Archive for June, 2008

Scottish accent and all.

The good folks at Mashable, are about to Kick off their U.S. Summer Tour in the great city of Seattle.  I have had the pleasure of hanging our with Pete Cashmore before and I can tell you it is always a good time.  When I first heard about this event from my favorite person Tamar, I was pretty stoked, because these kind of things are much more common to the Valley.  

So I got pinged by Adam from Mashable about some free tickets to the event.  I think this is an important enough event that I want to share these tickets with you.   I am limited to 50 tickets and when they are out they are out.   I will give the code to anyone who adds me on twitter and pings me for the code.  You can follow me at jandrick

You can read more about the event at upcoming.

All about startups

This event is all about startups.   If you are a part of a Seattle or PNW startup and want to get some attention you can submit a startup, just drop Mashable an email at news@mashable.com and include “SummerMash” in the subject line. Be sure to note the name, a brief description, and of course the SummerMash city in which you’re located.

Join me and my team from Live Search we will be there at Showbox SODO.  The good folks from Mashable will have food and drink, and DJ El Toro mixing things up.

So the Ariel and Microspotting team is having a little linkfest in an effort to spread their newly printed t-shirts.   At first I thought “why would I want another ‘nerd’ shirt?”  but I followed the link and  true to form Ariel and team came up with something unique that caught my attention.

The post on Microspotting asks for the following:

Here’s how to get your own “I am the empire” or “my job gives me special feelings” shirt:

• Write a post on your blog about Microspotting
• Leave a comment here with a link to your blog post
• Agree to post a photo of you wearing the shirt after you get it

So as someone who works with SEO’s on a regular basis my link bait alarm went off.  Not only does Ariel have a site that focuses on some of the most outstanding Microsofties; a unique content proposition. Now she is creatively offering tees in exchange for an article and a link.  Kudos Ariel!    When I look at alexa to see where Microspotting sits, it isn’t yet on the radar.   There are lots of popular blogs at Microsoft.  Good chance this will really help those traffic numbers and pass a bunch of link juice your way.

Ok, to be fair I might be overdoing it, but I just want a free t-shirt. 

Microspotting | Microspotting tshirts (want one?)

Again,  Marketplace provides a very interesting piece that you should listen too.   I have heard that Petrobras was an innovative company but  comparing them to the space program for the innovations in deep sea drilling is fascinating.   Please listen to this…  Business unusual.

Marketplace: The Petrobras way

Some quick thoughts on BarCamp this weekend.

1.  Much praise is deserved to the organizers. 

Generally I felt like Tara Brown and the other organizers pulled together a great event.  As a second time BarCamper I was really impressed.  I can’t wait till the next one. 

2. Generally good sessions

Outside of one session, I learned a lot.  The speakers were knowledgeable enough to speak or organize discussions on the quick.  I spoke in a session with Chris Wilson from IE and Gilbert (sorry G I don’t want to butcher your last name and your card is at my house.)  I felt bad as I think I monopolized the discussion unintentionally.   I pulled some slides together on 5 things related to standards that from a search optimization perspective people are doing wrong.  

I was hustling through them as I only wanted to talk for 5 of our 30 minutes.  I ended up begging a bunch of questions.   I think I corrected misperceptions in the Q & A.   Needless to say I was sad that I took up so much time. Even though the feedback was good.

3. What the heck Adobe? 

Adobe was kind enough to let us use there facilities on Sat. and Sun. but there was jackhammering going on underneath the building.   Seriously, construction on a Saturday?  I had to step outside a couple of times because I felt like I was shaking.   Thanks again for the use of the space, but can you let us know in advance about the jackhammering, that will let us know how much beer must purchased to get them to stop.

4.  Party at the Red Door

Live Search Sponsored the party at the Red Door. It was lots of fun and I enjoyed the conversations.  Thanks to all the people who came and took a sticker. Thanks Aya Zook for coming out and helping me hand out drink tickets.

5.  Where is my barCampSeattle sticker?

My only regret, no barCampSeattle sticker. The t-shirt was great, but my laptop lacks the vinyl proof that I attended.  ;-) 

oh and one last thing….

Not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but a conference designed to replicate the hallway conversations at other conferences still has its best conversations in the hallway.

I am hanging out at BarCampSeattle today.   As I have previously mentioned I really believe in the openCamp format.   There are industry folks here and disruptive thinkers.   I think this is going to be a good day.  I signed up to speak at 2:00.  I will be joining a group of industry folks to talk about standards development, Search, SEO.   So I will add more details in as the day goes on.  

The first workshop I am at is building a search engine with the google toolkit. 

The session I am doing later…..

I am also going to propose a side discussion.