My speaking schedule for early 2008

SES London was really fun last year, but in 2008 I’m mostly staying closer to home. If you’re attending SES London this week, please say hello to Adam Lasnik and Luisella Mazza. It also looks like Maile Ohye, Shuman Ghosemajumder, and several other Googlers will be speaking as well.

Here’s the places I plan on speaking in the first half of 2008:

February 26-28, 2008: Next week I will be doing a couple sessions for SMX West, including a Linking Q&A panel. What sounds even more fun is the trivia-quiz “Search Bowl” that I’m doing with fellow Googler Paul Haahr. It sounds like a fun, casual event to answer search trivia questions. Other search engines will field teams, plus an SEO team will play as well.

April 18-21, 2008: I’m speaking at the Domain Roundtable conference in San Francisco. I couldn’t pass up a chance to attend a conference about domain names when it’s so close to home. ๐Ÿ™‚

April 22-25, 2008: I’ll speak or be on a panel in the Web 2.0 Expo, also in San Francisco. Maybe I’ll just stay in San Francisco that week and work from Google’s San Francisco’s office.

June 3-4, 2008: This is more tentative, but I’m hoping to make it to SMX Advanced in Seattle. Considering that until last year I’d never visited Seattle, I’ve enjoyed every time that I’ve gotten a chance to visit the city.

You’ll note that most of these conferences are nearby. The wonderful thing about ramping up new conference speakers in webspam is that if I want to ramp down on travel, newer speakers can more than handle the task. I’m really proud of the speakers that we send from Google.

47 Responses to My speaking schedule for early 2008 (Leave a comment)

  1. Matt, you have to come to SMX Advanced again. PLEASE!

    That is such an awesome show that even if I can’t get my new company to sponsor me, I am going myself anyway. Highly recommended if you are more seasoned. ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. Matt,

    I won’t be at SMX West next week (just started at Tribune on the 14th of Feb) but would like to get in contact with you to do some Enterprise Level SEO Myth Busting. New company . . . new teams, you know how it is.

    Sorry I’m gonna miss you at SMX West.

    Brent D. Payne
    SEO Manager
    Tribune Interactive

  3. Orlando Florida is a great place to visit, Matt. Just sayin.

  4. Matt, is there any publicly-available public-speaking program or course that you would reccommend, or that Google uses to train its speakers? Or is it just natural… “organic” talent?

  5. Matt, It really good that you can visit lots of places ๐Ÿ™‚

  6. True, true. I did enjoy Pubcon Orlando back in 2003. ๐Ÿ™‚

    By the way, if you want to see a dizzying number of possible tech conferences, check out the conferences that Robert Scoble is watching on Upcoming:
    http://upcoming.yahoo.com/user/138148/

    You could just go from one conference to the next and never make it home! ๐Ÿ™‚

  7. Heya – I’ll be speaking at the domain roundtable conference too! See you there!

    (And I’ll see you next week too. Hey, and you totally have to come out to Seattle so we can can go rollerblading again.)

  8. As the year is 2008 how about ALL conferences being posted to YouTube for the World to see and hear?

  9. I’d like that, Vanessa.

    Dave (original), fine by me as far as I’m concerned.

  10. Unfortunately, many of those people lack personality.

    This may sound rude – but the public DOES react to personality and aura.

    Look at how SearchEnginesWEB has captured the imagination of Geeks around the world ๐Ÿ˜ฎ

    Think of how one dimensional the current speaking engagements are. Someone gives a safe monologue for an hour – then there is a few minutes for a few quick questions – that either get quick answers or are totally misunderstood.

    What is needed are spontaneous debates and confrontations WITHOUT worrying about being rude or insulting.

    A role up your sleeves type of debate – where SOLUTIONS are discovered.

    Can you imagine what a debate with SearchEnginesWEB must be like.

    You nice, polite Googlers would faint…….yes, faint from the ….!

  11. Can you imagine what a debate with SearchEnginesWEB must be like.

    Like pulling teeth is my guess ๐Ÿ™‚

    Matt, are you saying Google will post a video to YouTube?

  12. I am hoping you will be at Wordcamp this summer. That was wayyyy fun last year!
    dk

  13. Hi Matt.

    When you come to Madrid? People forget Spain ๐Ÿ™

  14. Hey Matt. I’ve been in the business for several years now, but have yet to attend a conference. Which of these conferences (or any else for that matter) would you suggest for someone who has never been?

  15. I was wondering exactly the same thing as Marc, is there a short list of events that shouldn’t be missed?

    I have been advised to visit the London conference, but its all money, money, money, plus accommodation.

    Nick

  16. Hi Matt,

    I hope you make it out to Seattle.

    Erik

  17. Dave (original), there’s often only me from Google in a room. What I’m saying is that I personally don’t mind if people record me doing a panel or keynote and post that to YouTube.

    Marc, I’ll let other commenters take a stab at that first. If you’re brand-new to the field, SES is a fine place to start. If you’re got a special interest (local/mobile/social media) there’s often an SMX that should match your interests. And if you’re pretty advanced, the Pubcon crowd should be to your liking. Lots of the conferences have a cheaper expo-pass version that would let you get the flavor of the conference (and possibly meet lots of folks) without putting out a ton of cash. Also bear in mind that the conference coverage gets better and more complete every year, so checking out various bloggers’ write-ups of the conference sessions can also get you part of the value if you can’t afford to attend, and you can see which conferences have the most sessions that appeal to you personally.

  18. My colleagues and I are attending the SES 2008 London this year, Sorry to hear that your not attending Matt, we didn’t get a chance to go last year.

    I’ll keep an eye out for your colleagues at SES.

    Our company is considering heading over to the states for the round table, depending on our workload!

  19. SEW

    “Unfortunately, many of those people lack personality.”

    Adam Lasnik lack personality? you must be kidding.

    What do you know about “personality”, SEW ๐Ÿ˜‰

  20. Matt, what about some more videos on SEO best practice (instead of having to catch you at a conference)?

  21. Can you imagine what a debate with SearchEnginesWEB must be like.

    I’m going to go with “a debate with SearchEnginesWEB would be like trying to shave the back hair of a gorilla with a severe toothache.” Anyone else want to play?

  22. Matt Adams, yet another thing that I’d like to do, but my to-do list is infinitely long write now.

  23. any chance you ever come to southern California? Irvine?

  24. Matt, what I was HINTING at was; for Google to video ALL conferences where they have a representative talking. That way it reaches Millions rather than a select local hundreds.

  25. Matt, any possibility you would be seen/heard at an event in India this year?

  26. I have a question, and I know of at least one person of note who has a big issue with this as well (I’m hoping that when I bring it up, he’ll chime in).

    Matt, at the Domain Roundtable conference, it doesn’t say anything about the growing issue with parked pages and major registrars (Register.com and Network Solutions come immediately to mind) who insist on putting up low-grade made-for-PPC parked pages up as the default, preying on both the domain owners who don’t point their domain to a different DNS server right away and also those domain owners who may not get their renewal notice due to a switch in email address, have it expire, and then end up seeing the same type of page.

    Are there going to be discussions about this issue, the solutions to it (the simplest of which is likely to create an ICANN rule stating that registrars can’t do this anymore) and the SEO impact of it, since a lot of these expired domain names with parked pages still often show up on SERPs.

    A low-grade example follows:

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Westcoast+Cylinders

    The Royal Cylinders domain has expired and is pending renewal, yet we see them in Google SERPs. Who profits off of this? Large domain registrars who overcharge for low-grade service and end up making even more money off the backs of the uninformed than they need to. This has long been a complaint of mine personally, but as of late it seems to be getting progressively worse.

    Is this something that is discussed, and is there any possibility in the future that big G (since you guys are also an approved ICANN registrar) can use some WHOIS efforts to maybe do a daily or at least a weekly check for the common DNS servers that large registrars use (e.g. NS1.pendingrenewaldeletion.com, DNS01.gpn.register.com) on expired domains and thus remove them from SERPs on a temporary basis until the domain is renewed or expires?

  27. Hi Matt,

    I’m at SES London 2008 and met ou with Adam Lasnik and he graciously answered a few questions betwen sessions (what a great guy!).

    Amongst many of the 8 questions (that I said would only be 2…ooops) was the handling of multiple 301’s being redirected in a short time frame and that it may throw up flags.

    I have a few clients looking at doing this. (they bought up a ton a few years back thinking they would do something with them or just block the competition from brand scraping visitors).

    I was wondering if you could shed some light on this?

    GaryTheScubaGuy

  28. GaryTheScubaGuy, not sure of the technical aspect from Google’s perspective, but I have added about 50 301 in one day and many more in a short time frame after that. Google has handled them fine without any negative impact. Going on nearly 12 months now.

    It shouldn’t matter so long as it’s NOT a SE spam attempt.

  29. It must be really great for you to visit so many places:) Sounds like an exciting trip, unfortunately I can’t visit these events and I totally support the idea for posting videos from the conferences on YouTube.

  30. ezra re public speaking

    There are tips you can learn but practice and experience are the only way to get comfortable. there are organizations like toastmasters that allow you to work on your communication skills.

    http://www.toastmasters.org/

    I know someone who does this in the UK – the other thing would be to get tips from experienced public speaker – I got some on speaking at a formal political conference and the way he did his speeches including whey you should start your peroration when the red light comes on.

    One thing I would advise is videoing/recording your self to see if there are any distracting physical/vocal ticks you have โ€“ on the vocal side there are a few SEO podcasters that could do with this โ€œno names no pack drillโ€

    You know I relay should do a blog post about this ๐Ÿ™‚

  31. Rajesh Kumar.
    Is there any Event like Pub Con or SMX or SES? If not may be SEO’s and SEM’s Can Organize something. Hey If so I would be a part of it. I bet it would be great. And I imagine a lot of speakers including Matt Cutts would like to visit India.

  32. Matt, nice to hear you doen’t spend much time at G HQ. ๐Ÿ™‚
    How about to hear the official version of what is white and what is black nowadays in linking? Every time I hear natural linking for commerce websites, I keep on laughing. What exactly is allowed is not listed. So it’s no way to treat those, who wan’t to be white. But before that – what once used to be white for Google is at least grey for the moment.
    Without links you’re nobody. But to have them these days is a quite risky thing as well. So what can be done and what should be avoided?

  33. Dave (original)
    > Matt, what I was HINTING at was; for Google to video ALL conferences where
    > they have a representative talking. That way it reaches Millions rather than a
    > select local hundreds.

    Dave, keep in mind that typically the conferences we Googlers speak at have very strict rules against audio/videotaping, so even when Matt and others of us may be cool with going on tape in various situations, well, we aren’t the ones who can grant full permission.

    Your point, though, is still quite a good one. I know our whole team continues to think of ways that we can reach more site owners around the world, not just those who choose to go to conferences. In the last year or two, we’ve gone from one help forum to over a dozen, added new official webmaster blogs, translated our Help Center into more than 20 languages, but… people are craving more, and particularly clamoring for video. We know! ๐Ÿ™‚ We’re passionate about getting the word out, and we have some neat stuff up our sleeves. Particularly when trying to be evenhanded about not-just-English, though, it’s quite a daunting task!

  34. Hi Matt,

    I was wondering if you will be writing soon about your take on the newest activity being promoted by a group of blog and website marketers. The specific new thing they are promoting is a extension of the do-follow blogs. Here is the twist. They are promoting a do-follow / no-follow plugin. This will allow them to trade blog comments with each other and in there words link build, but put No-Follow tags on any of their competitors who choose to comment on there blog posts.

  35. Hey Matt,

    Most all of SEO is predominately American. I could back that last sentence by fact, but I feel I don’t need to. I was wondering, will we ever see you at an SES Toronto, like the one this June? Also, SEO conferences I have looked into have a rule that you have to be 18 to enter, and be enlightened. I am 17 and have been in SEO since I was 15 years old. I may not “Look” like a professional typically looks, but I am. Is there any way I could get around this 18+ rule? If only age wasn’t a deciding factor in todays society, people like me wouldn’t be segregated as we are.

  36. Funnily enough, I’m watching Lee Odden’s interview with Adam Lasnik on my other monitor Right Now. Creepy eh?

    Your schedule looks nuts dude, at least you got the month of May to stop and smell the flowers. And drink some beer.

  37. Hello,

    Since you are speaking at domaintools, here’s something to think about.

    I am curious how DomainTools can provide so much information about phishing on their site, yet actually sell domains that contain US registered trademarks that could very well be used for phishing.

    Of course anyone could go purchase a ‘misspelled’ domain anywhere and use if for either legitimate or illegitimate purposes, but it seems to me like they are advertising and educating ways to phish on their web site.

    Have a great day.

    Waitman Gobble
    Los Altos, CA.

  38. Matt, I going to the Domain Rountable convention and hope to meet you…….it would be interesting if domain trademarking would be part of the discussion.

  39. Hi Matt, i was missing you at the ses 2008. do you intend to visit it 2009? Greetings Knut

  40. Thanks Adam Lasnik, much appreciated.

  41. What about South America? Buenos Aires is going to be the next place to the new Googleยดs office…

  42. What happened to the East Coast? I’m having a baby (any day now) and won’t be able to go out west for a while!

  43. Matt – no plans to make a trip down-under for us Aussie Googlers? ๐Ÿ˜‰

    Oh well – I guess Dave (original)’s idea is a close 2nd then.

  44. I believe all the “What about” my country should be, what about the rest of the Planet.

    In fact, why doesn’t Google broadast on a regular basis via Video to the World. There is no real need to wait for these SEO conferences.

  45. Orlando Florida is a great place to visit, Matt. Just sayin.

  46. Hey Matt,

    I know you get a lot of mail and a lot of, “come visit me” posts.

    Nobody has offered you BC smoke yet! ๐Ÿ˜€ he he!

    Come up to Vancouver after Seattle. Maybe a little fishing around the Gulf Islands with a few ladies!

    Think about it buddy!

  47. Matt

    Any chance you will be coming down to South Africa?

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