SES, New York 2008

He did it again!

My pal Kevin Ryan and the SES crew pulled together yet another hugely successful show. SES, New York last week had such a great atmosphere. The sessions and speakers were great. And, as ever, the networking and nightlife just added to the buzz.

I thoroughly enjoyed my sessions. In particular, I had great fun (and lively debate) with Kevin when we co-moderated the Orion Panel on Universal search. The panellist included Lyndsay Menzies, John Battelle, Jack Menzel and James Lamberti, In the picture below, you can see I have their undivided attention as I put forward the case for more images of scantily clad and naked ladies in Universal search results :-)

I also thoroughly enjoyed the meet the crawlers session I moderated. Great questions from the audience. Tons of information from the search engine representatives. And my usual pic of the audience to give them some quality content to link to ;-)

And I was thrilled to have the absolute queen of the blogging scene, Lisa Barone as my date for Alan Dick's VIP do at the Manhattan Penthouse. She didn't leave my arm for a second... In the elevator. But then she spotted the handsome and debonair James Hanbury (founding member and CEO of Incisive media - owners of SES/SEW/CZ) at the table. And also at the same table, the no less handsome or debonair Rory Brown (Managing Director of Incisive's Interactive division, active Newcastle United supporter and generally very canny lad). That's when I was left at the bar with a flat beer and half empty bowl of peanuts...

Only kidding! That was actually the first time that Lisa had met the "bosses" from Incisive Media. And after a splendid dinner and excellent company, she and I swooped out on to the town to a general piss-up somewhere else. I remember arriving and bumping into the wonderfully warm and huggy Kim Krause (yes, the very same Kim Krause spotted on stage singing in a New York nightclub last week!). There were drinks... And more drinks...And then some shots with Matt McGowan and then... Some more drinks. So, please don't ask me what was going in the picture below... I have no recollection whatsoever!

I managed to spend some time at our booth with my new buddies at Acronym Media. I have to say, I love every single one of them (even if I can't remember any names yet :-)

Well, there are some I do remember. Here's the wonderful force of nature, otherwise known as Farah Sadiq (runs our Singapore office). And with her, our own analytics guru (and bonzer Sheila), Tami Dalley.

And here's my buddy (and Acronym CEO) the very suave and sophisticated Anton Konikoff with my new pal (and Director, Business Development ) Brad Neelan. Brad's a sure-shot when it comes to hurling coffee! Only joking Brad. It was a pure accident, I know. I know.

Love 'em all as I do, there's one special person at Acronym who I actually knew before I joined. It's a very small world thing which is quite the secret... Okay, she's Kevin Ryan's partner... Well... It was bound to come out sooner or later!

And here she is, the one and only Rhian Aidala helping me prop up the bar at the Acronym staff party last week.

And let's throw in some more staffers from the party


And finally...

Back at the conference I bumped into my buddy Mel Carson from Microsoft. They have some very cool new stuff going on over at http://www.adcentercommunity.com/ It's well worth checking out.

Okay, time to start planning for the tenth anniversary SES in San Jose this August. Now that, I guarantee, is going to be the show of the year!