What was new at Pubcon 2007?

[waynelong]

For those of you who were able to go to Pubcon 2007 - what did you find the most interesting. I will be there next year - I just couldn't work it out this year.

[Ryan Ward]

Wayne,

It doesn't seem like anyone is ready to share yet...Maybe we should have gone.

[Max]

Frankly, I was quite disappointed in the organization of the event. Even though last year it was less expensive, but sessions were better organized. This year they super-sized the price and downsized everything else. Some sessions were exactly the same ones as last year... I mean the presentations were the same. Many sessions didn't have the right speakers, so speakers were invited and situated on the fly. Some sessions didn't discuss what they were supposed to and I left a few in the middle. Out of all the sessions I attended, I think, I liked 2 or 3. Also this year I was able to talk to more people than last year. I think the social part was better, but otherwise I was not impressed.

I'm not going to type up my short notes here, but I see that SERoundTable has an excellent detailed writeup as usually. Check it out here
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015623.html - they have pretty much everything (more then I wrote down, but of course, I was there not to write a blog).

[kensmith]

I am in agreement with Max, this year was not as good as last year. There was more then one session that the speakers didn't even know about the topic, but they would be experts in other topics that they where not asked to speak on. One speaker actually said "I don't really know much about this, but let me give you my take on it". If I want uneducated opinions I will just read random blogs.

With all that said there was still some good stuff. IMO if you can get a couple good ideas a conference is worth the cost and I did that. Mainly local and social media topics had my interest and I found a few new sites that are worth investing a little time into. Follow the link Max provided and read the session reviews there as they are very detailed, but if you ahve questions about any of the sessions feel free to ask.