, did Chris tell you any of his secrets? I’ve also been trying to find out what that man is actually doing. I tried fair amount of tactics with amazon but the result hasn’t been great yet.
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Thanks for sharing ian
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A number of people weren’t impressed by it. I guess it was just a good excuse to have a drink.
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Ian looking decent in pics. I hope you enjoyed a lot there in the Bing party and your new friend Neil Patel is really good marketer like you. Thanks for sharing such nice post.
http://www.ianfernando.com Ian

@Nikon lol not really…. I have some amazon stuff but not to where chris has it
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Plus i wasnt there to get you to bust a freestyle so i really dont blame you for not having fun, i miss you too.
http://www.hasoffers.com Peter Hamilton

Handsome fellas… thanks for the pic, and it was great to get to know you better

We’ll see you around.
http://www.makemoneyontheinternet.com Chris Guthrie

Hey Ian, it was a ton of fun hanging out with you. lol, I do recall you talking about trying to get me to share my Amazon secrets but I think I didn’t have enough to drink that night lol (nah there really isn’t that much of a secret). We’ll talk more again soon I’m sure.

Peace out!
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See you at ASE if you’ll be there?
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Hope you had a great knowledge you can impart with us here during that event. It’s nice to see guys like you sharing some good ideas on the same area of expertise.
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A number of people weren’t impressed by it. I guess it was just a good excuse to have a drink.
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Judging by the photo and what you are saying Ian, the event definitely looks weak, that ain’t cool

Till then,

Jean
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A number of people werenâ??t impressed by it. I guess it was just a good excuse to have a drink.
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I heard it was not the greatest of events. That said its wot u make of it.
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That’s like saying you dropped out of school and then blaming school for teaching you nothing.
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Hey Ian,

From looking at the photos I would have to agree with you,

It looks a bit too corporate for my liking, I am more interested in the casual meet ups!
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I can see that you are putting a lot of time and effort into your blog and detailed articles! )
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great you met neil patel , i follow his blog and a regular reader