The Conference

Alea casino is actually a really good venue – it’s easy to find if you’re driving and there’s a huge car park next door with free parking for (up to 50) attendees. This year the speaker slots were only 45 minutes with a 15-minute break in between – plenty of time to grab a cup of tea, go to the loo or find someone you really wanted to have a chat with. Last time felt rushed in between talks so this was a definite improvement and made the day a lot more comfortable for attendees. Likewise, lunch was really well-organised this year and I think everyone felt looked-after.

The Speakers

The September Think Vis was always going to be hard to live up to as far as big-name speakers went, but as always what I really liked about the conference were the afternoon slots when you get to see people who haven’t spoken before. Although Think Visibility is an SEO conference, it’s great that these smaller slots can be given to a wider range of subjects than ‘pure’ SEO. Doing SEO day in and day out, I find these more interesting and like to hear about things outside of my own skillset.

My favourite talk of the day was by Kenny Goodman, on buying, selling and ‘flipping’ domains. Although I own quite a lot of domains, building them up to sell them is something I knew nothing about so it really taught me a lot. He also covered the domain-buying process (e.g. if you’re buying an established domain and not just registering a new one) so it’s no longer a complete mystery! I liked how Kenny included practical tips as well, like a list of places you can find domain auctions, and the best sites to use to make a quick sale or get the most money for your domain.

My other highlight of the day was watching past and future colleague Paul Carpenter give his first ever conference talk on how to use online news to get links and traffic. I know how spine-chillingly terrifying it is to give your first talk but Paul looked like he’d done it before and gave a really good presentation. Interestingly, it seems like any old crap can get into Google News. Not to abuse sites that sell really boring products, but if you can make news relate to your carpet-selling business, your carpet site can get into Google news. Good for you, but imo bad for people actually looking for real news!

As always it was really good to catch up with everyone – I only wish I’d been able to see more of the afternoon presentations but with three at once you have to choose! I noted that the audience of talks I went to was never above 25 – I’m not sure how many tickets were sold but I wonder which talks drew the big crowds?

For more pictures of the day please see sk8geek’s Flickr set. There was another photographer there so when those pictures are online I’ll add some more

Update: Links to other reviews!

From the other side of the hangover – Paul Carpenter

My review of Think Visibility – Patrick Moogan <--Really would have liked to see Patrick talk!

Top 7 Things I Learnt at Think Visibility - Dan Harrison

Five reasons why Think Visibility rocked – Carla Marshall

Slides designed by the fantastical Floating Frog.

First I want to say hello to everyone I met this weekend – speakers Yoast, Judith Lewis, Fiona Thomson and Rob Manuel – all of whom I’d never met before but are completely awesome/nice and made me feel really welcome as a new speaker.

Also all the attendees I chatted to – I’m missing loads of names and I know I missed a few people at the conference but Dan, Carla, Anthony, Ben, Scott – great to meet you all for the first time. Steven, James, Joanna great to meet you for a second time! Karyn, Elaine & Dave, Al, Simon, Gaj – always a pleasure to see you And of course Dom who made the whole thing possible.

At the last Think Visibility the best thing about the conference for me wasn’t just the talks, but the time given over to chatting before and afterwards. This time as a speaker I got to hang out with all the other speakers, which made the whole experience really different in a good way. Some speakers were obviously conference veterans, and some were first-time speakers just like me.

Without exception though everyone was encouraging and helpful and supportive so I’d like to say thanks to everyone who made me feel a bit more confident about getting up in front of a room full of people

My talk was on ‘How to Win at the Content Network” – so it was aimed at Adwords advertisers who maybe haven’t used the content network before or who wanted a few tips on how to get the most out of it. I was aware that most speakers talk about SEO, or about blogging, and with most of the attendees being quite experienced anyway I wanted to pick a topic that SEO folk or website owners generally don’t know a lot about.

I was pretty nervous all day waiting for my time to talk – being up on a stage was pretty cool and I think I got through it okay! My slides looked good and I got a few nice comments about my talk being useful and having things in it that people could go away and implement themselves

There were a few things I’d do differently:

- Have a microphone. It was a really big room and I know I talk quietly – I tried to talk loud but it’s hard to make sure you talk loud when you’re trying to remember what to say Plus it’s hard on the voice – if I ever present again I’m going to ask for a microphone.

- Have clearer notes. I hand-wrote loads of notes for my talk in a little notebook. By the time I’d started talking though they just went out the window and I know I missed a couple of things out I’d like to have included. I felt like I should keep talking instead of stopping to find where I was in my notes, but I think I wouldn’t be afraid to refer to notes a lot more next time.

- Have a different laptop setup. This is related to the last point – my laptop was hooked up to the big screen, so my presentation slides showed on the big screen behind me. Unfortunately this meant my laptop screen was BLANK so I didn’t know what was coming next. Coupled with a lack of notes I had to turn round a bit to see what was on the screen. Yoast said that KeyNote on Macs lets you see the slide you’re on, your next slide and your notes, so maybe I should use a Mac from now on!

Anyway, I’m really really pleased I did it – I’ve said before it’s way outside my comfort zone but now I know it’s not so bad, and if I ever present again I know how I’d do it better.

Thanks to everyone who came to see my talk – I hope you found it useful and liked the pictures of cats.

I’m about to post my slides up on here….so check back soon!

Nursing a hangover and with a MacMuffin breakfast sitting heavily in my stomach I made it to Think Vis itself – it was great to see everyone from Northern Bloggers again and finally meet Simon and Steven who I’ve known on Twitter for ages!

I’m not going to go into detail – lots of others have done fantastic write-ups, but I think my favourite talk was Peter Cooper who got all motivational and made me want to go out and do stuff!. All in all it was a great day, and I’ve left out loads of names so if I’ve met you there and haven’t mentioned it just drop me a comment with your site/twitter and I’ll add you in!