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.
