Events – Bas van den Beld

27
Jan 16
0

Friends of Search, Iceland and workshops – My month in January and my February plans

Category:Events,News,Personal Tags : Events travel Workshops

It feels like last weekend that the New Year started. Yet January is almost over. Where has it gone? It seems like the first month of what is going to be a very interesting year has flown by. The month has been very busy. And guess what, I haven’t even been out of the country!

Where last year I spent many hours on a plane, my plan was to this year do a bit less traveling. The travel I will do would be very focused. And don’t worry, I’ll get on that plane soon, because there are many things planned in the upcoming months. More about that in a minute. First I want to quickly look back onto the last month.

What have I been doing?

As said, I haven’t been out of the country, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been doing nothing. Actually, I’ve been so busy that part of my plan for January I couldn’t even get done! My plan was to make a lot of mileage on my book that I’m finally writing. Now I’ve made some progress this month, but I have to admit, I wanted it to be more. The reason for the ‘delay’ however was good and it will benefit the book as well.

This month I’ve been doing a lot of workshops in The Netherlands. Next to my regular sessions, there’s been a workshop at a Dutch Insurance company, helping them get ready for a new website they are developing. This session was very interesting because of the field, the insurance field is a very competitive one as well as very seasonably influenced. There’s also been a workshop for a foundation that supports Autism, helping them get a first grip on who they are targeting with their several different websites. There will be a follow up on that as well. And there has been a great workshop with Sports Marketers, something I also did last year, but this year with a new group. The exciting things about these workshops is not just helping people, it’s also meeting new people and learning from them as well. Each industry is different and within each industry there are differences as well. Very valuable!

I’ve also done a webinar this month with Startup Istanbul (where I’m hoping to go in October) and I’m speaking to a group of retired High Level Executives, which is exciting for many reasons, one of them being that my dad is in the room!

What’s to come in February

January has been busy and by the looks of it, the upcoming month(s) will be as well! Just looking at February I can see a few things to be very excited about. Again there are workshops (one for a team of doctors and medical experts, talk about differentiation!) and I’m speaking again. Two conferences I’d like to highlight here for February:

Friends of Search

On February 11th I will be in Amsterdam the entire day to be hosting “Friends of Search”. The entire day I will be presenting and asking questions to people on stage. Most of them will be actually my friends! This event, organised by the Dutch DMA and IAB, was one of my highlights last year. This year it looks to be awesome again. Just look at the line-up. There is Lee Odden, who I haven’t seen in ages, so I’m really looking forward to seeing him again. There are Wil Reynolds and Larry Kim, extremely knowledgeable and likeable people. And there are the amazing Emily Grossman, Stacey MacNaught with whom I always love spending time and listening to. And I’m looking forward to seeing Martijn Scheijbeler from The Next Web on stage, not to mention all the other great speakers. It’s going to be an exciting day.

Who will be there? (I think there are s few tickets left)

RIMC 2016

The evening of Friends of Search I will be returning to the world of traveling. I’m flying to Reyjavik for the yearly return of RIMC! I’m always excited to see my good friend Kristjan Hauksson, who’s organised this conference for 11 years already. The past few years I’ve been lucky enough to be part of it. Again I will be hosting the day, but this year I will also be speaking, closing the conference with a bang!

It will be great to see old friends again, like Dave Naylor, who I haven’t seen in a while and of course Russell, Matt, Pierre Far and I’m really excited that State of Digital’s Sam Noble will be speaking!

February looks to be amazing again. It will probably fly by even faster than January (it has less days anyway), but luckily this year is a leap year, so we win a day ;-). Oh and I’m going skiing in February as well, my favourite holiday!

Where will you be this month? Am I going to see you somewhere? Let me know, be great to catch up!!!

29
Apr 15
3

Holy Crap! I won the award for European Search Personality of the Year!

Category:Events,News Tags : awards searchawards

It was a crazy week last week. After I had flown to Iceland for RIMC and gotten back home I flew out again to Berlin where I was awarded with what I believe is the biggest honor award you can get in the search industry at the moment: European Search Personality of the Year!

Last Wednesday I traveled to Berlin to attend the European Search Awards 2015. With State of Digital we were mediapartners and Linkdex had 4 nominations to win, so there was a lot of reason to go.

This was going to be one of my shorter trips so I decided to take my car to the airport so I would be sure I would be able to get home quickly the day after because I had to pick the kids up from school. When I got to the airport however Schiphol had decided to close down the parking garages, which are closest to the airport without any warnings. I had to drive around for almost half an hour to end up parking in the furthest place you can imagine. I would have been better off taking the train.

Because of this I almost missed my flight. That turned out to be the only stress I had that day. It would only get better. Much better.

In Berlin I met up with old friends. When you travel to speak you meet up with some people at events. An awards ceremony always means there are many people there you know. It’s kind of like a reunion sometimes. Some people I hadn’t seen in a long time, so it was really good to catch up.

I catched up with people before, during and after dinner. After dinner the actual awards started. Linkdex was nominated for four different awards so we were excited to have a shot at winning one or more. Before the categories from Linkdex came up Lisa Myers, co-founder with me on State of Search, and her company VerveSearch had already won 3 awards (congratulations!) so the atmosphere in the room was good. I was asked to hand out an award as well and the evening reached a nice peak when Linkdex actually won the award for best innovation for the Entity Search tool.

It however wasn’t over yet. During the evening there had been some hints but when Jackie Hole got on stage and started to talk about the award for Search Personality she was going to hand out it became clear to me something special was about to happen. I was expecting someone else to win the award, but when Jackie talked about the fact that the person who won it was special for her because he had helped her and she would not have been on the stage without him I realized she was talking about me. And indeed then she mentioned my name:

I am the European Search Personality of the year!

Holy crap!

It truly is great to receive an award like this. It is a huge recognition of all that I have been doing in the past few years, trying to educate the industry and getting it to the next level. For those not in the industry: you can compare it the winning best player of the year in Europe in sports, but then in the industry ;-).

On stage I told a story about how different people in the industry, starting with Collette and Dom had helped me when the site got hit about a year and a half ago and that Dom had said he helped me because of ‘Karma’. I truly believe that is what earned me this award as well. Giving makes that at one point you get as well. That also shows in tribute post the editorial team on State of Digital wrote for me.

Thank you!

When on stage I didn’t have time to thank all the people that made that I won this award and to be honest I was a bit overwhelmed so probably also forgot some names. So I would definitely want to name them again and some more here.

Starting of course with the editorial team of State of Digital, lead by the fantastic Sam Noble, with Barry Adams, Jo Turnbull, Russell O’Sullivan, Louis Venter, Jackie Hole and Arianne Donoghue. Lisa Myers, without whom it would have never happened if we hadn’t set up State of Search all those years ago. And of course the Linkdex team lead by my friend Matt Roberts with a huge role for Collette Easton. The marketing team there with Valbona, Pat, Matt and all the others. And then the industry friends. Too many to mention of course, but think about Roy (former co-host of the radio show), Paul Madden, Dom Hodgson, Gareth Hoyle, James Murray, Dave Naylor, from whom I learned so much, Kristjan Hauksson and so many others that I would have to mention names here forever. Of course also a big thank you to the organisers of the event Don’t Panic.

The most important thing is to realize that this award is one that shows that working together pays off. It’s the people that make the business, not the tools.

So thank you all for this fantastic award. I am hugely proud of it and will carry the title with honor!

Find below some more images of the evening, if you want to see more, the organisation has some here.

Winners with Linkdex!

The great host of the evening, Mel Carson

Dom and Gareth

Handing out an award

Lisa and her Vervesearch team

Jackie announcing my win

Winning! With Jackie

30
Dec 13
0

2013: What a Year I’ve had!

Category:Events,Personal,speaking Tags : speaking travel

The year is almost over, about time for a little recap. Yes, I know, there are many out there, but this one is different. Why? Because it’s about my year :). On my final trip of the year, back from Istanbul, Turkey, to Amsterdam, I had some time to reflect a little on what has been one of the most amazing years in my life. This year I have seen a lot of this world, more than ever before, met a lot of great people, was inspired a lot, saw some great businesses and learned a lot myself as well. Time to get you up to speed on what I’ve done this year.

28
Aug 12
0

A Week in San Francisco

Category:Events Tags : Events linkdex ses san francisco

So my plan was to give some more updates on what I am doing , where I am speaking and what I’m writing about on different places. I should really do that right? 🙂

Well you might want to hear about the week I spent at SES San Francisco this month. I was there as part of an expert roundtable, I did some blogging and I was there together with three people from Lindex. They ‘took me in’ as part of their family and I thoroughly enjoyed that. It was nice because it was a different experience than I usually have on conferences.

One nice thing about being in San Francisco was the fact that I got picked up from the airport by Dennis Goedegebuure, a well known Dutch SEO who made a good career for himself in San Francisco. He even took a picture of my plane landing (see below). It was great seeing him again, and begin picked up made me feel like a VIP. Dennis even wrote about it on his blog.

I also wrote a post about being in San Francisco for the Linkdex blog. The intro is here, the rest of the post you can read on the Linkdexblog. Please do 😉

02
Jun 11
0

Next week doing something new at A4U!

Category:Events Tags : a4uexpo Interview State of Search

A few weeks ago I spent the entire week in the UK doing several talks (I still have to put my presentations online, will do that soon!). I was then at the conferences SMX, ISS and SASCON (check State of Search for the coverage there!). Next week I’ll again be taking the plane, over to Germany this time. To be more specific: Munich. I will go to A4U Expo Europe which, like last year, is held in the Hilton Munich Park Hotel. Last year I was one of the speakers there, but unlike then and unlike last week I won’t be speaking this year. That is because I am doing something else.

This year at A4U we from State of Search are trying out something “new”. At A4U Munich there is, as always, an Expo Hall in which sponsors can exhibit and people can network. Looking over that Expo Hall there will be a special booth in which I will be talking to people about A4U Expo, what their experiences are, but also what is keeping them busy in their day-to-day business. Off course we will also be getting speakers to talk about what they have been telling the audience on stage. For the duration of the conference we will be doing this in several ‘sessions’. This will all be live streamed on State of Search.

Category Archives: Events

Jan 16

0