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 .

Last week at Search Engine Strategies late at night in the pub Dave Naylor suddenly looked at his phone and looked sad. When I asked him what the matter was he told me his favorite football club Leeds United had just lost to Wallsall. In the First English Division. Leeds once was one of the leading clubs in English Football, being champions ‘only’ back in 1992, when Eric Cantona played in Leeds.

Dave and I talked a little about the football as I am a big Ajax-fan. Now Ajax has always been one of the leading clubs in Europe, but the last decade it has declined rapidly with the last championship in 2004. “Where are the days you could watch a game, sit back and know they will win” I said to Dave. Those days are gone. Tonight Ajax plays Juventus in the Europa League. With a 1-2 loss last week at home chances are they will be out of the cup by the end of the evening.

But as an Ajax- or Leeds fan luckily there is YouTube. The video-channel from Google. Although some Italian judges might ‘kill’ the website if they get there way with the conviction of some Google-bosses in Italy over a video, the site (for now) is a huge resource of historical material. And you can be back in those successful 90s within seconds.

I spend 15 minutes on the site and found loads of fun videos taking me back to the most successful period of Ajax in the last 20 years, one I was part of, living in Amsterdam and visiting many games of Ajax. I found some brilliant videos and some brilliant football. Like the best match I ever saw Ajax play against Real Madrid in 1996:

The beautiful thing about YouTube however is that you also can find a lot of ‘home made’ videos, which give you the exact feeling you had back then. This one for example is taken in the old Ajax-stadium De Meer where I spent a lot of time. The sound and the look of the pitch take you back immediately:

And finally this video from the semi-finals of the Champions League in 1995 against Bayern Munich. The position these guys were in is about the same position (I think I was two/three meters to the left) I was standing during that semi final:

You just have to love YouTube for this. And you have to love the web for this. Without that all I would have are memories. Those were the days. Lets hope that one day they’ll return!

To close it down, especially for Dave two Leeds United videos, just for fun:

 As a boy I grew up watching football a lot. And though I’m not a UK resident I did see a lot of Gary Lineker, England striker, Barcelona player. He was "the role model" for every player, never got a yellow card, always nice, yet succesfull. Yet I never dreamed (or wanted for that matter) about seeing him in his ‘birthday suite’. The former England captain, now BBC Match Of The Day anchorman, showed up in this commercial. 

So why post it here? Well, for one thing because it surprised me, second I believe this is one of those commercials which could go viral. I talked about linkbait the other day in a training session I did on search marketing. Here’s an example of some brilliant linkbait by Walkers Crips…

I ran into this video below yesterday. I hadn’t seen it before, and was pleasantly surprised. Danny Sullivan, probably the best known search guru in the world, did a keynote at "Where 2.0" last May. He talked about local search and what issues the ‘normal guy’ could have with local. It’s a very good keynote because Sullivan knows how to combine humor with lessons and search and is able to present the issues in a language anyone, not just the search community, can understand. It’s a killer tip therefore: watch this!

Just before my daughter was born I did a presentation about the use of online social networking in front of a group of Dutch "offline" managers. The presentation (in Dutch) can be seen on my Dutch blog.

One of the things which is always difficult is to explain to those who are not familiar with the subject what social networking actually is and what the benefits are. That’s why I like Common Craft so much. These guys know how to explain things easy:

I found this video featuring SEO Strategist Jessica Bowman. She talks about what can go wrong in SEO projects. And as we all know, we can learn from our mistakes .

That Americans want to do everything to get elected we knew. We also knew that most Americans don’t even bother to vote. This group of American celebrities tries to get people to vote. Funny sometimes, but also a bit ‘preachy’. But I guess Americans need that?

Last week I visited PICNIC. Some keynotes were way out and did not get close to what the ‘normal guy’ is doing on the web. Others are usefull if you, like me, want to ‘explain’ to people what’s going on. Charles Leadbeater’s presentation did both. Leadbeater wrote a book and he also made a short film. People around him said the film told the entire story in a simple way. Be the judge yourself:

Google is sometimes seen as a search engine, sometimes as a company looking to obtain ‘World Domination’ but even as often as an example of how to keep your employees happy. Things Google does to ‘help’ their employees are often copied to other companies. A good example is the time Googlers get to work on a self-thought-off project.

Two weeks ago ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ broadcasted an item on how things work at the Google Campus (the business area of Google). Below you can see the item. And well, who doesn’t want to work at Google after seeing this item..?