I was fortunate to be invited twice to speak at the International Search Summit in London. This conference, organized by Webcertain, the company of Andy Atkins Kruger, is a small conference, but one which is very nice, partly because its not that big. You really get good information from different international speakers and you can really learn something there. At the last one in London I (with some others) was shortly asked about the conference. An opinion I was happy to give, you can find it below in the video. This is one conference I will come back if they ask me. And then off course I hope to see you there .

Today at the Emerce Travel Event 2010 I spoke about the future of search (in Dutch). I talked about Universal Search, how search engines are trying to grab the user intent and how you should handle that. It went really well and I was surprised about how many people showed up. It was standing room only and people were actually standing outside of the room listening to what I had to say, that was kinda cool .

Here’s my presentation on Slideshare:

Yesterday I made a very quick trip to London, I flew in on Wednesday afternoon, had a quick drink with my good friend and State of Search Nichola Stott and then went on to a Jazz club where I was invited by the organizers Andy Atkins Kruger and Gemma Birch from Webcertain. I had a great time there. A big compliment for the both of them.

The next day it was time for the conference, the International Search Summit. It was (again) a really, really good conference. Very well organized and a line up of impressing speakers who, something many organizers forget, were all complementary to one another, making the day very informative.

In the afternoon it was my turn to talk about Mobile Search in Europe. It’s not my main topic I usually discuss, but a topic I do work on quite a bit behind the scenes. Mobile, and mobile search in special, are a very much growing. If you don’t do it, you are crazy. I will put up a longer post on the subject on State of Search soon, but for now, here is my presentation:

This week I spent some time in Manchester for SASCON, a conference organized by a group of Manchester SEOs in an effort to attract attention to the fact that there is more than London when it comes to search marketing in the UK. After a day of conference (and two nights of networking and fun) we can safely say the organization has succeeded.

The conference was a big success  I think. There were many good speakers and the organizers did a great job in how they took care of the speakers. We as speakers all agreed on the fact they did that very good. Which is important when organizing a conference. I am already looking forward to next year, where the organisation wants to make things even better.

I was on two panels this show, the black hat / white hat panel and the Running a Pan-European Search Campaign panel. In the last one I did a presentation on how to handle the different cultural elements in Europe. It was in line with a post I did last year for Searchengineland. Below you can see the presentation on Slideshare.

This week is another week of traveling. Conference season continues with a trip to Manchester this week. Although right here, in my ‘home town’ (I don’t live there anymore, but it still feels like home) Amsterdam one of the best conferences in Europe takes place: The Next Web. This conference I used to cover for Dutch Cowboys a few years ago and it really is a great conference, which is organize by a ‘few good men’ Patrick, Boris and Arjen. Anyone in the Netherlands this week I urge them to go and buy a ticket and head over to the conference. But as said, I won’t be there myself. If you want to meet up with me, I will be in Manchester this week. There I will be speaking at SASCON, a conference which is organized by a group of Manchester SEOs who believe that the north of England also needs a good conference. And by the looks of it, they have succeeded. The line up of speakers is very very good, they even got Joost de Valk . I will be discussing international search. In my talk I will be looking at the differences within Europe, in the line of what I wrote about before on Searchengineland and something which will be published there this Tuesday. I’m very much looking forward to the conference. Be sure to check out what we write on State of Search and listen to our radioshow which we’ll be trying to do from Manchester this week!

As said I spoke at the B2B Marketingforum yesterday in Amsterdam. It was an interesting day. My presentation went allright, I kind of got carried away a little and because I did in Dutch talked to much so I used the full amount of time I had. Could have kept going on for hours .

I talked about the changing SERPS and how we should act on that, making the most use out of it. I wrote about that on State of Search also. Below you can find my presentation, in Dutch so for those not speaking Dutch: here’s Google Translate, or just ask me

Today (Wednesday) I am speaking at a conference in my own home country for a change. In stead of traveling to New York, London or Berlin, this time I’m traveling a short bit, to Amsterdam.

There, in the Westergasfabriek the conference “B2B Marketing Forum” is organized. A conference which is very interesting for a couple of reasons: the crowd is all b2b, which makes it different from the search engine – crowd. Second I get to talk for 45 minutes on a subject very near to me: the changing SERPS and how to act on that. I wrote about this topic this week on State of Search.

If you happen to be in Amsterdam, be sure to drop by and take a look at the conference.

In a year there are a couple of months in which the search marketing industry tends to organize their events. The first couple of months are February and March. This week therefore my first period of traveling and speaking starts again. In London Search Engine Strategies 2010 starts. I will be speaking on the second day, but I am also very much looking forward to both the program and the fact I’m meeting up with a lot of my friends again.

Speaking

As said, I am speaking at SES London this year. Which makes me very proud. Only a few years back I visited SES London as one of the anonymous visitors, blogging for Dutch Cowboys. Now I am on stage. And I am talking about that route. How I got from sitting in the audience to being pretty well known in the industry by using social media. I will post the presentation here soon!

Program

If you look at the program there are many sessions which are worth visiting. I’ll be very busy, thats for sure. I will most definitely be present at Avinash Kaushik’s keynote. I’m now reading his book and writing a review on it and the book is absolutely fabulous. Other sessions which I most definitely will attend:

And many more

Friends

Finally one thing I’m very much looking forward to is meeting up with some good friends again. Off course Mr and Mrs Myers, (Jon and Lisa), Dave Naylor, Mikkel deMib, Louis Venter, Matt McGowan, Mike Grehan and many others. Good fun!

See you there?

Are you at SES London? Come say hi!

Last week I was invited by Andy Atkins Kruger of Webcertain to talk on the International Search Summit in London. He organizes this event to give people a better view on international and multilingual Search. The event was very well organized (credits to Gemma Birch) and also had a very good line up of speakers. Amongst others Bill Hunt, Motoko Hunt, Dixon Jones, Will Critchlow and Kristjan Mar Hauksson made their appearance. I was very impressed with the quality of speakers and especially liked the talks of Motoko Hunt and Ching-Yun Huang about search in the far East, Japan and China.

In the afternoon it was my turn to do a talk about Search in Holland. I took a little different approach then most other speakers. The angle I took was somewhat cultural. I took the audience by the hand explaining them what Dutch are like and how that translates to the web and search. It was somewhat of a detour but that was intentional because I believe that if you don’t know who you’re optimizing for you won’t succeed.
The built up of the presentation looked like this:

• some background figures
• what do those outside of Holland think is "Dutch"?
• what is more typical Dutch? (they like to discuss, love to trade, like bargains etcetera)
• how does this translate to online and search?
• How do Dutch act online?
• The future: how do kids interact online and a look at mobile

Take a look at the presentation below. Questions? Ask them! Remarks? Place them!

This Thursday I will be speaking at the International Search Summit in London. This event, which is organized by Webcertain, will take place in the British Library in London. And for an historian that is off course a very nice place to be speaking at! I am very much looking forward to this event, for several reasons:

The event itself

First of all off course the event itself. A look at the agenda and speakers list shows that there will be quite a few interesting speakers I will want to be listening to. Bill Hunt is there, who will also be keynoting at SES Berlin the week after, I always enjoy listening to Will Critchlow and it will be very interesting to hear Motoko Hunt speak about Search in Japan. Check out the entire line up here.

The people I will be seeing again

Every event is special because you get to see friends again who you don’t see that often in real life. So its always good to have some drinks and dinner with people from all over the world. This time will be no different. I also added an extra day to my trip to be able to see some people who will not be attending the event, so looking forward to that too!

The topic I will be talking about

I will be talking about "Search in Holland". I had to think a while to get the right idea of how I would be stepping into this topic. If I would be looking at just the numbers that would take only a minute: Google is dominant. So I decided to take a different angle and I will be looking at how you should do search in Holland, keeping in mind what the Dutch are like. That way I hope to learn the audience something they can actually use.

Would there be anything I should address? Let me know, I’m sure I can get something in there and answer your question . The presentation will be on slideshare also!