My entire office headed off to Webmaster World's PubCon conference in Vegas last week. The conference was excellent and easily worth the six bills per person required for registration. Heck it was even worth the $60 per night rooms, the 8/10ths of a mile walk to and back from the convention center each day, and having to put up with all the glitz and glamor of a typical Las Vegas evening!

In short, PubCon was worth the price all the way around.

Analyzing the Experiences

Our five-member team was able to attend just about every session with some overlap. Sure there were sessions that we just didn't get into and one entire morning that we skipped altogether, but aside from that, between all five us us, we got some pretty solid coverage of the event. Each member of our team was tasked with taking notes and now that we have returned, will be posting blogs of their experience along with session recaps over at our company blog E-Marketing Performance. Look for those in the coming days. I have posted notes from my sessions here at Search Engine Guide (scroll to the bottom for links.)

But what we are also tasked with, as a group, is to sift through the information in our collective heads and turn that into applicable strategies that will produce tangible benefits for our clients. We have already had our first of several such sessions last Friday in a three-hour marathon meeting. And that only covered the sessions attended by one of our team. Only four more of these sessions to go.

Something New, Something Old and Things Newly Realized

One thing we walked away with from PubCon is confirmation of existing research, ideas and strategies. There is nothing more satisfying when months of research, planning and implementation of thoughts and ideas is not only confirmed by results, but also gets confirmed verbally by other experts in the field. SEO isn't an exact science and sometimes what we think works is a result of something else entirely. Its great to go to these conferences and get third party confirmations on what we already believe to be true.

The other important thing that we found out is that often times the panel of experts are just as clueless as we are. This isn't a derogatory remark by any means, just one that simply takes note of all of our human limitations. We readily recognize that we don't know everything there is to know about SEO and conferences such as this often brings to light the fact that neither does anybody else.

We also walked away knowing that in some areas our strategies are considerably more advanced than most. This is a good feeling and one that allows us to pat ourselves on the back a bit, but only briefly. We know enough to understand that sitting back while ahead only allows others to bypass. As I said above, we were also shown our limitations, areas where we must improve in order to stay competitive and relevant.

Gord Hotchkiss wrote about his experience at PubCon and the passion that he found among the search giants there. And he's exactly right. PubCon re-ignited our passion for search as a team. Passion is not something we ever lacked, but we came back with a passion for new ideas, new strategies, new goals and ultimately, a new desire to take what we know and make it work like never before.

It was important for us not to just attend sessions that interested us, but to also attend sessions that, on the surface, may have appeared completely irrelevant for our needs. More times than not we found the "irrelevant" sessions more valuable than the relevant ones. Our goal was not just to walk away with more information about something we already know but to garner new information as well. And that we did, and its that new information that really excites us!

In all, PubCon was a fantastically educational experience, one that we'll be using to tweak, adjust, compare and advance our strategies for many months to come.

Sessions Notes:

Viral and Word of Mouth Marketing Management
Tools of the Trade – Turnkey Solutions
Press & Public Relations Campaigns
In-House Optimization Forum
Affiliate Strategies and Content Strategies