Posted on August 24th, 2008

[Editor’s note: This post is our continued dissemination of content from last week’s  SearchEngineStrategies San Jose search marketing conference, where AIMCLEAR had 3 correspondents providing our readers notes and articles. The following is from our friend and blogger-associate, Charlene Jaszewski (BTW, don’t piss Char off):]


So I had my first belligerent search heckler experience
in the Death of .mobi session last week @ SES (props to Rebecca Lieb for putting him DOWN!). This was followed by an impulse that I might need a two-drink minimum in the session immediately following (thanks to funnyman Search Engine Strategies Master of Ceremonies Kevin Ryan, for soothing my tattered nerves!). But I digress…Here’s how to behave like a jackass, at any search marketing conference, in 8 stupid-simple steps:

  1. Arrive late to a session and make lots of noise. Trip over people, knock over speakers, etc.
  2. Plug in your computer so the cords cross the aisle, stretched out 3 inches above the ground, where people walk.
  3. Don’t turn your cell phone off after you arrive. Leave the ringer on high playing “so you wanna be a rock star.” In fact, listen to your voice mails at the conference with the volume turned WAY up so people even three rows ahead on the other side of the aisle can hear the squeaks of pops of the minions calling you. Yes you Mr. Pinkish shirt man with the white 3G iPhone.
  4. Start asking questions while the presentations are still going on. Yell into the microphone. Act annoyed and make little snarky comments under your breath if they won’t take them until the end.
  5. If the moderator does happen to be polite and take your question, be sure to challenge the speaker’s knowledge of their spoken topic. Try to prove you know more. Act like the speaker must have been randomly picked to be up there anyway… and made up the subject matter at the last minute.
  6. Accuse the speaker of having an agenda for a certain company. They like that, especially when they don’t.
  7. Be sure to repeatedly flaunt how important you are by how many domains you own, your site’s PageRank and last year’s revenue. We all judge by that. You + hundreds of domains = ROWR!
  8. When chastised for being rude, defend yourself by saying “I paid to be in this conference.” Expect instant forgiveness.

Chime in the comments thread if you have any anecdotes regarding search conference jackasses. We’ve all been there. 🙂

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  • Marc Grabanski

    9. Become a speaker to stroke your ego or product, while inundating your speech topic with buzz words to get accepted.
    10. Instead of networking with your peers like you should, follow industry leaders around asking them lots of questions to feel, “important”.

  • Marty Weintraub

    11. Make your focus hitting on the booty of cute conference attendees.
    12. Hand out 768 business cards the first day
    13. Get stinky drunk and get kicked out of a bar after-hours with contusions

  • Kimota

    14. Tweeting every obvious moment without actually saying anything. “So and so on stage now. Really interesting” Yeah, all of us who aren’t there really feel clued in. Stop rubbing our faces in it… **sniff**

  • Charlene Jaszewski

    Kimota: too true! Sadly I was guilty of this a few times. But honestly – Twitter isnt’ built for conference coverage!

  • Jaan kanellis

    Wow if one guy did all 8 of these things I would laughing very hard at him and he would know he is jackass without this post.

  • jimhedger

    Jaan… You had to see the “Champion” to get where Charlene is coming from in a few of her points. This guy was too much. Seriously…. It’s hard to believe someone would act like that. If he accomplished one thing at SES SJ, it was to become an industry legend. (He is well on his way to becoming a fable too).

    The champ hit six of the eight points Char makes. Mr. Pink-shirt man, I didn’t meet though I might be the jerk she refers to who had to take a phone call (on silent vibe ring) and leave the room during the first session.

  • Search Engine Optimization Journal

    Pretty funny stuff… I can only imagine what the heckler was like – annoying!

  • Marty Weintraub

    @jimhedger: Thank goodness we have a serious journalist to keep track of all of this! It’s nice to see you Jim and always good to meet you in these threads.

  • 84t.mobi

    The guy blogged about it on his site seochampion.com. Not defending bad behaviour, but that also applies to the presenters – some of what they said was not sound advice according to mobienthusiast.mobi – so if they picked a provocative title maybe they should expect a response.

  • gerry

    Perhaps most annoying would be those that call themselves experts on SEO and SEM but offer such advice as “do nothing” in regards to a mobile site.

    Can any explain, in detail, why all of a sudden a device like the iPhone is the death of dot mobi? I ask this because as these comments are rehashed from even before the iPhone release.

    And as the site 84T.mobi clearly explains and SHOWS, the viewing of a full page PC site is hardly optimal on the iphone for the viewer’s experience. Seems like that is the one equation missing all these discussions and meet ups. If folks in attendance would stop and view themselves as consumers and approach these from that standpoint then I think everyone would be singing a different tune.

    Not to mention that their whole advice is based on a product that occupies less than a 9% market share of the smart phone market.

    Sure, that’s what I want to do…ignore the other 91% of the market.

    Naturally you can assume that I am involved with .mobi from my points. Yet you would be missing the point which is…do nothing and their other options are not viable from a business and marketing standpoint.

    Plus, besides being a domainer and successful business person, I am above all a consumer and their advice, if followed, have just spoiled the entire mobile-sphere and my experience of using a mobile device to connect to the internet.

    While we can chastise the heckler as being unprofessional (in all seriousness well deserving rebuttal) it is grossly unprofessional to not explore all options of the now and future mobile web. Then again, in another column, Ms. Krum related that the word “mobile web” is misused and does not actually exist.

    Yup, I want to put all my trust and confidence in someone leading me in the path of ignoring 91% of the market.

    If you are not convinced that there are viable options, then please check out 84T.mobi and why.mobi. Oh, they work equally well and flawlessly on the phone and PC.

  • Charlene Jaszewski

    84t.mobi: thanks for link! I’ll have to check it. Ther’es nothing wrong with challenging info, but he was quite adversarial (and pompous) about it.

  • Johny.mobi

    I found this very true and this effort seemed very inspiring for the future of the mobile web NOT!!!! 😀

    Please get your facts straight. If you think that the iphone killed.mobi, then go to http://Zem.mobi on your iphone. Do you own an iPhone Rebecca?

    And if you think MizPEE.com is a good moble site, then try http://johny.mobi and you tell me which site is more informative and loads quicker and updated every day and only at its beging stages.

    I always remeber this saying from my 8th grade teacher 19 years ago and she was a catholic nun. This is directed at people that are afraid of .mobi becoming huge eventualy (which it is) .mobi sites are only poping up more and more every day now. ANyway here is that saying to who ever thinks .mobi is dead and over.

    “Confusious says: HE WHO KNOWS WHAT HE DOES NOT KNOW IS STUPID!” I never understood that when I was younger, but more and more Every year, I am starting to understand what it acutaly means!”

    PS if .mobi is dead, then why did http://autotrader.mobi just spring up? And many more sites that you dont know about from many major companies have been springing up.

    Last question….Why are you so affraid of .mobi Rebbeca? Everyone is waiting your anwer, obviosuly there is some kind of fear IMHO.

    Johny

  • Gary

    Having read the SEOChampions Blog I can see why the guy was frustrated, this woman (Lieb?) is making the fatal mistake that all the mobile internet is (to her at least) is finding a way to view the internet (as is! – i.e. status quo 2008) on a small screen device. – enter iphone… class dismisses.

    What she fails to grasp is the enormity of the mobilenet (circa 2010 – 2015) and the inevitability that there will soon (by soon I mean 3 to 5 years) be more web access ‘visits’ made via these small screen devices than desk top PC’s.

    Personally, I think there is a vacuum to be filled where those with existing websites need to fill the ‘mobile space’ and that needs to be done on a case by case basis – some companies may just require a mobile front page with contact details… some companies will have sites offering ecommerce on their most popular or latest products, some sites will wish to have full blown ecommerce sites, others will simply have a mobile access site – take ringtones & wallpapers for example – why load these via a PC when you can load straight to the device?
    Obviously the same goes for music – it won’t be long before PC’s don’t see as much action loading MP3’s as mobile devices will…
    Then there are companies that have services which have an ‘on the move’ element to them… bus companies, train companies, airlines, ferrys, car hire, weather, gigs, events, churches & mosques even… the mobile sites will evolve to become independent offerings – that is the BIG USP that these dies in the wool SEO people don’t ‘get’ (yet)
    Sooner or later they will begin to realise that mobile sites are not best utilised when simply trying to shink down the desk-top version for a small screen… the mobilenet is a huge opportunity for marketing, promotion, services & of course evolution of the internet / mobilenet.

    Take a look at the hundreds of pages of resources at mtld.mobi / dev.mobi etc… and of course for a brief but compelling overview take a look at WHY.mobi

    It is my professional opinion that these self-proclaimed experts are really misleading their clients and their conference guests by completely overlooking the opportunities that the mobile net & dot.mobi have to offer and are instead treating it as a ‘problem’ to be resolved… It’s true of all things I suppose; where some see trouble, others see opportunity!

  • Binaryman

    One point that Mrs. Lieb forgets also and a point that is not thought of very often is that there are many companies and businesses out there that do not have a .COM site as it’s already taken by someone else. Yes there can only be one .com site of any type or kind obviously. Everyday new businesses come into being and many of them find that when they want to start a website the .com is not available as it is already in operation by a company in a similar line of business. So they can turn to .net (if available) or .info( if available) or maybe a country tld
    None of these other options if available has as much allure as a .com site. But now there’s .Mobi and there’s still a lot of available options there (more so then with .com) and .Mobi whilst primarily a site for access by mobile devices can be viewed equally well from a home based PC
    Get my point?

  • Marty Weintraub

    @Binaryman: Thanks for making your point. .com will, and always will be, lakefront property (They’re not making any more of it). There is a plethora of available extensions out there (.info, .biz, .ca, .TONS of options).

    I respect your opinion but, to my mind, I would never advise a client to choose a .mobi because the .com is not available. For one thing, do you think MyCompany.com, with a service mark on the name, would not think it to be a violation if a MyCompany.mobi showed up?

    Also, the branding implications are serious.