I spent the better part of this week in Seattle for SMX Advanced 2010 and got to see a lot of my old friends, and meet new awesome ones. Conferences are always awesome, but SMX Advanced is even more special to me because of relationships made at a past one I attended (hat tip Cameron). I feel it brings huge opportunity for those who attend & speak – if, and I say IF …. they are smart and think outside of the box. There was one such individual that did think outside the box this year and impressed me. His name is Thomas Ballantyne he owns Blog Pest Control & he made me a shirt! Its been done before you say? Maybe, but never like this before – HIS TWIST? He really enjoyed something I had said on Twitter, and ended up making me a shirt with that specific “tweet” (see below)
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SMX, smx advanced, smx advanced 2010
To all those who were wanting our Foursquare survey slides at SMX Advanced – here they are! Do what you will with them, but give Will Scott and I a little credit in the process 
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foursquare, SMX, smx advanced
I am really looking forward to SMX Advanced this year for many reasons, but the biggest this year is being able to hang out with some of the most awesome friends on the planet. Another reason is because I am on a pretty kick butt panel with some amazing fellas called “Location Services: The new local search?”
Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence
Speakers:
Vince Blackham, Founder & CEO, Primary Affect
Michael Martin, Owner, Mobile Martin
Will Scott, President, Search Influence
Dylan Swift, Director of Local Business Marketing, Yelp
I look forward to seeing you all there, please make sure and come up and say hi! Some of the best friends I have in this industry came about by going up and saying hi! Some of the best info I have gotten out of other speakers was when we were hanging out, chilling in a bar or eating dinner!
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Matt Siltala, SMX, smx advanced
How about this for a headline: Matt McGee, an Arizona Cardinals fan?
Matt McGee, a great friend of mine was such an awesome sport about this. Ok, maybe he was a little upset at himself for making this bet (The Arizona Cardinals would get further in the 2009 season than the Seahawks), but we had fun with it. To show my appreciation to Matt I wanted to make sure and post the pics for ALL to see. Here ya go Matt:
Matt McGee hesitant to put on the jersey!
This looks hard for this Seahawks fan
Matt still not looking "happy" with this fake smile here.
What a good sport wearing the jersey during his Twitter clinc
Love this, Thanks Matt for being such a good sport!
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matt mcgee, SMX, smx west 2010
A couple of us from Dream Systems Media will be speaking at SMX West, and we are pretty excited about it. Myself and David Mink are going to be speaking on a combined total of 4 panels. They are some awesome subjects with some even cooler speakers! Here is a run down of our speaking schedule. We are very excited to be speaking with some of these other awesome speakers! We are also very thankful that our 3rd team member Andy Melchior will be holding down the DSM fort for us while we are gone!
Matt Siltala speaking schedule:
Local & Mobile Search Track
Mobile Search Apps & Opportunities – Away from your computer, but need to search for something? There’s a smart phone app for that! More than 100,000 for the iPhone, 20,000 and growing for Google’s Android. This session looks at popular search apps on different devices, how they gather data and opportunities they offer to search marketers.
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David Mink, Matt Siltala, SMX, SMX West, smx west 2010
I just had to take a snapshot of this picture and share it because I thought it was cool. Our very own David Mink‘s likeness is being used on the banners pitching SMX Advanced next month in Seattle. I have seen the banners for a while now, but it only hit me today that the guy in the snapshot was David! I think that’s pretty cool! This picture was taken at SMX West 2009 (which Dave and I spoke at), and I am pretty sure that another one of DSM’s crew took the picture. Greg Lindblom in fact (lostbro1 on Twitter) was the guy responsible for the picture and apparently SMX took the image off my Flickr feed. So the question is, where is the credit/link love for Greg? I guess this will have to do! Nice picture Greg! Now only if we were actually speaking at SMX advanced … haha
David Mink
dave mink, David Mink, SMX, smx advanced, smx west 2009
Up Close With Google AdWords Quality Score – Google’s quality score remains a mystery to many marketers, plus Google keeps changing when and how it is used. This session takes a fresh look at the current state of quality score, how it is implemented and tips on using it to your advantage
Moderator: Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster
Q&A Moderator: James Zolman, CEO, semvironment
Speakers:
Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, Course Advisor Inc.
Craig Danuloff, President, ClickEquations Inc.
Nicholas Fox, Business Product Management Director, AdWords, Google Inc.
NOTES:
Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, Course Advisor Inc.
Topic: Fact vs. Myth with Google Quality Score
- There is a different CPC forumula if you are the only advertiser on the page? Fact.
- Quality score is lost once you make changes? Myth, QS is changed, but not lost.
Google, PPC, SMX
SMX, SMX West
